An educational multimedia IP telephony platform

Nowadays where IP telephony and multimedia applications infiltrate our daily lives the comprehension of contributing services and protocols is essential for ITK technicians and engineers. Also new added functionalities are essential. Therefore we constructed a platform for multimedia applications prototyping based on IP technology and IP phones. Our educational IP telephony platform enables students to study and analyze Voice over IP protocol (VOIP) with associated processes and procedures necessary for IP phone application implementation. The article discusses the description and functionalities of the presented educational VOIP local network platform. Actually the platform represents a unified communications framework because it´s not solely a VOIP network but also a data and multimedia network. It includes presentation of implemented protocols and software environments on which the system can be configured. It also describes the functionalities of the system and how the students can observe, analyze or change the IP telephony system. The foremost task that students are involved with is development and testing of the IP phones applications. These applications add functionality to IP phones that a stationary phone has never had before. It enables users to read news, check weather, stock markets or play games directly from the IP phone without the need of a desktop or portable computer.