SIP Separates Setup from Communication Flow

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) draft for managing the handshake procedures for beginning and ending real-time communications between IP network end points.

SIP is a text-based protocol, similar to HTTP and SMTP, for initiating interactive communication sessions between users. This makes SIP easy to troubleshoot, enables fast application development, and presents a stable framework for establishing interoperability between devices, applications, call controllers, and gateways. SIP is used to enable human-to-human communications that might include voice, video, chat, interactive games, and virtual reality.

The Six Messages in a SIP Service

Since February 1996, SIP has developed substantial industry infrastructure and momentum to encourage and promote its use, including over 130 IETF drafts influenced by SIP and the technology-promoting SIP Forum.

Not only is SIP a simple protocol as shown in the illustration above, but it is designed to perform session setup independent from the communications flow. End devices speak to each other directly using whatever application they have available. This delivers a greater degree of flexibility, failure recovery, and scalability since the network maintains no state information about the end devices.

3Com is a member of the SIP Forum and was the first in the enterprise market with a fully functional SIP-PBX, namely the 3Com® VCX™ portfolio.

Find out more about 3Com SIP offerings or call us at 1-800-638-3266.