In
telephony
Telephony ( ) is the field of technology involving the development, application, and deployment of telecommunications services for the purpose of electronic transmission of voice, fax, or data, between distant parties. The history of telephony is ...
, a stimulus protocol is a type of protocol that is used to carry event notifications between end points. Such a protocol is used to control the operation of devices at each end of the link. However a stimulus protocol is not sensitive to the system state. In a typical application such a protocol will carry keystroke information from a telephone set to a central
call control In telephony, call control refers to the software within a telephone switch that supplies its central function. Call control decodes addressing information and routes telephone calls from one end point to another. It also creates the features that c ...
. It may also carry control information for simple types of text displays.
MiNET from
Mitel
Mitel Networks Corporation is a Canadian telecommunications company. The company previously produced TDM PBX systems and applications, but after a change in ownership in 2001, now focuses almost entirely on Voice-over-IP (VoIP), unified commu ...
is a typical protocol of this sort.
Stimulus protocols are most suited to networks with dumb peripherals and intelligent centralized applications (see
intelligent network
The Intelligent Network (IN) is the standard network architecture specified in the ITU-T Q.1200 series recommendations. It is intended for fixed as well as mobile telecom networks. It allows operators to differentiate themselves by providing ...
). This is in contrast to functional protocols which are best suited to a network with an intelligent periphery and a dumb core (see
dumb network
A dumb pipe or dumb network, in relation to a mobile network operator (MNO), is a simple network that has high enough bandwidth to transfer bytes between the customer's device and the Internet without the need to prioritize content. This means it ...
). Because these architectures share core hardware over large numbers of peripherals, large and expensive computing capabilities in terms of both hardware and software may be supplied. These centralized architectures excel in solving the problems of complexity for large scale applications since the investment in hardware and software may be amortized across a great many users. However the same virtue of large scale sharing prevents these architectures from providing any significant degree of customization to the preferences of the individual user. The most that can be supplied is a degree of parameterization of service operation.
With their suitability tied to the virtues of centralized network architectures, stimulus protocols are being deprecated in favor of functional protocols with the rise of the Internet. A functional protocol such as
Session Initiation Protocol
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating communication sessions that include voice, video and messaging applications. SIP is used in Internet telephony, in private IP telepho ...
(SIP) from the
IETF
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...
is more suited for Internet applications.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stimulus Protocol
Network protocols
Telephony