Session Initiation Protocol - Protocol Design

Protocol Design

SIP employs design elements similar to the HTTP request/response transaction model. Each transaction consists of a client request that invokes a particular method or function on the server and at least one response. SIP reuses most of the header fields, encoding rules and status codes of HTTP, providing a readable text-based format.

Each resource of a SIP network, such as a user agent or a voicemail box, is identified by a uniform resource identifier (URI), based on the general standard syntax also used in Web services and e-mail. A typical SIP URI is of the form: sip:username:password@host:port. The URI scheme used for SIP is sip:.

If secure transmission is required, the scheme sips: is used and mandates that each hop over which the request is forwarded up to the target domain must be secured with Transport Layer Security (TLS). The last hop from the proxy of the target domain to the user agent has to be secured according to local policies. TLS protects against attackers which try to listen on the signaling link. It does not provide real end-to-end security, since encryption is only hop-by-hop and every single intermediate proxy has to be trusted.

SIP works in concert with several other protocols and is only involved in the signaling portion of a communication session. SIP clients typically use TCP or UDP on port numbers 5060 and/or 5061 to connect to SIP servers and other SIP endpoints. Port 5060 is commonly used for non-encrypted signaling traffic whereas port 5061 is typically used for traffic encrypted with Transport Layer Security (TLS). SIP is primarily used in setting up and tearing down voice or video calls. It also allows modification of existing calls. The modification can involve changing addresses or ports, inviting more participants, and adding or deleting media streams. SIP has also found applications in messaging applications, such as instant messaging, and event subscription and notification. A suite of SIP-related Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) rules define behavior for such applications. The voice and video stream communications in SIP applications are carried over another application protocol, the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP). Parameters (port numbers, protocols, codecs) for these media streams are defined and negotiated using the Session Description Protocol (SDP) which is transported in the SIP packet body.

A motivating goal for SIP was to provide a signaling and call setup protocol for IP-based communications that can support a superset of the call processing functions and features present in the public switched telephone network (PSTN). SIP by itself does not define these features; rather, its focus is call-setup and signaling. The features that permit familiar telephone-like operations: dialing a number, causing a phone to ring, hearing ringback tones or a busy signal - are performed by proxy servers and user agents. Implementation and terminology are different in the SIP world but to the end-user, the behavior is similar.

SIP-enabled telephony networks can also implement many of the more advanced call processing features present in Signaling System 7 (SS7), though the two protocols themselves are very different. SS7 is a centralized protocol, characterized by a complex central network architecture and dumb endpoints (traditional telephone handsets). SIP is a peer-to-peer protocol, thus it requires only a simple (and thus scalable) core network with intelligence distributed to the network edge, embedded in endpoints (terminating devices built in either hardware or software). SIP features are implemented in the communicating endpoints (i.e. at the edge of the network) contrary to traditional SS7 features, which are implemented in the network.

Although several other VoIP signaling protocols exist (such as BICC, H.323, MGCP, MEGACO), SIP is distinguished by its proponents for having roots in the IP community rather than the telecommunications industry. SIP has been standardized and governed primarily by the IETF, while other protocols, such as H.323, have traditionally been associated with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

The first proposed standard version (SIP 1.0) was defined by RFC 2543. This version of the protocol was further refined to version 2.0 and clarified in RFC 3261, although some implementations are still relying on the older definitions.