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RFC 3261

SIP: Session Initiation Protocol

Pages: 269
Proposed Standard
Errata
Obsoletes:  2543
Updated by:  326538534320491653935621562656305922595460266141666568787462746382178591876088988996
Part 1 of 13 – Pages 1 to 10
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Top   ToC   RFC3261 - Page 1
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.
Top   ToC   RFC3261 - Page 2

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 8.1.1.9 Supported and Require ............................... 40 8.1.1.10 Additional Message Components ....................... 41 8.1.2 Sending the Request ................................. 41 8.1.3 Processing Responses ................................ 42 8.1.3.1 Transaction Layer Errors ............................ 42 8.1.3.2 Unrecognized Responses .............................. 42 8.1.3.3 Vias ................................................ 43 8.1.3.4 Processing 3xx Responses ............................ 43 8.1.3.5 Processing 4xx Responses ............................ 45 8.2 UAS Behavior ........................................ 46 8.2.1 Method Inspection ................................... 46 8.2.2 Header Inspection ................................... 46 8.2.2.1 To and Request-URI .................................. 46 8.2.2.2 Merged Requests ..................................... 47 8.2.2.3 Require ............................................. 47 8.2.3 Content Processing .................................. 48 8.2.4 Applying Extensions ................................. 49 8.2.5 Processing the Request .............................. 49
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   8.2.6      Generating the Response .............................   49
   8.2.6.1    Sending a Provisional Response ......................   49
   8.2.6.2    Headers and Tags ....................................   50
   8.2.7      Stateless UAS Behavior ..............................   50
   8.3        Redirect Servers ....................................   51
   9          Canceling a Request .................................   53
   9.1        Client Behavior .....................................   53
   9.2        Server Behavior .....................................   55
   10         Registrations .......................................   56
   10.1       Overview ............................................   56
   10.2       Constructing the REGISTER Request ...................   57
   10.2.1     Adding Bindings .....................................   59
   10.2.1.1   Setting the Expiration Interval of Contact Addresses    60
   10.2.1.2   Preferences among Contact Addresses .................   61
   10.2.2     Removing Bindings ...................................   61
   10.2.3     Fetching Bindings ...................................   61
   10.2.4     Refreshing Bindings .................................   61
   10.2.5     Setting the Internal Clock ..........................   62
   10.2.6     Discovering a Registrar .............................   62
   10.2.7     Transmitting a Request ..............................   62
   10.2.8     Error Responses .....................................   63
   10.3       Processing REGISTER Requests ........................   63
   11         Querying for Capabilities ...........................   66
   11.1       Construction of OPTIONS Request .....................   67
   11.2       Processing of OPTIONS Request .......................   68
   12         Dialogs .............................................   69
   12.1       Creation of a Dialog ................................   70
   12.1.1     UAS behavior ........................................   70
   12.1.2     UAC Behavior ........................................   71
   12.2       Requests within a Dialog ............................   72
   12.2.1     UAC Behavior ........................................   73
   12.2.1.1   Generating the Request ..............................   73
   12.2.1.2   Processing the Responses ............................   75
   12.2.2     UAS Behavior ........................................   76
   12.3       Termination of a Dialog .............................   77
   13         Initiating a Session ................................   77
   13.1       Overview ............................................   77
   13.2       UAC Processing ......................................   78
   13.2.1     Creating the Initial INVITE .........................   78
   13.2.2     Processing INVITE Responses .........................   81
   13.2.2.1   1xx Responses .......................................   81
   13.2.2.2   3xx Responses .......................................   81
   13.2.2.3   4xx, 5xx and 6xx Responses ..........................   81
   13.2.2.4   2xx Responses .......................................   82
   13.3       UAS Processing ......................................   83
   13.3.1     Processing of the INVITE ............................   83
   13.3.1.1   Progress ............................................   84
   13.3.1.2   The INVITE is Redirected ............................   84
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   13.3.1.3   The INVITE is Rejected ..............................   85
   13.3.1.4   The INVITE is Accepted ..............................   85
   14         Modifying an Existing Session .......................   86
   14.1       UAC Behavior ........................................   86
   14.2       UAS Behavior ........................................   88
   15         Terminating a Session ...............................   89
   15.1       Terminating a Session with a BYE Request ............   90
   15.1.1     UAC Behavior ........................................   90
   15.1.2     UAS Behavior ........................................   91
   16         Proxy Behavior ......................................   91
   16.1       Overview ............................................   91
   16.2       Stateful Proxy ......................................   92
   16.3       Request Validation ..................................   94
   16.4       Route Information Preprocessing .....................   96
   16.5       Determining Request Targets .........................   97
   16.6       Request Forwarding ..................................   99
   16.7       Response Processing .................................  107
   16.8       Processing Timer C ..................................  114
   16.9       Handling Transport Errors ...........................  115
   16.10      CANCEL Processing ...................................  115
   16.11      Stateless Proxy .....................................  116
   16.12      Summary of Proxy Route Processing ...................  118
   16.12.1    Examples ............................................  118
   16.12.1.1  Basic SIP Trapezoid .................................  118
   16.12.1.2  Traversing a Strict-Routing Proxy ...................  120
   16.12.1.3  Rewriting Record-Route Header Field Values ..........  121
   17         Transactions ........................................  122
   17.1       Client Transaction ..................................  124
   17.1.1     INVITE Client Transaction ...........................  125
   17.1.1.1   Overview of INVITE Transaction ......................  125
   17.1.1.2   Formal Description ..................................  125
   17.1.1.3   Construction of the ACK Request .....................  129
   17.1.2     Non-INVITE Client Transaction .......................  130
   17.1.2.1   Overview of the non-INVITE Transaction ..............  130
   17.1.2.2   Formal Description ..................................  131
   17.1.3     Matching Responses to Client Transactions ...........  132
   17.1.4     Handling Transport Errors ...........................  133
   17.2       Server Transaction ..................................  134
   17.2.1     INVITE Server Transaction ...........................  134
   17.2.2     Non-INVITE Server Transaction .......................  137
   17.2.3     Matching Requests to Server Transactions ............  138
   17.2.4     Handling Transport Errors ...........................  141
   18         Transport ...........................................  141
   18.1       Clients .............................................  142
   18.1.1     Sending Requests ....................................  142
   18.1.2     Receiving Responses .................................  144
   18.2       Servers .............................................  145
   18.2.1     Receiving Requests ..................................  145
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   18.2.2     Sending Responses ...................................  146
   18.3       Framing .............................................  147
   18.4       Error Handling ......................................  147
   19         Common Message Components ...........................  147
   19.1       SIP and SIPS Uniform Resource Indicators ............  148
   19.1.1     SIP and SIPS URI Components .........................  148
   19.1.2     Character Escaping Requirements .....................  152
   19.1.3     Example SIP and SIPS URIs ...........................  153
   19.1.4     URI Comparison ......................................  153
   19.1.5     Forming Requests from a URI .........................  156
   19.1.6     Relating SIP URIs and tel URLs ......................  157
   19.2       Option Tags .........................................  158
   19.3       Tags ................................................  159
   20         Header Fields .......................................  159
   20.1       Accept ..............................................  161
   20.2       Accept-Encoding .....................................  163
   20.3       Accept-Language .....................................  164
   20.4       Alert-Info ..........................................  164
   20.5       Allow ...............................................  165
   20.6       Authentication-Info .................................  165
   20.7       Authorization .......................................  165
   20.8       Call-ID .............................................  166
   20.9       Call-Info ...........................................  166
   20.10      Contact .............................................  167
   20.11      Content-Disposition .................................  168
   20.12      Content-Encoding ....................................  169
   20.13      Content-Language ....................................  169
   20.14      Content-Length ......................................  169
   20.15      Content-Type ........................................  170
   20.16      CSeq ................................................  170
   20.17      Date ................................................  170
   20.18      Error-Info ..........................................  171
   20.19      Expires .............................................  171
   20.20      From ................................................  172
   20.21      In-Reply-To .........................................  172
   20.22      Max-Forwards ........................................  173
   20.23      Min-Expires .........................................  173
   20.24      MIME-Version ........................................  173
   20.25      Organization ........................................  174
   20.26      Priority ............................................  174
   20.27      Proxy-Authenticate ..................................  174
   20.28      Proxy-Authorization .................................  175
   20.29      Proxy-Require .......................................  175
   20.30      Record-Route ........................................  175
   20.31      Reply-To ............................................  176
   20.32      Require .............................................  176
   20.33      Retry-After .........................................  176
   20.34      Route ...............................................  177
Top   ToC   RFC3261 - Page 6
   20.35      Server ..............................................  177
   20.36      Subject .............................................  177
   20.37      Supported ...........................................  178
   20.38      Timestamp ...........................................  178
   20.39      To ..................................................  178
   20.40      Unsupported .........................................  179
   20.41      User-Agent ..........................................  179
   20.42      Via .................................................  179
   20.43      Warning .............................................  180
   20.44      WWW-Authenticate ....................................  182
   21         Response Codes ......................................  182
   21.1       Provisional 1xx .....................................  182
   21.1.1     100 Trying ..........................................  183
   21.1.2     180 Ringing .........................................  183
   21.1.3     181 Call Is Being Forwarded .........................  183
   21.1.4     182 Queued ..........................................  183
   21.1.5     183 Session Progress ................................  183
   21.2       Successful 2xx ......................................  183
   21.2.1     200 OK ..............................................  183
   21.3       Redirection 3xx .....................................  184
   21.3.1     300 Multiple Choices ................................  184
   21.3.2     301 Moved Permanently ...............................  184
   21.3.3     302 Moved Temporarily ...............................  184
   21.3.4     305 Use Proxy .......................................  185
   21.3.5     380 Alternative Service .............................  185
   21.4       Request Failure 4xx .................................  185
   21.4.1     400 Bad Request .....................................  185
   21.4.2     401 Unauthorized ....................................  185
   21.4.3     402 Payment Required ................................  186
   21.4.4     403 Forbidden .......................................  186
   21.4.5     404 Not Found .......................................  186
   21.4.6     405 Method Not Allowed ..............................  186
   21.4.7     406 Not Acceptable ..................................  186
   21.4.8     407 Proxy Authentication Required ...................  186
   21.4.9     408 Request Timeout .................................  186
   21.4.10    410 Gone ............................................  187
   21.4.11    413 Request Entity Too Large ........................  187
   21.4.12    414 Request-URI Too Long ............................  187
   21.4.13    415 Unsupported Media Type ..........................  187
   21.4.14    416 Unsupported URI Scheme ..........................  187
   21.4.15    420 Bad Extension ...................................  187
   21.4.16    421 Extension Required ..............................  188
   21.4.17    423 Interval Too Brief ..............................  188
   21.4.18    480 Temporarily Unavailable .........................  188
   21.4.19    481 Call/Transaction Does Not Exist .................  188
   21.4.20    482 Loop Detected ...................................  188
   21.4.21    483 Too Many Hops ...................................  189
   21.4.22    484 Address Incomplete ..............................  189
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   21.4.23    485 Ambiguous .......................................  189
   21.4.24    486 Busy Here .......................................  189
   21.4.25    487 Request Terminated ..............................  190
   21.4.26    488 Not Acceptable Here .............................  190
   21.4.27    491 Request Pending .................................  190
   21.4.28    493 Undecipherable ..................................  190
   21.5       Server Failure 5xx ..................................  190
   21.5.1     500 Server Internal Error ...........................  190
   21.5.2     501 Not Implemented .................................  191
   21.5.3     502 Bad Gateway .....................................  191
   21.5.4     503 Service Unavailable .............................  191
   21.5.5     504 Server Time-out .................................  191
   21.5.6     505 Version Not Supported ...........................  192
   21.5.7     513 Message Too Large ...............................  192
   21.6       Global Failures 6xx .................................  192
   21.6.1     600 Busy Everywhere .................................  192
   21.6.2     603 Decline .........................................  192
   21.6.3     604 Does Not Exist Anywhere .........................  192
   21.6.4     606 Not Acceptable ..................................  192
   22         Usage of HTTP Authentication ........................  193
   22.1       Framework ...........................................  193
   22.2       User-to-User Authentication .........................  195
   22.3       Proxy-to-User Authentication ........................  197
   22.4       The Digest Authentication Scheme ....................  199
   23         S/MIME ..............................................  201
   23.1       S/MIME Certificates .................................  201
   23.2       S/MIME Key Exchange .................................  202
   23.3       Securing MIME bodies ................................  205
   23.4       SIP Header Privacy and Integrity using S/MIME:
              Tunneling SIP .......................................  207
   23.4.1     Integrity and Confidentiality Properties of SIP
              Headers .............................................  207
   23.4.1.1   Integrity ...........................................  207
   23.4.1.2   Confidentiality .....................................  208
   23.4.2     Tunneling Integrity and Authentication ..............  209
   23.4.3     Tunneling Encryption ................................  211
   24         Examples ............................................  213
   24.1       Registration ........................................  213
   24.2       Session Setup .......................................  214
   25         Augmented BNF for the SIP Protocol ..................  219
   25.1       Basic Rules .........................................  219
   26         Security Considerations: Threat Model and Security
              Usage Recommendations ...............................  232
   26.1       Attacks and Threat Models ...........................  233
   26.1.1     Registration Hijacking ..............................  233
   26.1.2     Impersonating a Server ..............................  234
   26.1.3     Tampering with Message Bodies .......................  235
   26.1.4     Tearing Down Sessions ...............................  235
Top   ToC   RFC3261 - Page 8
   26.1.5     Denial of Service and Amplification .................  236
   26.2       Security Mechanisms .................................  237
   26.2.1     Transport and Network Layer Security ................  238
   26.2.2     SIPS URI Scheme .....................................  239
   26.2.3     HTTP Authentication .................................  240
   26.2.4     S/MIME ..............................................  240
   26.3       Implementing Security Mechanisms ....................  241
   26.3.1     Requirements for Implementers of SIP ................  241
   26.3.2     Security Solutions ..................................  242
   26.3.2.1   Registration ........................................  242
   26.3.2.2   Interdomain Requests ................................  243
   26.3.2.3   Peer-to-Peer Requests ...............................  245
   26.3.2.4   DoS Protection ......................................  246
   26.4       Limitations .........................................  247
   26.4.1     HTTP Digest .........................................  247
   26.4.2     S/MIME ..............................................  248
   26.4.3     TLS .................................................  249
   26.4.4     SIPS URIs ...........................................  249
   26.5       Privacy .............................................  251
   27         IANA Considerations .................................  252
   27.1       Option Tags .........................................  252
   27.2       Warn-Codes ..........................................  252
   27.3       Header Field Names ..................................  253
   27.4       Method and Response Codes ...........................  253
   27.5       The "message/sip" MIME type.  .......................  254
   27.6       New Content-Disposition Parameter Registrations .....  255
   28         Changes From RFC 2543 ...............................  255
   28.1       Major Functional Changes ............................  255
   28.2       Minor Functional Changes ............................  260
   29         Normative References ................................  261
   30         Informative References ..............................  262
   A.         Table of Timer Values ...............................  265
   Acknowledgments ................................................  266
   Authors' Addresses .............................................  267
   Full Copyright Statement .......................................  269

1 Introduction

There are many applications of the Internet that require the creation and management of a session, where a session is considered an exchange of data between an association of participants. The implementation of these applications is complicated by the practices of participants: users may move between endpoints, they may be addressable by multiple names, and they may communicate in several different media - sometimes simultaneously. Numerous protocols have been authored that carry various forms of real-time multimedia session data such as voice, video, or text messages. The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) works in concert with these protocols by
Top   ToC   RFC3261 - Page 9
   enabling Internet endpoints (called user agents) to discover one
   another and to agree on a characterization of a session they would
   like to share.  For locating prospective session participants, and
   for other functions, SIP enables the creation of an infrastructure of
   network hosts (called proxy servers) to which user agents can send
   registrations, invitations to sessions, and other requests.  SIP is
   an agile, general-purpose tool for creating, modifying, and
   terminating sessions that works independently of underlying transport
   protocols and without dependency on the type of session that is being
   established.

2 Overview of SIP Functionality

SIP is an application-layer control protocol that can establish, modify, and terminate multimedia sessions (conferences) such as Internet telephony calls. SIP can also invite participants to already existing sessions, such as multicast conferences. Media can be added to (and removed from) an existing session. SIP transparently supports name mapping and redirection services, which supports personal mobility [27] - users can maintain a single externally visible identifier regardless of their network location. SIP supports five facets of establishing and terminating multimedia communications: User location: determination of the end system to be used for communication; User availability: determination of the willingness of the called party to engage in communications; User capabilities: determination of the media and media parameters to be used; Session setup: "ringing", establishment of session parameters at both called and calling party; Session management: including transfer and termination of sessions, modifying session parameters, and invoking services. SIP is not a vertically integrated communications system. SIP is rather a component that can be used with other IETF protocols to build a complete multimedia architecture. Typically, these architectures will include protocols such as the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) (RFC 1889 [28]) for transporting real-time data and providing QoS feedback, the Real-Time streaming protocol (RTSP) (RFC 2326 [29]) for controlling delivery of streaming media, the Media
Top   ToC   RFC3261 - Page 10
   Gateway Control Protocol (MEGACO) (RFC 3015 [30]) for controlling
   gateways to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), and the
   Session Description Protocol (SDP) (RFC 2327 [1]) for describing
   multimedia sessions.  Therefore, SIP should be used in conjunction
   with other protocols in order to provide complete services to the
   users.  However, the basic functionality and operation of SIP does
   not depend on any of these protocols.

   SIP does not provide services.  Rather, SIP provides primitives that
   can be used to implement different services.  For example, SIP can
   locate a user and deliver an opaque object to his current location.
   If this primitive is used to deliver a session description written in
   SDP, for instance, the endpoints can agree on the parameters of a
   session.  If the same primitive is used to deliver a photo of the
   caller as well as the session description, a "caller ID" service can
   be easily implemented.  As this example shows, a single primitive is
   typically used to provide several different services.

   SIP does not offer conference control services such as floor control
   or voting and does not prescribe how a conference is to be managed.
   SIP can be used to initiate a session that uses some other conference
   control protocol.  Since SIP messages and the sessions they establish
   can pass through entirely different networks, SIP cannot, and does
   not, provide any kind of network resource reservation capabilities.

   The nature of the services provided make security particularly
   important.  To that end, SIP provides a suite of security services,
   which include denial-of-service prevention, authentication (both user
   to user and proxy to user), integrity protection, and encryption and
   privacy services.

   SIP works with both IPv4 and IPv6.

3 Terminology

In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, RFC 2119 [2] and indicate requirement levels for compliant SIP implementations.


(page 10 continued on part 2)

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