SIP: Understanding the Session Initiation Protocol, Second Edition (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a new signaling, presence and instant messaging protocol developed to set up, modify, and tear down multimedia sessions, request..." (more)
Key Phrases: none remote sendrecv, contact header field, mandatory header fields, Session Initiation Protocol, Phone Call, Ringing Via (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This newly revised edition of the ground-breaking Artech House bestseller, SIP: Understanding the Session Initiation Protocol offers a thorough and up-to-date understanding of this revolutionary technology for IP Telephony. Essential reading for anyone involved in the development and operation of voice or data networks, the second edition includes brand new discussions on the use of SIP as a wireless communications protocol and mobility technology. Professionals find details on the latest application areas such as instant messaging.

The book explains how SIP is a highly-scalable and cost-effective way to offer new and exciting telecommunication feature sets. From an examination of SIP as a key component in the Internet multimedia conferencing architecture… to a look at the future direction of SIP, practitioners get the knowledge they need to design "next generation" networks and develop new applications and software stacks.

About the Author

Alan B. Johnston is a distinguished technical member at MCI and an adjunct assistant professor of electrical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. He holds a B.E.(Hons) in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Melbourne, Australia and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Lehigh University. He is a co-author of the new SIP specification RFC 3261 and several other SIP-related RFCs.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 310 pages
• Publisher: Artech House Publishers; 2 edition (November 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580536557
• ISBN-13: 978-1580536554
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #498,027 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #87 in

  Books > Computers & Internet > Networking > Telephony

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars if you're developing with SIP, you need this book, September 26, 2005

By	Roger D. Voss (Maple Valley, Washington) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm a working developer that recently became engaged in a J2EE project where needed to design and build a SIP server for a call center requiring all manner of specialized behaviors. Needless to say I needed to learn all about the ins and outs of SIP as this system would be SIP VoIP based.

I started out trying to use the various RFCs related to the SIP and SDP protocols. Well, I could spend an entire review about how miserable it is to trudge through typical RFC documentation. Online hyperlinked documentation is indeed in some respects a miracle of our modern cyber information age. Yet it's not exactly perfect. In many respects I maintain that the traditional book remains solidly the highest technological invention that mankind has yet conceived - especially now that I can compare book form information vs. its online hyperlinked and searchable alternative.

When it comes to learning and having ready access to the relevant information I'd take a book, such as "SIP: Understanding the Session Initiation Protocol" hands down vs the RFCs. I was making slow and painful progress yet once I had this book in hand, I could quickly whip around in it and cross reference the material presented in it by flipping pages, look for things via by scanning the table of contents, or dereferencing the index. Finally I started to rapidly accelerate my endeavor.

Besides the mechanics of accessing the relevant information, this book was also solidly presented by the author. He indeed has a authoritative command of the subject matter. Many of the scenarios he presents of how SIP is deployed and used were directly relevant to my particular project. It was particularly important to see the full dialog of SIP/SDP protocol exchange and the diagrams that accompanied this were very helpful. Nice visual diagrams of this manner are not to be found in the bland RFC material.

I came to amazon.com and read up on all the reviews posted for this title. Several of them gave the book a low rating. I sensed that what these people were after was a more digestible higher level presentation of the subject matter. There is an O'Reilly title on VoIP that I think might serve some of these folks better in that regard. However, this book on SIP also does a fair job of presenting SIP in light of some of the other VoIP related standards, etc. It's just that the main thrust of this book is to convey the technical understanding of SIP so that one can program systems based on it.

So if one is a software developer and needs to learn the technical ins and outs of SIP then this books is definitely the one to get. It beats using the RFCs by themselves by many leagues.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, but not the best, March 1, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Sip: Understanding the Session Initiation Protocol (Artech House Telecommunications Library) (Hardcover)

I found the book useful as a backup reference to the spec, but not the best explanation I have seen. It was at times slightly confusing, and found that I was constantly referring back to the SIP overview in D. Collins "Carrier Grade Voice over IP" (which is very well written). From an education perspective, it was a little like a dictionary for SIP that explained concepts such as what a given header was for, but gave little info on how it is used, or what the industry is doing.

There were some call flows, but they were sparse with a few mistakes. Further, they were either very base, or very comprehensive, and did not cover many of the questions I had.

In summary, if you are looking for a readable reference to help with the not so reader friendly RFC, this is pretty good. For learning how SIP is being imlemented beyond basic call handling, keep looking.

As an option, also look at the book by Collins noted above. It is a good overview reference, and tries to address where the industry is moving from an implementation perspective

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Just an introduction to the SIP RFC, March 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Sip: Understanding the Session Initiation Protocol (Artech House Telecommunications Library) (Hardcover)

This book simply summarizes some of the SIP RFC into more user-friendly english. It consists mostly of lists of SIP headers and error codes, lifted from the RFC. There is no sample code or discussion of SIP applications or architecture. Of course, the RFC is pretty hefty, so this book has been a useful introduction. I still use the RFC as my real reference, though, because there are some minor discrepancies between the book and the RFC, such as some error code names.