VoIP Emergency Calling: Foundations and Practice

This book provides a comprehensive view of the emerging standards for VoIP emergency calling from an International perspective In this book, the authors provide a treatment of the VoIP emergency calling process that is both comprehensive, looking at all aspects of emergency calling, and practical, providing technical details on how such functions can be implemented.  In addition, the authors describe the standardization efforts of the Internet Engineering Task Force who are currently working to improve the situation for VoIP emergency calls. The book provides an overview of emergency calling with a particular focus on the ECRIT emergency calling architecture, and discusses considerations related to implementation, deployment, and regulation of next–generation emergency calling.  It also takes a look at practical aspects of emergency calling, with a set of exercises to help the reader get familiar with the technologies involved. Key Features: Discusses emerging standards for VoIP emergency calling from an international perspective Provides practical guides for implementing the core of the emergency calling architecture Contains architectural, practical, and regulatory perspectives Written by experts working on the development of emergency calling architectures and its implementation Includes an accompanying website with open–source software packages (http://www.voip–sos.net/) This book will be an invaluable resource for product managers and developers, equipment vendors, network operators, emergency service providers, and telecommunications regulators. Industry professionals interested in standards compliance will also find this book of interest.

Foreword. Useful Links. List of Abbreviations. 1 Introduction. 1.1 Calling over the Internet. 1.2 VoIP Emergency Calling Problem Statement. 1.3 Emergency Communication. 1.4 Overview of this Book. References. 2 Emergency Calling. 2.1 Overview. 2.2 Infrastructure Requirements. 2.3 The Role of Location Information. References. 3 The ECRIT Emergency Calling Architecture. 3.1 Overview. 3.2 Location Information. 3.3 Service URNs. 3.4 Determining the Appropriate PSAP – the LoST Protocol. 3.5 The Emergency Call Itself. 3.6 Home Dial String Configuration via LoST. 3.7 Deployment Models. 3.8 Considerations for Proxies. 3.9 Standardization. 3.10 Summary. References. 4 Including Location Information. 4.1 Location Configuration. 4.2 Positioning Using GPS. 4.3 Network–Based Positioning. 4.4 Location Hiding. 4.5 Default Location. References. 5 Implementation and Regulatory Considerations. 5.1 Distribution of Implementation Tasks. 5.2 Austria. 5.3 The United States. 5.4 The European Union. 5.5 Japan. 5.6 Summary. References. 6 VoIP Emergency Calling in Practice. 6.1 Software. 6.2 Practice Exercises. References. 7 Security. 7.1 ECRIT Security. 7.2 Location Security. References. 8 Ongoing Emergency Calling Work. 8.1 Prototyping, Implementation, and Interoperability. 8.2 Ongoing Standardization Issues. 8.3 Ongoing Implementation Issues. References. 9 Summary and the Outlook for the Future. Index.