Cisco Cisco IOS Software Release 12.2(4)T

MGCP voice gateway interoperability with Cisco CallManager allows modular access routers to act as 
redundant failover MGCP gateways. You can enable IP telephony and Cisco CallManager solutions 
using Cisco 2600 and Cisco 3600 series routers as voice gateways. This allows you to use the Cisco 2600 
and 3600 platforms already in your networks as MGCP gateways within an IP telephony architecture. 

An MGCP gateway handles the translation between audio signals and the packet network. The gateways 
interact with a call agent (also called a Media Gateway Controller or MGC) that performs signal and call 
processing on gateway calls. 

In the MGCP configurations that Cisco IOS supports, the gateway can be any of the following:

Cisco router 

Access server 

Cable modem 

The call agent is either of the following: 

A server from a third-party vendor

Cisco CallManager

With MGCP, gateways are defined as secondary devices under control of the call agent. MGCP uses 
endpoints and connections to construct a call. Endpoints are sources of or destinations for data, and can 
be physical or logical locations in a device. Connections can be point-to-point or multipoint. The call 
agent manages connections between endpoints and controls how gateways function. (See 

An MGCP gateway derives most of the configuration it requires from the call agent. To configure an 
MGCP gateway, you simply identify the call agent associated with the gateway and identify the gateway 
to the call agent. 

POTS phones

MGCP-managed endpoints

PSTN

MGCP gateway

Cisco Unified Communications Manager

(MGCP call agent)

TCP/IP network

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