What Is SIP?

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP, as in sipping from a fire hose on
a hot day) is an open signaling protocol standard developed
by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in cooperation
with many industry leaders, including Avaya, for establishing,
managing, and terminating real-time communications over
large IP-based networks, such as the Internet. Communications
via voice, video, or text (instant messaging), may take place
using any combination of SIP-enabled devices, such as a softphone
on a laptop computer, a wireless handheld device or
PDA, a mobile phone, an instant messaging client on a desktop
PC, or an IP phone with videoconferencing capabilities.
SIP is an application layer peer-to-peer communication protocol
for establishing, manipulating, and tearing down communication
sessions. But, you can do a lot more with SIP than
just setting up telephone calls. The protocol is extensible —
meaning developers can easily write custom applications for
SIP to accommodate video, instant messaging, and other
emerging communications media and features, using tools and
programming languages, like Java, that are already familiar to
Internet developers. Using SIP, simple-to-develop and quick-todeploy
custom applications can be easily integrated into your
communications sessions.

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