Network-based Call Signaling (NCS) is a profile of the Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) for use in PacketCable applications for voice-over-IP.
This architecture physically decomposes the functionality of providing complete end-to-end multimedia telecommunication sessions into several discrete components, notably a media gateway (MG) located at the customer premises that performs the physical translation between analog voice or video streams to packetized digital data, and a media gateway controller (MGC) which is a centralized server that controls typically many media gateways and manages the complexity of call setup, resource negotiation, call routing, and tear-down.
In addition, the architecture also uses signaling gateways to the traditional telecommunication channels, such as SS7-based networks.
Network-based Call Signaling is a modification of the Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP).
[1] NCS provides a PacketCable profile of an application programming interface (MGCI),[2] and a corresponding protocol (MGCP) for controlling voice-over-IP (VoIP) embedded clients from external call control elements.