The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) allows phone calls and similar communication sessions to be made over the Internet, private data networks, or cellular networks. It defines the messages that are sent between parties (signaling) which govern establishment, termination, and other essential elements of a call (or, more generally, a session, hence the name).
SIP is an IETF-defined signaling protocol and is widely used for controlling communication sessions such as voice and video calls over Internet Protocol (IP). The protocol can be used for creating, modifying and terminating two-party (unicast) or multiparty (multicast) sessions. Sessions may consist of one or several media streams, such as voice or video data.
Other SIP applications include video conferencing, streaming multimedia distribution, instant messaging, presence information, file transfer and online games.
SIP is an application layer protocol designed to be independent of the underlying transport layer; it can run on Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), or Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). It is a text-based protocol, incorporating many elements of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).
