SIP or Jabber?

Three open protocols (SIP, Jabber/XMPP and H.323) have been fighting it out to become the Internet equivalent of a phone call. What does this mean for you?

Meeting the players

• SIP is a creation of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the group that defines standards for ubiquitous systems like e-mail and surfing the web.
• H.323 comes from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the people who define the standards used by the incumbent legacy telephone networks.
• Jabber (official title: XMPP) is a hot alternative to SIP, and it has also been advanced through the IETF.

How did we get here?

Early internet phones typically supported both SIP and H.323. Today, H.323 has largely been pushed aside and won't be mentioned again on this blog.

SIP works well on private networks, but had some challenges with communication across the wider internet, mainly due to firewalls.

Jabber/XMPP maintains the benefits of SIP and is slightly stronger as a solution for chat. It has various features such as chat rooms that create new possibilities for collaboration.

There is plenty of software for all three protocols: but in the world of physical phones, SIP is king.

Where are we going?

The significant presence of SIP hardphones, SIP on mobile devices and SIP in corporate products means that SIP is unlikely to disappear the way H.323 has.

The extra features offered by Jabber mean that it is also unlikely to be cast aside.

One common feature of both protocols is their use of email addresses as an identifier. A single email address becomes a common identifier for email, SIP and Jabber. This means that they can operate in parallel, without any inconvenience to the end user. This particular point leads to the conclusion that both protocols are likely to evolve and exist in parallel for some time to come, with many users having the benefits of both.