Introduction to SIP – Session Initiation Protocol

5 reasons why you should learn SIP

In this post you learn the 5 reasons why you should lean SIP, the benefits of SIP and how it helps increase reliability, security, and ease of management and configuration.

As technology evolves so do we. It is important to stay relevant in our industry, and SIP is one of those things that you should have at least an overview understanding of what it is. Here you can gain an clear overview of this technology and its benefits.

So what is SIP? – SIP is a signaling protocol used for controlling multimedia sessions. It helps establish User Presence; allowing the user to update their status based on their preferences through end-points. These endpoints are use in the form of trunks, phones, and telecommunication applications.

These are 5 reasons why you should learn SIP:

1. The growth of telecommunications
2. Everybody communicates
3. Advantages of SIP over legacy PSTN
4. It is a technology that is still evolving
5. Know your technology

1.- Telecom and its growth

In order to understand how SIP works lets look at the beginnings of telecommunication. Voice has come a long way since the Bell Labs days. I won’t give you full lecture on the beginnings of telecom and the PSTN, but it is important to know the basics and differences between Circuit and Packet Switching.

Circuit Switching was the first telephone network that ever existed, and it consisted of two phones connected via a dedicated line. as the telephone users grew, the more wires connections were needed, creating the first Mesh Topology.

Through time Circuit Switching progressed from Analog to Digital. Circuit Switched used AC/DC Systems for handling the calls using the Time Division Multiplexing technology.  The TUP (Telephone User Part) and ISUP (ISDN User Part) are protocols part of the SS7, which provides both circuit related and non-circuit-related signaling.

Packet Switching came after Circuit Switching offering FDM using a binary format with 0s and 1s. As the name describes it; it uses Packets to send data.

2.-Everybody communicates

Think of the last time you saw a telephone line installed at a house. Everyone seems to own a cellphone now a days. Based on an article that I read from Cheryl Conner from Forbes “Fifty Essential Mobile Marketing Facts” showed that there were 271 million mobile subscribers in the U.S. by the time they wrote the article.

SIP Providers are offering Email, IM and SMS for a small cost to the user. Presence based services that allow users to control what colleagues can see about them, and control over where calls are being routed based on their presence status.

3.- Advantages of SIP

• Reduces support and maintenance costs
• Easy to implement
• Eliminates any oversubscription of voice channels
• Presence (Video and IM)
• Less hardware needed

4.- A technology that is evolving

SIP is a text-based protocol the same as HTML and SMTP. Some of the features available on SIP are: security methods e.g. Certificates of authentication, SRTP, DTLS, etc.

5.- Know your technology

Okay now its your turn to do your research and start getting comfortable learning. I know, it could be a bit intimidating especially if you come from where I came from… the Legacy of PSTN. I suggest you get familiar with the basics of networking, voip, then dive into SIP technology.

I would also appreciate if you leave a comment below and tell me what do you think of this blog?, and also share your opinion(s) about this topic.