SIP goes P2P

To some of us here at Columbia, this is old news. Our very own Internet Real-Time Laboratory headed by Prof. Schulzrinne (of SIP, RTP fame) has been working on SIP over P2P for a while. But, it seems like the IETF effort in this direction is increasing. Recently, we have seen the publishing of a few Internet drafts in this area.

This is very positive. For those of us who are not aware of how the IETF functions, let me tell you that the standardization process is a very slow and tedious one. It is extremely thorough, as probably it should be - but to us techies sitting on the outside, sometimes it looks like a waste of time. So am glad that the wheels have started turning.

You can find latest information, including I-Ds and relevant reseach about SIP P2P over here. For me, SIP P2P is another contribution of Skype. They have nothing to do with the project, but they were the first ones to show that secure VoIP over P2P is possible. Now SIP is responding with its own P2P enabled version.