SIP Gateways
A SIP gateway is an application that interfaces a SIP network to a network utilizing another signaling protocol. In terms of the SIP protocol, a gateway is just a special type of user agent, where the user agent acts on behalf of another protocol rather than a human. A gateway terminates the signaling path and can also terminate the media path, although this is not always the case. For example, a SIP to H.323 gateway terminates the SIP signaling path and converts the signaling to H.323, but the SIP user agent and H.323 terminal can exchange RTP media information directly with each other without going through the gateway. An example of this is described in [H.323 to SIP Call]
A SIP to Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) gateway terminates both the signaling and media paths. SIP can be translated into, or interwork with, common