SIP: Information from Answers.com

SIP: Information from Answers.com

SIP

1. (Session Initiation Protocol) An IP telephony signaling protocol developed by the IETF. Primarily used for voice over IP (VoIP) calls, SIP can also be used for video or any media type; for example, SIP has been used to set up multi-player Quake games. With SIMPLE extensions for IM and presence, SIP is also used for instant messaging (see SIMPLE).

SIP is a text-based protocol that is based on HTTP and MIME, which makes it suitable and very flexible for integrated voice-data applications. SIP is designed for realtime transmission, uses fewer resources and is considerably less complex than H.323. Its addressing scheme uses URLs and is human readable; for example: sip:john.doe@company.com.

SIP relies on the session description protocol (SDP) for session description and the realtime transport protocol (RTP) for actual transport (see RTP and SDP). Windows XP was the first version of Windows to natively support SIP for PC-based phone applications, and numerous vendors make SIP desktop phones. See SIP proxy.

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