Subject: Support of Values in Packages

From: Christian Groves <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 07:37:30 +1000

G'Day all,

There has been some confusion at the SG16 on what is supported in
Packages.

The understanding that I had was that: If you support a package you must
support all the signals, properties, events and statistics. However you
do not have to support all the values associated with the properties and
parameters.

Tom mentioned that a thread discussed on the list contravened this.

The reasoning that I have for not having to support all the values is
the following:
o Proliferation of packages. Eg: if a package has a list of tones, and I
must support all the values, if I only want to support a subset of these
values then I need a new package. Therefore you may get the case of a
package "Package Call Progress Tones E.7" where an MG doesn't support
Payphone Recognition Tone because it doesn't have payphones connected to
it. To be compliant with H.248 I can't extend the package because I want
to remove the payphone tone. So a new Package needs to be defined
containing exactly the same information but without the payphone tone.
Now my MG won't support the standard Call Progress Tone package but will
support the XXX_companies_Call_Progress_Tone package. This would lead to
a proliferation of packages.

o Multiple GW support - One MG may not implement all the values of a
property. For something like a list of codecs, a group of resources
associated with the value may be placed in different MG GWs. ie. GSM
codecs in MG1, PCM codecs in MG2. So whilst the MGs support the same
package properties, they can't support a subset of values then you'd
need to define a different package for each MG configuration. Again
leading to a proliferation of packages.

o The MGC knows the PackageID, that all Properties, Signals, Events,
Statistics are supported. In H.248 we have the AuditCapability and
AuditValue commands to find out what actual values of properties are
supported.

So if people agree that not all values in a package need to be supported
I propose to add some text to the implementor's guide:
Section 12.1 after 2nd Paragraph
"A MG SHALL support all Property, Signals & parameters, Events &
parameters and Statistics. A MG MAY support a subset of property X-Mozilla-Status: 0009defined in the package unless specified in a package."

Cheers, Christian