SIP Session Initiation Protocol

The SIP protocol, an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard, is the most advanced VoIP protocol today. Among other things, SIP allows applications and devices created by multiple vendors to inter operate with each other. SIP is used to establish, maintain and terminate multimedia sessions, including telephony, video, and other types of communication. A person only needs one SIP address to work with any SIP-enabled device they happen to be using at a particular moment. These devices may include cell phones, PDAs, computers, etc.

Unlike SIP's predecessors, which were modeled after traditional telephony protocols, SIP has been modeled after modern Internet data protocols and thus has the ability to scale with a distributed architecture. Since SIP is based on standard Web protocols like SMTP and HTTP, it is more intuitive for Web developers, and thus facilitates the creation of unique applications, such as 'find me/follow me' services. deltathree chose to migrate its next generation network to SIP because of the protocol's superior attributes, including faster and more cost-effective application development, rapid service deployment, greater scalability, and lower hardware requirements.

If you are interested in learning more about SIP, we recommend starting with the following white papers: