shawn_rin's blog

The Basics

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signalling protocol used for establishing sessions in an IP network. A session could be a simple two-way telephone call or it could be a collaborative multi-media conference session. The ability to establish these sessions means that a host of innovative services become possible, such as voice-enriched e-commerce, web page click-to-dial, Instant Messaging with buddy lists, and IP Centrex services.

Over the last couple of years, the Voice over IP community has adopted SIP as its protocol of choice for signalling. SIP is an RFC standard (RFC 3261) from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the body responsible for administering and developing the mechanisms that comprise the Internet. SIP is still evolving and being extended as technology matures and SIP products are socialised in the marketplace.