h the topics. Alan Johnston has made significant contributions toward the use of SIP for communications over the Internet. I had the privilege of watching Alan in meetings with some of the largest telecom vendors as he went methodically line by line over hundreds of call flows, which were then submitted as an Internet Draft to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and implemented in com- mercial systems. Alan combines in this book his expertise and methodical approach with page turning narrative and a discreet sense of humor. I could not help reading the book manuscript page by page, since every- thing from Internet basics, protocols, and SIP itself is explained SO well, in an attractive and concise manner. Henry Sinnreich Distinguished Member of Engineering WorldCom Richardson, Texas July 2000 Preface to the Second Edition Much has changed in the 2.5 years since the first edition of SIP: Understanding the Session Initiation Protocol was published. In 2001, SIP was a relatively unknown quantity, an upstart in the voice over IP (VoIP) and multimedia com- munications industry. Today, SIP is seen as the future of call signaling and telephony. It has been widely deployed by service providers and enterprises and is used casually every day by users of the dominant PC operating system. The full range of possibilities enabled by SIP is just now being glimpsed, and many more possibilities are yet to come. One reason for this rapid acceptance is that SIP is an incredibly powerful call control protocol. It allows intelligent end points to implement the entire suite of telephony, Private Branch Exchange (PBX), Class, and Centrex services without a service provider, and without a controller or switch, for example. The biggest driver for SIP on the Internet, however, has less to do with SIP's signaling and call control capabilities. Instead, it is due to the extensions of SIP that turn it into a powerful "rendezvous" protocol that leverages mobility and presence to allow users to communicate using different devices, modes