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VoIP Using SIP

Imagine having a dynamically updated icon on your desktop that shows the best way to get in touch with a co-worker. You could see if she were in a meeting, for instance, but had her wireless laptop with her and was available via IM for urgent questions. Or, if she were on the phone in her office, the icon could notify you when she hung up. There are, of course, proprietary ways to provide such functionality. But for those of you who, like us, are partial to standards, say hello to SIP.

Session Initiation Protocol has been around for a few years, but lately it's really picking up steam. Many smaller players are vying for market attention, while big-name vendors are jumping on the bandwagon. Microsoft, for example, seems excited about providing presence services via SIP, and IBM plans to revamp its client and server software to utilize the protocol.

For those who are ready to get down with SIP now, we brought standards-compliant VoIP phones from ipDialog, Mitel, Polycom, Siemens, Snom and Zultys into our Syracuse University Real-World Labs®. How did they fare? Frankly, we were knocked out: Each and every one earned a perfect interoperability grade. Chalk one up for standards compliance.