scope:

This Recommendation | International Standard provides a specification of a Group Management Protocol (GMP), which is an application-layer control protocol for creating a group session and for managing the group's participating members.

The GMP consists of session management (SM), membership management (MM), and the function of exchanging information between SM and MM. SM is responsible for session creation and deletion. MM manages the member lists based on session information retrieved from SM.

According to ITU-T Rec. X.601, "Multi-peer communications framework", the multi-peer communication service is achieved in seven distinct phases: registration, enrolment, activation, data transfer, deactivation, de-enrolment, and de-registration. Since one of these operations - data transfer - may be performed using ECTP or TCP, SM may perform the rest of operations: creation, announcement, registration, enrolment, activation, including session announcement. In addition, MM manages group members who are in enrolled or active groups.

SM may provide a convenient interface to users because it may be implemented on the Web. Operation of MM is transparent to users as in a transport protocol.