Network Working Group J. Rosenberg
Request for Comments: 3261 dynamicsoft
Obsoletes: 2543 H. Schulzrinne
Category: Standards Track Columbia U.
G. Camarillo
Ericsson
A. Johnston
WorldCom
J. Peterson
Neustar
R. Sparks
dynamicsoft
M. Handley
ICIR
E. Schooler
AT&T
June 2002
SIP: Session Initiation Protocol
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), an
application-layer control (signaling) protocol for creating,
modifying, and terminating sessions with one or more participants.
These sessions include Internet telephone calls, multimedia
distribution, and multimedia conferences.
SIP invitations used to create sessions carry session descriptions
that allow participants to agree on a set of compatible media types.
SIP makes use of elements called proxy servers to help route requests
to the user's current location, authenticate and authorize users for
services, implement provider call-routing policies, and provide
features to users. SIP also provides a registration function that
allows users to upload their current locations for use by proxy
servers. SIP runs on top of several different transport protocols.
Rosenberg, et. al. Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 3261 SIP: Session Initiation Protocol June 2002
Table of Contents
1 Introduction ........................................ 8
2 Overview of SIP Functionality ....................... 9
3 Terminology ......................................... 10
4 Overview of Operation ............................... 10
5 Structure of the Protocol ........................... 18
6 Definitions ......................................... 20
7 SIP Messages ........................................ 26
7.1 Requests ............................................ 27
7.2 Responses ........................................... 28
7.3 Header Fields ....................................... 29
7.3.1 Header Field Format ................................. 30
7.3.2 Header Field Classification ......................... 32
7.3.3 Compact Form ........................................ 32
7.4 Bodies .............................................. 33
7.4.1 Message Body Type ................................... 33
7.4.2 Message Body Length ................................. 33
7.5 Framing SIP Messages ................................ 34
8 General User Agent Behavior ......................... 34
8.1 UAC Behavior ........................................ 35
8.1.1 Generating the Request .............................. 35
8.1.1.1 Request-URI ......................................... 35
8.1.1.2 To .................................................. 36
8.1.1.3 From ................................................ 37
8.1.1.4 Call-ID ............................................. 37
8.1.1.5 CSeq ................................................ 38
8.1.1.6 Max-Forwards ........................................ 38
8.1.1.7 Via ................................................. 39
8.1.1.8 Contact ............................................. 40
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