A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
RFC 5411
Network Working Group J. Rosenberg
Request for Comments: 5411 Cisco
Category: Informational January 2009
A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
Status of This Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Abstract
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is the subject of numerous
specifications that have been produced by the IETF. It can be
difficult to locate the right document, or even to determine the set
of Request for Comments (RFC) about SIP. This specification serves
as a guide to the SIP RFC series. It lists a current snapshot of the
specifications under the SIP umbrella, briefly summarizes each, and
groups them into categories.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Scope of This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Core SIP Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) Interworking . . . . 8
5. General Purpose Infrastructure Extensions . . . . . . . . . . 10
6. NAT Traversal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7. Call Control Primitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8. Event Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
9. Event Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
10. Quality of Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
11. Operations and Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
12. SIP Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
13. SIP Service URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
14. Minor Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
15. Security Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
16. Conferencing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
17. Instant Messaging, Presence, and Multimedia . . . . . . . . . 24
18. Emergency Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
19. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
20. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
21. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Rosenberg Informational [Page 1]
RFC 5411 Hitchhiker's Guide to SIP January 2009
1. Introduction
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) [RFC3261] is the subject of
numerous specifications that have been produced by the IETF. It can
be difficult to locate the right document, or even to determine the
set of Request for Comments (RFC) about SIP. "Don't Panic!" [HGTTG]
This specification serves as a guide to the SIP RFC series. It is a
current snapshot of the specifications under the SIP umbrella at the
time of publication. It is anticipated that this document itself
will be regularly updated as SIP specifications mature. Furthermore,
it references many specifications, which, at the time of publication
of this document, were not yet finalized, and may eventually be
completed or abandoned. Therefore, the enumeration of specifications
here is a work-in-progress and subject to change.
For each specification, a paragraph or so description is included
that summarizes the purpose of the specification. Each specification
also includes a letter that designates its category in the Standards
Track [RFC2026]. These values are:
S: Standards Track (Proposed Standard, Draft Standard, or Standard)
E: Experimental
B: Best Current Practice
I: Informational
The specifications are grouped together by topic. The topics are:
Core: The SIP specifications that are expected to be utilized for
each session or registration an endpoint participates in.
Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) Interop: Specifications
related to interworking with the telephone network.
General Purpose Infrastructure: General purpose extensions to SIP,
SDP (Session Description Protocol), and MIME, but ones that are
not expected to always be used.
NAT Traversal: Specifications to deal with firewall and NAT
traversal.
Call Control Primitives: Specifications for manipulating SIP dialogs
and calls.
Rosenberg Informational [Page 2]
RFC 5411 Hitchhiker's Guide to SIP January 2009
Event Framework: Definitions of the core specifications for the SIP
event framework, providing for pub/sub capability.
Event Packages: Packages that utilize the SIP event framework.
Quality of Service: Specifications related to multimedia quality of
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