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.