SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is a signaling protocol used to create, manage and terminate sessions in an IP based network. A session could be a simple two-way telephone call or it could be a collaborative multi-media conference session. This makes possible to implement services like voice-enriched e-commerce, web page click-to-dial or Instant Messaging with buddy lists in an IP based environment. Don’t worry if you don’t know about these services. You don’t need to know them before you learn about SIP.
SIP has been the choice for services related to Voice over IP VoIP in the recent past. It is a standard put forward by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). SIP is still growing and being modified to take into accounts all relevant features as the technology expands and evolves. But it should be noted that the job of SIP is limited to only the setup and control of sessions. The details of the data exchange within a session e.g. the encoding or codec related to an audio/video media is not controlled by SIP and is taken care of by other protocols.
This introduction is meant for beginners. This beginners’ made easy tutorial is to give a brief introduction to SIP before one venture into the long RFC documents. However, if you are a veteran please go through this short tutorial and suggest modifications.