Subject: [Sipping] SIP-T and BICC

From: "Aarti Iyengar" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2004 11:36:05 +0000

All,
I am trying to understand SIP-T and BICC in detail.
From my initial reading, both are essentially to seamlessly
interface the PSTN to broadband networks. SIP-T is specifically for
SIP based IP networks, whereas BICC is bearer independent and can
interface with IP/ATM networks well. Apart from that, SIP-T deals
with ISUP translation and encapsulation while BICC deals with
extensions with ISUP for additional bearer support.
BICC CS3 will also enable SIP services to co-exist with BICC based
networks.
My questions are -
Are these the only key differences between these protocols which
essentially are intended perform the same function? If there are
others, what are they?
Are there certain situations where one would fit in better than the
other, and if so what are these?
How well would these interoperate with each other if they have to
co-exist?

Also, any pointers to urls/whitepapers on the above (BICC versus
SIP-T) would be appreciated.

thanks
Aarti

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* 
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

_______________________________________________
Sipping mailing list  https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/sipping
This list is for NEW development of the application of SIP
Use [email-masked] for questions on current sip
Use [email-masked] for new developments of core SIP

---

From: "Rosen, Brian" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 08:18:45 -0500

Since SIP depends on SDP for describing bearers, and SDP can describe
an ATM bearer (RFC3108), you can't use that as a discriminator.
We have SIP products that are ATM based.

The primary difference between the two is that BICC uses the EXISTING
SS7 network for the signaling, and an IP (or ATM) network for the bearer,
where SIP-T uses IP (or ATM) for both the signaling and the bearer.
Also, the fundamental idea of SIP-T is that SIP is the signaling protocol,
and the -T part allows SIP to carry those parts of ISUP that have no
SIP equivalent.  This allows calls between two ISUP controlled endpoints
to use SIP in the middle of the network.  Contrast that to BICC, where
the assumption is that the whole network is ISUP signaled.
Thus if you believe that SIP will eventually supplant ISUP for voice
signaling, you might want to use SIP-T.  If you expect that multimedia
(video, text, ...) bearers might be interesting, you might want to chose
SIP-T.  Conversely, if you think that separating signaling from bearers is
essential, you might choose BICC.

Interoperating with these two protocols is somewhat problematic, primarily
because they don't anticipate each other; SIP-T does not specifically deal
with the bearer extension introduced by BICC, although it would be pretty
trivial to take it into account.  BICC does not admit any other signaling
for endpoints (CS-3 notwithstanding).  In practice, I expect you COULD
interwork them if you needed to.

Brian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aarti Iyengar [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 6:36 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: [Sipping] SIP-T and BICC
> 
> 
> All,