Why You Need SIP Protocol for Voice Communications
SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is the communications technology for person-to-person voice traffic over the Web. Its technical specifications come from the SIP working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force. SIP gives access to the public switched telephone network for voice data at 3 kHz bandwidth and common number dialing using Voice over IP (VoIP). It can also be extended to handle IP telephony combined with video and instant messaging. Forthcoming improvements will enable SIP applications such as video conference calls, application sharing, home monitoring, and interactive gaming for companies in Roane.
SIP is commonly thought of as a method to emulate the operation of common telephony over an IP network. It is replacing the older, less flexible protocols used in the past such as H.323 and MGCP. These earlier protocols functioned at a very low level to connect IP phones to the public telephone system. SIP, however, provides a sophisticated and well-defined way to network the enterprise. For instance, SIP uses email addresses as the SIP address instead of a telephone number over the standard phone network.
Before installing a SIP solution in your business, you should consider the appropriate configuration of your corporate firewall to support SIP. Many of the common firewalls already installed in business offices are not designed to allow the SIP protocol. First, SIP media streams are transferred over dynamically allocated UDP ports that are often closed on firewalls. Second, SIP clients within a firewall can not be reached using IP addresses because these addresses are local and unique to the LAN. Third, you need to ensure that either your T1 line broadband carrier or Metro fiber carrier is able to handle the SIP protocol from your internal network to the outside world. Your IT administrator will need to evaluate how to correctly support SIP to get around these technical issues. By including a SIP proxy and registrar for controlling the firewall, it is feasible to deal with complicated SIP scenarios for secure and private communications.
