NET-X 002: Have a little SIP
Here's Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), and the world that comes with it
A week ago, I had a chat with a good co-worker of mine who was helping me with my job applications and was mentoring me on how to start my career in networking. I was informed about the job I was applying for, it included collaboration technologies.
Uhh what? Well, CCNA introduced us to VoIP (Voice over IP), voice VLANs and pretty much the basics of IP phone setups and how it connects to the network. I was curious and as per usual, I spiraled into the abyss of SIP and Unified Communications. (It was fun)
Unified Communications is just different types of communication converged onto your IP network, from VoIP, to web and video conferencing, voicemail, instant messaging, presence and more. How is this configured? How do I troubleshoot an IP phone that won't connect to the server? How do I find someone's dial number to IP address mapping? How? How?
Uhh what? Well, CCNA introduced us to VoIP (Voice over IP), voice VLANs and pretty much the basics of IP phone setups and how it connects to the network. I was curious and as per usual, I spiraled into the abyss of SIP and Unified Communications. (It was fun)
Unified Communications is just different types of communication converged onto your IP network, from VoIP, to web and video conferencing, voicemail, instant messaging, presence and more. How is this configured? How do I troubleshoot an IP phone that won't connect to the server? How do I find someone's dial number to IP address mapping? How? How?
This was really daunting for someone who applied for a job that works on Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) and didn't even have a clue on how a VoIP call process and setup works. Most companies these days have converged networks, so I would advice to at least learn the very basics of SIP, and an introduction to collaboration.
MY RECOMMENDATION
MY RECOMMENDATION
- Learn VoIP and the history of telephony
- Learn the basics of SIP
- Look into Unified Communication videos and catalog
THE TL;DR
- A signaling protocol for starting, ending and managing communication sessions
- It is software-based, independent of hardware and open source!
- 2 types of packets: Signaling (establish session) and Media (data, video, voice, etc.)
- Voice and Video are encoded/decoded as it traverses the IP network
- SIP Entities: Registrar and Location Services, SIP Registry and Proxy (Feature) Server
- The entities work together during a call session and provides most of the functionalities
- SIP includes many more modern features with the help of proxy/feature servers
This summary is what I learned from the SIPsense course. It's a few hours but it is clear and concise. It goes more into what each entity does, step by step process of how an IP call works, the 7 messages in a call setup and more. I'm not advertising them by the way.
RESOURCES USED:
- SIPSense (Free) - great course, but only the introduction is free. Good enough to understand the basics of SIP and how it works.
- CBT Nuggets (Free 7-day Trial) - I specifically studied CCT Collaboration, the instructor is not the best but free is free. Note that this is a vendor course and is specific to Cisco products like WebEx and CUCM.
- Cisco's Unified Communications - look around Cisco's definition and product offers for a good idea of the modern collaboration technologies
- Eli The Computer Guy explains VoIP - honestly an amazing teacher, this one is an hour long but it's worth it since he also goes over the history of it.
- Patrick
Comments
Post a Comment