What role do keepalives play in SIP?

What role do keepalives play in SIP?

• A. They maintain NAT bindings and detect dead peers to trigger failover faster
• B. They encrypt signaling messages
• C. They negotiate codecs
• D. They log calls

Answer: (A)

Keepalives in SIP provide a lightweight heartbeat that confirms the path between endpoints or between a device and its SIP peers remains usable. This helps maintain NAT/firewall bindings so responses keep routing correctly, and it allows quick detection of a dead peer. If a keepalive fails, the system can trigger faster failover or re-registration, improving reliability in networks with NAT. They don’t encrypt signaling (encryption is TLS/SRTP), nor do they negotiate codecs (that’s SDP in the SIP exchange), and they aren’t used for logging calls.

Keepalives in SIP provide a lightweight heartbeat that confirms the path between endpoints or between a device and its SIP peers remains usable. This helps maintain NAT/firewall bindings so responses keep routing correctly, and it allows quick detection of a dead peer. If a keepalive fails, the system can trigger faster failover or re-registration, improving reliability in networks with NAT. They don’t encrypt signaling (encryption is TLS/SRTP), nor do they negotiate codecs (that’s SDP in the SIP exchange), and they aren’t used for logging calls.