SSCS: A Serverless SIP-Based Communication System

Most current real-time IP communication systems are either based on non-standard protocols or follow a client-server model. However, both of the two kinds of systems have their own problems. The use of non-standard protocols limits growth due to the proprietary properties, while the client-server model suffers from a "single point of failure" problem due to the existence of central servers. Requirements for the central servers also result in a number of issues which limit deployment in certain scenarios. In this paper, we design and implement a fully decentralized serverless SIP based communication system, SSCS. Our design is for use with wireless mesh networks and supports VoIP and other real-time applications for any unmodified standard SIP user agent device. The main idea is to utilize the distributed nature of P2P networks to allow for distributed resource storage and lookup in a SIP system. This eliminates the need for the central servers. Performance analysis shows that SSCS has higher system capacity and is more robust when compared to the traditional SIP systems but at a cost of larger latency for resource lookup. We also discuss some advanced services which can be supported in SSCS for the future research work.