In many ways, SIP already is a peer-to-peer protocol, as user agents directly exchange media and signaling data. However, a network without proxy servers requires additional design and consideration. The talk will describe protocol options for providing a scalable peer-to-peer SIP federated network and some of the technical challenges that need to be overcome. Unlike other attempts, we want to maintain multiple, independent namespaces and the ability to combine both proxy-based and peer-to-peer systems into a global, interoperable network under distributed administration. Security may be more probabilistic rather than deterministic, however.

Prof. Henning Schulzrinne received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts. He was a member of technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill and an associate department head at GMD-Fokus (Berlin), before joining the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering departments at Columbia University, New York. He is currently chair of the Department of Computer Science.

Protocols co-developed by him, such as RTP, RTSP and SIP, are now Internet standards, used by almost all Internet telephony and multimedia applications. His research interests include Internet multimedia systems, ubiquitous computing, mobile systems, quality of service, and performance evaluation.