Monday 13 August 2012

SIP User ID vs. Auth ID

When you are configuring a SIP device, setting the Auth ID to the same value as the SIP User ID will always make for an easier life. If you set them to different values, it is much more likely you will have problems with registration.

For a typical Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSP), handling unmatched SIP User ID's and Auth ID's is surprisingly tricky. For this reason, they generally instruct users to set the same value for both fields.

While this keeps things simple in some respects, it can be an unwelcome and inconvenient restriction: Firstly, on simple SIP devices the Caller ID for outbound calls is generally taken from the 'SIP User ID', so being obliged to always match the account's 'Auth ID' would take away your flexibility to change the Caller ID. Furthermore, it can be quite convenient sometimes to be able to use a single "User ID-password" pair for several different SIP devices or for all the lines on a multi-line analogue adaptor. Finally, it could be argued that a SIP account that has the same value for the SIP User ID and the Auth ID is not as secure as one where the ID's are different.

My most recent online article discusses this topic in much more detail. It tries to look at the problem from the point of view of the Service Provider, especially using OpenSIPS as their main portal or SIP Proxy. Please follow the link and read the whole article:
http://kb.smartvox.co.uk/opensips/sip-user-credentials-itsp/

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