Part 5
SIP Interoperabilit y
In This Part
ᮣ Getting greater interoperability within a company
ᮣ Examining interoperability between companies
ᮣ Looking at industry interoperability efforts
ᮣ Integrating multiple vendors
S
IP is successful and widespread because it is open,
extensible, and driven by the IETF. Great strides have
already been made to make SIP interoperable among the
growing community of SIP-enabled hardware and software
products. In this part we discuss interoperability from the
perspectives of operating within enterprises and among
enterprises.
Internal to the Enterprise
SIP is the most interoperable multimedia signaling protocol
to date. SIP has approximately 20 standard features that func-
tion admirably across multiple vendors’ equipment, as tested
periodically at SIPit and InteropNet Labs (iLabs) events. Avaya
and other vendors actively test interoperability of their SIP
services and endpoints at these events, further advancing
the openness of their solutions.
Although SIP is considered a mature protocol, it isn’t
100 percent complete as a standard. Standards are still
being developed, especially in the privacy and security areas,
and enhancements to the feature set will continue for the
foreseeable future. For example, the IETF is still finalizing
some fundamental architecture decisions regarding SIMPLE
(see Part 3 for more about this instant messaging protocol).
09_041498 ch05.qxp 3/16/06 5:52 PM Page 43
