thinQmaster Virtual testing partner Adaptive practice exams that find your weak spots and drill them. Every answer explained. From $69
Enroll

thinQmaster

Find your exam

Five questions free, before you decide.

Step 1 · choose a vendor

In one of our camps? Your practice exams come with the tuition — they are on your study page already.

Collaboration, Voice & AV · Intermediate

Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP)

A centralized master/slave protocol (UDP 2427) in which a call agent such as CUCM controls voice gateway endpoints.

Definition

With MGCP the gateway has no local dial plan; CUCM, acting as call agent, configures and controls each voice port and can backhaul ISDN Q.931 signaling for PRIs. This simplifies administration because dial plan changes happen only in CUCM. The trade-off is that gateway survivability during WAN outages requires fallback to H.323 or SCCP/SIP SRST, and Cisco now recommends SIP gateways for new designs.

Example

ccm-manager config and mgcp commands let a branch ISR download its PRI configuration from CUCM.

Exam tip

MGCP gateways rely on CUCM for dial plan; during WAN failure they need MGCP fallback to local H.323 or SIP dial peers.

Related terms