Local policy MAY specify an alternate set of destinations to attempt.
If the Request-URI contains a SIPS URI, any alternate destinations
MUST be contacted with TLS. Beyond that, there are no restrictions
on the alternate destinations if the request contains no Route header
field. This provides a simple alternative to a pre-existing route
set as a way to specify an outbound proxy. However, that approach
for configuring an outbound proxy is NOT RECOMMENDED; a pre-existing
route set with a single URI SHOULD be used instead. If the request
contains a Route header field, the request SHOULD be sent to the
locations derived from its topmost value, but MAY be sent to any
server that the UA is certain will honor the Route and Request-URI
policies specified in this document (as opposed to those in RFC
2543). In particular, a UAC configured with an outbound proxy SHOULD
attempt to send the request to the location indicated in the first
Route header field value instead of adopting the policy of sending
all messages to the outbound proxy.
This ensures that outbound proxies that do not add Record-Route
header field values will drop out of the path of subsequent
requests. It allows endpoints that cannot resolve the first Route
URI to delegate that task to an outbound proxy.
The UAC SHOULD follow the procedures defined in [4] for stateful
elements, trying each address until a server is contacted. Each try
constitutes a new transaction, and therefore each carries a different
topmost Via header field value with a new branch parameter.
Furthermore, the transport value in the Via header field is set to
whatever transport was determined for the target server.