Design and implementation of lifeline communication system in the Internet

As Internet access had spread, it has become an important potential means of lifeline communication. The Internet can fulfill a role in the everyday life of citizens by offering lifeline communication services such as the police, ambulance, gas, electricity, and water services when an emergency occurs. In these lifeline communications, a caller needs to be able to communicate with the nearby lifeline service in the same manner as on a PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Networks) without being consciously aware of the path the caller's message is taking. Moreover, the lifeline service agency must be able to acquire the caller's location and identity. However, it is very difficult to transfer these essential functions from the PSTN to the Internet without making significant changes, because of large differences between the PSTN and the Internet. In this paper, we discuss how to obtain these functions for lifeline communications in the Internet. We further propose a model and implement a lifeline communication system on the Internet.