Session Initiation Protocol

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an IETF standard for setting up sessions between one or more clients. It is currently (2003) the leading protocol for Voice over IP, gradually replacing H.323 in this role.

A goal for SIP was to provide a superset of the call processing functions and features present in the public switched telephone network (PSTN). As such, features that permit familiar telephone-like operations are present: dialing a number, causing a phone to ring, hearing ringback tones or a busy signal. Implementation and terminology are different; for example, SIP refers to a device being in an "alerting state" rather than "ringing."

SIP also implements many of the more advanced call processing features present in Signalling System 7 (SS7), though the two protocols themselves could hardly be more different.

Devices with the look, feel, and shape of a traditional telephone, but that use SIP and RTP for communications, are commercially available from several vendors.

SIP uses the Session Description Protocol (SDP) to describe the media content of the session, e.g. what IP ports to use, the codec being used etc. In typical use, SIP "sessions" are simply packet streams of the Real Time Transport Protocol (RTP).

The first standard version (SIP 2.0) was defined in RFC 2543 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2543.txt). The protocol was further clarified in RFC 3261 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3261.txt), although many implementations are still using interim draft versions. Note that the version number remains 2.0.

Microsoft Windows Messenger uses SIP, implementing a SIP User Agent (end device). So are various softswitch[?] implementations, e.g. by Nortel, Sonus[?] and many more. Such devices are normally acting as a SIP proxy. Also, SIP requires firewalls to have knowledge about the SIP protocol in order to give the needed security. Today this is not a normal funcionality of most firewalls but the functionality can be added via third-party products.

A standard instant messaging protocol based on SIP, called SIMPLE, has been proposed and is under development.

External links

• Henning Schulzrinne's SIP page (http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/sip)
• The SIP Forum page (http://www.sipforum.org)
• SIP Specification (RFC 3261) (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3261.txt)