sslsipvoipipsec

SIP: IPSEC vs TLS


I am new to the VOIP concepts. I just took a course on VOIP. I am interested in implementations of SIP using TLS, IPSEC and Digest as well.

I want to see if SIP signaling uses IPSEC instead of TLS, how would it effect the performance, would the singaling be a little more time consuming? Would it add to the security or reduce the security.

I was searching for a softphone which has both TLS/IPSEC mechanisms so that I can analyze both packets on wireshark but I didnot come across any. Any suggestions on how to do that?

Thanking in advance!


Solution

  • Softphones don't explicitly support IPSEC because it is a network layer protocol. The lowest level dealt with in the SIP RFC is the transport layer where it provides 3 alternatives those being UDP, TCP and TLS.

    SIP signalling would work fine over IPSEC since it's not that time sensitive. Even a delay of 1 or 2 seconds for SIP requests and responses will be barely noticeable. However the RTP traffic which carries the call media could well be affected if additional latency is introduced.