NAT traversing solutions for SIP applications

Abstract

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) has been proposed for multimedia services and wide-area connectivity in smart home environments (SHEs). An important issue for SIP deployment in SHEs is network address translator (NAT) traversing. SIP and Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) packets are delivered between an SHE (i.e., private IP network) and Internet (i.e., a public IP network) through an NAT function of a home gateway, and the NAT translates the IP/transport layer address and port number but leaves the application layer content unchanged. This results in inconsistency between the IP addresses/port numbers in the IP/transport layers and those in the SIP layer. To resolve this issue, we describe six solutions including static route, UPnP, STUN, ICE, ALG, and SBC. Then we compare these solutions in terms of smart home appliance (SHA) modification, scope of NATs supported, multilayer NAT traversal, ease of configuration, security issue, and time complexities. Copyright (c) 2008 Whai-En Chen et al.