SIP: Understanding the Session Initiation Protocol

SIP: Understanding the Session Initiation Protocol is a pick for any communications engineering library at the college level. It appears in its third edition and provides details on call signaling and IP telephony, and has been expanded with numerous new chapters covering peer-to-peer SIP, ABNF and XML, and other details key to telecommunications network development and SIP uses in Internet architecture.

Not a how to guide, but definitly a complete review of the SIP specification. It gives a complete description of the protocol to the point where you can actually implement the protocol. This is reference book to keep (as opposed to some computer books that you can trash after a few years because they are no longer relevant). This book will teach you enough about the SIP protocol so you will know how to position the protocol in your architecture, and start implementing!

If you are currently viewing the page for the first edition, please note that there is a new second edition of this book available. You can find it by searching for 1580536557

I've read and reviewed a great deal of technical literature, and found Dr. Johnston's book to be a detailed and well-written introduction to an extremely complex protocol. Without over-simplifying, Dr. Johnston, manages to convey a great deal of information in a style of writing that is lively and engaging (and that's a real breath of fresh air, compared to similar books on the topic). I plan to put this on the required reading list for my next class on the subject.