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NewsGlobe: Currents
SIP Forum sets rules for interoperability
SIPconnect compliance program offers guidelines, seal of approval
by Jim Barthold
The SIP Forum has established the SIPconnect compliance
program to ensure interoperability among equipment,
software and service providers as SIP functionality becomes a
bigger part of the expanding IP networking space.
SIPconnect-compliant players will receive a seal of
compatibility that they have agreed to abide by terms of the
SIPconnect agreement. The first companies to achieve the
SIPconnect seal of approval are Acme Packet, BroadSoft,
Cbeyond, Digium, Ingate Systems and McLeodUSA.
“We’re looking for industrywide adoption of SIPconnect as
the mechanism by which people hook up to service
providers,” said Steven Johnson, U.S. president of Ingate and
a SIP Forum board member. “Everything that we are putting
into the SIPconnect specification are features that are part of
the SIP standards themselves so there’s nothing unique in
here. We’d like to formalize these best practices and
encourage both service providers and equipment vendors to
make sure that the methods that are designed in here to be
interop standards are supported in a way that the SIPconnect
standards define them.”
SIP, as a standard, is receiving increasing traction within the
IP space, especially as VoIP and IP PBXs grow in popularity.
The standard is so all-encompassing, however, that it leaves
wiggle room in which some components may fail to
interoperate in the real world. SIPconnect compliance offers
more of a voluntary agreement than a certification process to
assuage that.
“We struggled with that. We don’t want to be a (certification)
lab; that’s not the business we’re in, but we do want to spur
people towards compliance,” said Chris Gatch, CTO of
Cbeyond and a SIP Forum board member. “The reality is we
have this spec and even if all the companies participated in
the initial release, they don’t all comply 100 percent with the
spec.”
To make things easier, SIP Forum is publishing members’
compliance to the various components of the specification in
an effort to clear up any misjudgments about what’s
compliant.
“In order for a certification mark to be valuable it has to
mean something and we’re trying to walk a fine line between
that and where we are which is not having everybody in the
industry 100 percent compliant. It’s kind of a delicate walk,”
said Gatch.
SIP Forum, while being delicate, has included a big stick to
beat those who might falsely claim compliance.
“If someone observes a product or buys a product that asserts
it’s SIPconnect compliant and it’s not, they can submit a
complaint to the certification committee and this committee
has the authority to investigate that,” Gatch said. “Ultimately,
if a licensee is found to be not compliant and doesn’t resolve
it, they can remove their use of the mark.”
Hopefully things won’t come to that, he said, but
interoperability—or lack of same—could be a stumbling block for
the wider adoption of the SIP protocol.
“We need to know that when we buy a PBX we can go to a
service provider, but a SIPconnect compliant service and
they’re going to hook together and work,” Gatch said. “That
will take us to real broad mainstream adoption.”
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