Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)

• SIP is a signaling protocol for multimedia

control which was published by the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 1999.
• SIP end points negotiates the media
parameters using Session Description Protocol
(SDP)
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• Session Description Protocol allows the SIP terminals or
application to negotiate the type of media (audio, video or
data), transport protocol (RTP) and media encoding
method.
• SIP is actually an application layer protocol for
establishing manipulating and tearing down the sessions.

Main Objective:
• To help session originators deliver invitations to the
potential session participants.

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SIP serves four major purposes
• Establishment of user location.

• Provides future negotiation so that all of the

participants in a session can agree on a feature to
be supported among them.
• Mechanism for call management functions.

• Allows for changing features of a session when it

is in progress.
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• SIP follows the client/server model.

• Components interfacing in a SIP environment

are called as User Agents (UA). Two types
• User Agent Client (UAC): It generates the
requests and send them to the servers. The user
agent is the end system component for the call

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• User Agent Server (UAS) : It receives the
requests, processes them and generates responses.
SIP servers operates in two different modes.
• Stateful mode: In a stateful mode the incoming
requests received, responses sent and the
outgoing requests made by the sever are stored in
memory. Stateful-mode servers are the local
devices close to the user agents.
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• Stateless mode : The incoming requests received,
responses sent and the outgoing requests made by
the server are not stored in memory.
• Stateless servers are the backbone of the SIP
infrastructure.
• SIP uses series of requests and responses to
communicate.
• The commands that SIP uses are called methods.
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The lists of commands used by SIP are
• INVITE – Invites a user to a call.
• ACK – used to facilitate reliable message exchange
for INVITEs.
• BYE – Terminates a connection between users.
• CANCEL – Terminates a requests or search for a
user. It is used if a client sends an invite and then
changes its decision to call the receipts.
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• OPTIONS – Solicits information about a
servers capabilities.
• REGISTER – Registers a users current
location.
• INFO – Used for mid-session signaling.

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 Working principle of SIP

The SIP uses a series of requests and responses to

communicate. Lets see how this works.
1. A session is initiated when user agent client sends a
request to another user agent.
2. If the location of the other user is known request is sent
directly to user agent else it is sent to the proxy server.

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3. There are many options in this stage they are:
The server will attempt to resolve the called
users location and send the request them.
• SIP network server can proxy or redirect the
call to additional servers until it arrives at one
that definitely knows the IP address where the
called user can be reached.

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4. Once found, the request is sent to the user.
When the user Agent receives the requests i.e.
the user picks the call the client responds to
the invitation with the predefined responses
and a connection is established.
5. When a connection is terminated
predetermined commands and responses are
used.
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Applications

• VoIP

• Softphones

• Videoconferencing

• Instant messaging. (Instant Messanger)

• Answering machine

• Interactive Voice Response (IVR) System

• Mobile e-Business

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