What is a Gatekeeper?

A gatekeeper is an H.323 entity on a LAN that provides address translation and control access to the LAN for H.323 terminals and gateways.

The gatekeeper can provide other services to the H.323 terminals and gateways, such as bandwidth management and locating gateways.

A gatekeeper maintains a registry of devices in the multimedia network. The devices register with the gatekeeper at startup and request admission to a call from the gatekeeper.

The Cisco VRC supports primary gatekeepers, alternate gatekeepers, overlap gatekeepers, and clustered gatekeepers.

Cisco VRC supports the following Cisco products as H.323 gatekeepers:

Note: VRC support of certain platforms is limited to the Cisco IOS Release running on the device. Refer to VRC Feature Sets for more information.

Cisco gatekeepers perform the following tasks: