CCMP: a novel standard protocol for Conference Management in the XCON Framework

This paper presents the design and implementation of CCMP, a conference management protocol currently under standardization within the IETF, conceived at the outset as a lightweight protocol allowing conferencing clients to access and manipulate objects describing a centralized conference. The CCMP is a state-less, XML-based, client-server protocol carrying in its request and response messages conference information in the form of XML documents and fragments conforming to the centralized conferencing data model schema. It represents a powerful means to control basic and advanced conference features such as conference state and capabilities, participants and relative roles and details. We first focus on the design of the protocol and then discuss how it has been integrated in the Meetecho collaborative framework developed at the University of Napoli as an active playground for IETF standardization activities in the field of real-time applications and infrastructure.