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

   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.