MMUSIC J. Rosenberg
Internet-Draft Cisco Systems
Expires: March 4, 2007 August 31, 2006
Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE): A Methodology for Network
Address Translator (NAT) Traversal for Offer/Answer Protocols
draft-ietf-mmusic-ice-10
Status of this Memo
By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any
applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware
have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes
aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
This Internet-Draft will expire on March 4, 2007.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
Abstract
This document describes a protocol for Network Address Translator
(NAT) traversal for multimedia session signaling protocols based on
the offer/answer model, such as the Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP). This protocol is called Interactive Connectivity
Establishment (ICE). ICE makes use of the Simple Traversal
Underneath NAT (STUN) protocol, applying its binding discovery and
relay usages, in addition to defining a new usage for checking
connectivity between peers.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Overview of ICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Gathering Candidate Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2. Connectivity Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3. Sorting Candidates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.4. Frozen Candidates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.5. Security for Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4. Sending the Initial Offer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.1. Gathering Candidates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2. Prioritizing Candidates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.3. Choosing In-Use Candidates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.4. Encoding the SDP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5. Receiving the Initial Offer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.1. Verifying ICE Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.2. Gathering Candidates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.3. Prioritizing Candidates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.4. Choosing In Use Candidates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.5. Encoding the SDP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.6. Forming the Check List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.7. Performing Periodic Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6. Receipt of the Initial Answer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.1. Verifying ICE Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.2. Forming the Check List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.3. Performing Periodic Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7. Connectivity Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7.1. Applicability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7.2. Client Discovery of Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
7.3. Server Determination of Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
7.4. New Requests or Indications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
7.5. New Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
7.6. New Error Response Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
7.7. Client Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
7.7.1. Sending the Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
7.7.2. Processing the Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7.8. Server Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
7.9. Security Considerations for Connectivity Check . . . . . . 29
8. Completing the ICE Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
9. Subsequent Offer/Answer Exchanges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
9.1. Generating the Offer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
9.2. Receiving the Offer and Generating an Answer . . . . . . . 31
9.3. Updating the Check and Valid Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
10. Keepalives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
11. Media Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
11.1. Sending Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
11.2. Receiving Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
12. Usage with SIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
12.1. Latency Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
12.2. Interactions with Forking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
12.3. Interactions with Preconditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
12.4. Interactions with Third Party Call Control . . . . . . . . 38
13. Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
14. Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
15. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
15.1. Attacks on Connectivity Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
15.2. Attacks on Address Gathering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
15.3. Attacks on the Offer/Answer Exchanges . . . . . . . . . . 49
15.4. Insider Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
15.4.1. The Voice Hammer Attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
15.4.2. STUN Amplification Attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
16. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
16.1. candidate Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
16.2. remote-candidates Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
16.3. ice-pwd Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
16.4. ice-ufrag Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
17. IAB Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
17.1. Problem Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
17.2. Exit Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
17.3. Brittleness Introduced by ICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
17.4. Requirements for a Long Term Solution . . . . . . . . . . 55
17.5. Issues with Existing NAPT Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
18. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
19. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
19.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
19.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Appendix A. Design Motivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
A.1. Applicability to Gateways and Servers . . . . . . . . . . 59
A.2. Pacing of STUN Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
A.3. Candidates with Multiple Bases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
A.4. Purpose of the Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
A.5. Importance of the STUN Username . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
A.6. The Candidate Pair Sequence Number Formula . . . . . . . . 64
A.7. The Frozen State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
A.8. The remote-candidates attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
A.9. Why are Keepalives Needed? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
A.10. Why Prefer Peer Reflexive Candidates? . . . . . . . . . . 67
A.11. Why Can't Offerers Send Media When a Pair Validates . . . 67
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 70
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
1. Introduction
RFC 3264 [4] defines a two-phase exchange of Session Description
Protocol (SDP) messages [10] for the purposes of establishment of
multimedia sessions. This offer/answer mechanism is used by
protocols such as the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) [3].
Protocols using offer/answer are difficult to operate through Network
Address Translators (NAT). Because their purpose is to establish a
flow of media packets, they tend to carry IP addresses within their
messages, which is known to be problematic through NAT [14]. The
protocols also seek to create a media flow directly between
participants, so that there is no application layer intermediary
between them. This is done to reduce media latency, decrease packet
loss, and reduce the operational costs of deploying the application.
However, this is difficult to accomplish through NAT. A full
treatment of the reasons for this is beyond the scope of this
specification.
Numerous solutions have been proposed for allowing these protocols to
operate through NAT. These include Application Layer Gateways
(ALGs), the Middlebox Control Protocol [15], Simple Traversal
Underneath NAT (STUN) [13] and its revision [11], the STUN Relay
Usage [12], and Realm Specific IP [17] [18] along with session
description extensions needed to make them work, such as the Session
Description Protocol (SDP) [10] attribute for the Real Time Control
Protocol (RTCP) [2]. Unfortunately, these techniques all have pros
and cons which make each one optimal in some network topologies, but
a poor choice in others. The result is that administrators and
implementors are making assumptions about the topologies of the
networks in which their solutions will be deployed. This introduces
complexity and brittleness into the system. What is needed is a
single solution which is flexible enough to work well in all
situations.
This specification provides that solution for media streams
established by signaling protocols based on the offer-answer model.
It is called Interactive Connectivity Establishment, or ICE. ICE
makes use of STUN and its relay extension, commonly called TURN, but
uses them in a specific methodology which avoids many of the pitfalls
of using any one alone.
2. Overview of ICE
In a typical ICE deployment, we have two endpoints (known as agents
in RFC 3264 terminology) which want to communicate. They are able to
communicate indirectly via some signaling system such as SIP, by
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
which they can perform an offer/answer exchange of SDP [4] messages.
Note that ICE is not intended for NAT traversal for SIP, which is
assumed to be provided via some other mechanism [31]. At the
beginning of the ICE process, the agents are ignorant of their own
topologies. In particular, they might or might not be behind a NAT
(or multiple tiers of NATs). ICE allows the agents to discover
enough information about their topologies to find a path or paths by
which they can communicate.
Figure Figure 1 shows a typical environment for ICE deployment. The
two endpoints are labelled L and R (for left and right, which helps
visualize call flows). Both L and R are behind NATs -- though as
mentioned before, they don't know that. The type of NAT and its
properties are also unknown. Agents A and B are capable of engaging
in an offer/answer exchange by which they can exchange SDP messages,
whose purpose is to set up a media session between A and B.
Typically, this exchange will occur through a SIP server.
In addition to the agents, a SIP server and NATs, ICE is typically
used in concert with STUN servers in the network. Each agent can
have its own STUN server, or they can be the same.
+-------+
| SIP |
+-------+ | Srvr | +-------+
| STUN | | | | STUN |
| Srvr | +-------+ | Srvr |
| | / \ | |
+-------+ / \ +-------+
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ <- Signalling -> \
/ \
/ \
+--------+ +--------+
| NAT | | NAT |
+--------+ +--------+
/ \
/ \
/ \
+-------+ +-------+
| Agent | | Agent |
| L | | R |
| | | |
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
+-------+ +-------+
Figure 1
The basic idea behind ICE is as follows: each agent has a variety of
candidate transport addresses it could use to communicate with the
other agent. These might include:
o It's directly attached network interface (or interfaces in the
case of a multihomed machine
o A translated address on the public side of a NAT (a "server
reflexive" address)
o The address of a media relay the agent is using.
Potentially, any of L's candidate transport addresses can be used to
communicate with any of R's transport addresses. In practice,
however, many combinations will not work. For instance, if L and R
are both behind NATs then their directly interface addresses are
unlikely to be able to communicate directly (this is why ICE is
needed, after all!). The purpose of ICE is to discover which pairs
of addresses will work. The way that ICE does this is to
systematically try all possible pairs (in a carefully sorted order)
until it finds one or more that works.
2.1. Gathering Candidate Addresses
In order to execute ICE, an agent has to identify all of its address
candidates. Naturally, one viable candidate is one obtained directly
from a local interface the client has towards the network. Such a
candidate is called a HOST CANDIDATE. The local interface could be
one on a local layer 2 network technology, such as ethernet or WiFi,
or it could be one that is obtained through a tunnel mechanism, such
as a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or Mobile IP (MIP). In all cases,
these appear to the agent as a local interface from which ports (and
thus a candidate) can be allocated.
If an agent is multihomed, it can obtain a candidate from each
interface. Depending on the location of the peer on the IP network
relative to the agent, the agent may be reachable by the peer through
one of those interfaces, or through another. Consider, for example,
an agent which has a local interface to a private net 10 network, and
also to the public Internet. A candidate from the net10 interface
will be directly reachable when communicating with a peer on the same
private net 10 network, while a candidate from the public interface
will be directly reachable when communicating with a peer on the
public Internet. Rather than trying to guess which interface will
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
work prior to sending an offer, the offering agent includes both
candidates in its offer.
Once the agent has obtained host candidates, it uses STUN to obtain
additional candidates. These come in two flavors: translated
addresses on the public side of a NAT (SERVER REFLEXIVE CANDIDATES)
and addresses of media relays (RELAYED CANDIDATES). The relationship
of these candidates to the host candidate is shown in Figure 2. Both
types of candidates are discovered using STUN.
To Internet
|
|
| /------------ Relayed
| / Candidate
+--------+
| |
| STUN |
| Server |
| |
+--------+
|
|
| /------------ Server
|/ Reflexive
+------------+ Candidate
| NAT |
+------------+
|
| /------------ Host
|/ Candidate
+--------+
| |
| Agent |
| |
+--------+
Figure 2
To find a server reflexive candidate, the agent sends a STUN Binding
Request, using the Binding Discovery Usage [11] from each host
candidate, to its STUN server. (It is assumed that the address of
the STUN server is configured, or learned in some way.) When the
agents sends the Binding Request, the NAT (assuming there is one)
will allocate a binding, mapping this server reflexive candidate to
the host candidate. Outgoing packets sent from the host candidate
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
will be translated by the NAT to the server reflexive candidate.
Incoming packets sent to the server relexive candidate will be
translated by the NAT to the host candidate and forwarded to the
agent. We call the host candidate associated with a given server
reflexive candidate the BASE.
Note
"Base" refers to the address you'd send from for a particular
candidate. Thus, as a degenerate case host candidates also have a
base, but it's the same as the host candidate.
When there are multiple NATs between the agent and the STUN server,
the STUN request will create a binding on each NAT, but only the
outermost server reflexive candidate will be discovered by the agent.
If the agent is not behind a NAT, then the base candidate will be the
same as the server reflexive candidate and the server reflexive
candidate can be ignored.
The final type of candidate is a RELAYED candidate. The STUN Relay
Usage [12] allows a STUN server to act as a media relay, forwarding
traffic between L and R. In order to send traffic to L, R sends
traffic to the media relay which forwards it to L and vice versa.
The same thing happens in the other direction.
Traffic from L to R has its addresses rewritten twice: first by the
NAT and second by the STUN relay server. Thus, the address that R
knows about and the one that it wants to send to is the one on the
STUN relay server. This address is the final kind of candidate,
which we call a RELAYED CANDIDATE.
2.2. Connectivity Checks
Once L has gathered all of its candidates, it orders them highest to
lowest priority and sends them to R over the signalling channel. The
candidates are carried in attributes in the SDP offer. When R
receives the offer, it performs the same gathering process and
responds with its own list of candidates. At the end of this
process, each agent has a complete list of both its candidates and
its peer's candidates and is ready to perform connectivity checks by
pairing up the candidates to see which pair works.
The basic principle of the connectivity checks is simple:
1. Sort the candidate pairs in priority order.
2. Send checks on each candidate pair in priority order.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
3. Acknowledge checks received from the other agent.
A complete connectivity check for a single candidate pair is a simple
4-message handshake:
A B
- -
STUN request -> \ A's
<- STUN response / check
<- STUN request \ B's
STUN response -> / check
Figure 3
As an optimization, as soon as B gets A's check message he
immediately sends his own check message to A on the same candidate
pair. This accelerates the process of finding a valid candidate.
At the end of this handshake, both A and B know that they can send
(and receive) messages end-to-end in both directions. Note that as
soon as B receives A's STUN response it knows that the B->A path
works and it can start sending media on that path right away, as
shown below. This allows for 'early media' to flow as fast as
possible:
A B
- -
STUN request -> \ A's
<- STUN response / check
<- STUN request \ B's
STUN response -> / check
<- RTP Data
Figure 4
Once any connectivity check for a candidate for a given media
component succeeds, ICE uses that candidate and immediately abandons
all other connectivity checks for that component. Note that due to
race conditions and packet loss, this may mean that the "best"
candidate isn't selected, but it does guarantee the selection of a
candidate that works, and because of the sorting process it will
generally be one of the most preferred ones.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
2.3. Sorting Candidates
Because the algorithm above searches all candidate pairs, if a
working pair exists it will eventually find it no matter what order
the candidates are tried in. In order to produce faster (and better)
results, the candidates are sorted in a specified order. The
algorithm is described in Section 4.2 but follows two general
principles:
o Each agent gives its candidates a numeric priority which is sent
along with the candidate to the peer
o The local and remote priorities are combined so that each agent
has the same ordering for the candidate pairs.
The second property is important for getting ICE to work when there
are NATs in front of A and B. Frequently, NATs will not allow packets
in from a host until the agent behind the NAT has sent a packet
towards that host. Consequently, ICE checks in each direction will
not succeed until both sides have sent a check through their
respective NATs.
In general the priority algorithm is designed so that candidates of
similar type get similar priorities and so that more direct routes
are favored over indirect ones. Within those guidelines, however,
agents have a fair amount of discretion about how to tune their
algorithms.
2.4. Frozen Candidates
The previous description only addresses the case where the agents
wish to establish a single media component--i.e., a single flow with
a single host-port quartet. However, in many cases (in particular
RTP and RTCP) the agents actually need to establish connectivity for
more than one flow.
The naive way to attack this problem would be to simply do
independent ICE exchanges for each media component. This is
obviously inefficient because the network properties are likely to be
very similar for each component (especially because RTP and RTCP are
typically run on adjacent ports). Thus, it should be possible to
leverage information from one media component in order to determine
the best candidates for another. ICE does this with a mechanism
called "frozen candidates."
The basic principle behind frozen candidates is that initially only
the candidates for a single media component are tested. The other
media components are marked "frozen". When the connectivity checks
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
for the first component succeed, the corresponding candidates for the
other components are unfrozen and checked immediately. This avoids
repeated checking of components which are superficially more
attractive but in fact are likely to fail.
While we've described "frozen" here as a separate mechanism for
expository purposes, in fact it is an integral part of ICE and the
the ICE prioritization algorithm automatically ensures that the right
candidates are unfrozen and checked in the right order.
2.5. Security for Checks
Because ICE is used to discover which addresses can be used to send
media between two agents, it is important to ensure that the process
cannot be hijacked to send media to the wrong location. Each STUN
connectivity check is covered by a message authentication code (MAC)
computed using a key exchanged in the signalling channel. This MAC
provides message integrity and data origin authentication, thus
stopping an attacker from forging or modifying connectivity check
messages. The MAC also aids in disambiguating ICE exchanges from
forked calls.
3. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [1].
This specification makes use of the following terminology:
Agent: As defined in RFC 3264, an agent is the protocol
implementation involved in the offer/answer exchange. There are
two agents involved in an offer/answer exchange.
Peer: From the perspective of one of the agents in a session, its
peer is the other agent. Specifically, from the perspective of
the offerer, the peer is the answerer. From the perspective of
the answerer, the peer is the offerer.
Transport Address: The combination of an IP address and port.
Candidate: A transport address that is to be tested by ICE procedures
in order to determine its suitability for usage for receipt of
media.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
Host Candidate: A candidate obtained by binding to a specific port
from an interface on the host. This includes both physical
interfaces and logical ones, such as ones obtained through Virtual
Private Networks (VPNs) and Realm Specific IP (RSIP) [17] (which
lives at the operating system level).
Server Reflexive Candidate: A candidate obtained by sending a STUN
request from a host candidate to a STUN server, distinct from the
peer, whose address is configured or learned by the client prior
to an offer/answer exchange.
Peer Reflexive Candidate: A candidate obtained by sending a STUN
request from a host candidate to the STUN server running on a
peer's candidate.
Relayed Candidate: A candidate obtained by sending a STUN Allocate
request from a host candidate to a STUN server. The relayed
candidate is resident on the STUN server, and the STUN server
relays packets back towards the agent.
Translation: The translation of a relayed candidate is the transport
address that the relay will forward a packet to, when one is
received at the relayed candidate. For relayed candidates learned
through the STUN Allocate request, the translation of the relayed
candidate is the server reflexive candidate returned by the
Allocate response.
Base: The base of a server reflexive candidate is the host candidate
from which it was derived. A host candidate is also said to have
a base, equal to that candidate itself. Similarly, the base of a
relayed candidate is that candidate itself.
Foundation: Each candidate has a foundation, which is an identifier
that is distinct for two candidates that have different types,
different interface IP addresses for their base, and different IP
addresses for their STUN servers. Two candidates have the same
foundation when they are of the same type, their bases have the
same IP address, and, for server reflexive or relayed candidates,
they come from the same STUN server. Foundations are used to
correlate candidates, so that when one candidate is found to be
valid, candidates sharing the same foundation can be tested next,
as they are likely to also be valid.
Local Candidate: A candidate that an agent has obtained and included
in an offer or answer it sent.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
Remote Candidate: A candidate that an agent received in an offer or
answer from its peer.
In-Use Candidate: A candidate is in-use when it appears in the m/c-
line of an active media stream.
Candidate Pair: A pairing containing a local candidate and a remote
candidate.
Check: A candidate pair where the local candidate is a transport
address from which an agent can send a STUN connectivity check.
Check List: An ordered set of STUN checks that an agent is to
generate towards a peer.
Periodic Check: A connectivity check generated by an agent as a
consequence of a timer that fires periodically, instructing it to
send a check.
Triggered Check: A connectivity check generated as a consequence of
the receipt of a connectivity check from the peer.
Valid List: An ordered set of candidate pairs that have been
validated by a successful STUN transaction.
4. Sending the Initial Offer
In order to send the initial offer in an offer/answer exchange, an
agent must gather candidates, priorize them, choose ones for
inclusion in the m/c-line, and then formulate and send the SDP. Each
of these steps is described in the subsections below.
4.1. Gathering Candidates
An agent gathers candidates when it believes that communications is
imminent. An offerer can do this based on a user interface cue, or
based on an explicit request to initiate a session. Every candidate
is an IP address and port (also known as a transport address). It
also has a type and a base. Three types are defined and gathered by
this specification - host candidates, server reflexive candidates,
and relayed candidates. The base of a candidate is candidate that an
agent must send from when using that candidate.
The first step is to gather host candidates. Host candidates are
obtained by binding to ports (typically ephemeral) on an interface
(physical or virtual, including VPN interfaces) on the host. The
process for gathering host candidates depends on the transport
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
protocol. Procedures are specified here for UDP.
For each UDP media stream the agent wishes to use, the agent SHOULD
obtain a candidate for each component of the media stream on each
interface that the host has. It obtains each candidate by binding to
a UDP port on the specific interface. A host candidate (and indeed
every candidate) is always associated with a specific component for
which it is a candidate. Each component has an ID assigned to it,
called the component ID. For RTP-based media streams, the RTP itself
has a component ID of 1, and RTCP a component ID of 2. If an agent
is using RTCP it MUST obtain a candidate for it. If an agent is
using both RTP and RTCP, it would end up with 2*K host candidates if
an agent has K interfaces.
The base for each host candidate is set to the candidate itself.
Once the agent has obtained host candidates, it obtains server
reflexive and relayed candidates. The process for gathering server
reflexive and relayed candidates depends on the transport protocol.
Procedures are specified here for UDP.
Agents which serve end users directly, such softphones, hardphones,
terminal adapters and so on, SHOULD obtain relayed candidates and
MUST obtain server reflexive candidates. The requirement to obtain
relayed candidates is at SHOULD strength to allow for provider
variation. If they are not used, it is RECOMMENDED that it be
implemented and just disabled through configuration, so that it can
re-enabled through configuration if conditions change in the future.
Agents which represent network servers under the control of a service
provider, such as gateways to the telephone network, media servers,
or conferencing servers that are targeted at deployment only in
networks with public IP addresses MAY skip obtaining server reflexive
and relayed candidates.
The agent next pairs each host candidate with the STUN server with
which it is configured or has discovered by some means. This
specification only considers usage of a single STUN server. Every Ta
seconds, the agent chooses another such pair (the order is
inconsequential), and sends a STUN request to the server from that
host candidate. If the agent is using both relayed and server
reflexive candidates, this request MUST be a STUN Allocate request
from the relay usage [12]. If the agent is using only server
reflexive candidates, the request MUST be a STUN Binding request
using the binding discovery usage [11].
The value of Ta SHOULD be configurable, and SHOULD have a default of
50ms. Note that this pacing applies only to starting STUN
transactions with source and destination transport addresses (i.e.,
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
the host candidate and STUN server respectively) for which a STUN
transaction has not previously been sent. Consequently,
retransmissions of a STUN request are governed entirely by the
retransmission rules defined in [11]. Similarly, retries of a
request due to recoverable errors (such as an authentication
challenge) happen immediately and are not paced by timer Ta. Because
of this pacing, it will take a certain amount of time to obtain all
of the server reflexive and relayed candidates. Implementations
should be aware of the time required to do this, and if the
application requires a time budget, limit the amount of candidates
which are gathered.
An Allocate Response will provide the client with a server reflexive
candidate (obtained from the mapped address) and a relayed candidate
in the RELAY-ADDRESS attribute. A Binding Response will provide the
client with a only server reflexive candidate (also obtained from the
mapped address). The base of the server reflexive candidate is the
host candidate from which the Allocate or Binding request was sent.
The base of a relayed candidate is that candidate itself. A server
reflexive candidate obtained from an Allocate response is the called
the "translation" of the relayed candidate obtained from the same
response. The agent will need to remember the translation for the
relayed candidate, since it is placed into the SDP. If a relayed
candidate is identical to a host candidate (which can happen in rare
cases), the relayed candidate MUST be discarded. Proper operation of
ICE depends on each base being unique.
Next, redundant candidates are eliminated. A candidate is redundant
if its transport address equals another candidate, and its base
equals the base of that other candidate. Note that two candidates
can have the same transport address yet have different bases, and
these would not be considered redundant.
Finally, each candidate is assigned a foundation. The foundation is
an identifier, scoped within a session. Two candidates MUST have the
same foundation ID when they are of the same type (host, relayed,
server reflexive, peer reflexive or relayed), their bases have the
same IP address (the ports can be different), and, for reflexive and
relayed candidates, the STUN servers used to obtain them have the
same IP address. Similarly, two candidates MUST have different
foundations if their types are different, their bases have different
IP addresses, or the STUN servers used to obtain them have different
IP addresses.
4.2. Prioritizing Candidates
The prioritization process results in the assignment of a priority to
each candidate. An agent does this by determining a preference for
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
each type of candidate (server reflexive, per reflexive, relayed and
host), and, when the agent is multihomed, choosing a preference for
its interfaces. These two preferences are then combined to compute
the priority for a candidate. That priority MUST be computed using
the following formula:
priority = 1000*(type preference) +
100*(local preference) +
10*(stream ID) +
1*(10 - component ID)
The type preference MUST be an integer from 0 to 9 inclusive, and
represents the preference for the type of the candidate (where the
types are local, server reflexive, peer reflexive and relayed). A 9
is the highest preference, and a 0 is the lowest. Setting the value
to a 0 means that candidates of this type will only be used as a last
resort. The type preference MUST be identical for all candidates of
the same type and MUST be different for candidates of different
types. The type preference for peer reflexive candidates MUST be
lower than that of server reflexive candidates. Note that candidates
gathered based on the procedures of Section 4.1 will never be peer
reflexive candidates; candidates of these type are learned from the
STUN connectivity checks performed by ICE. The component ID is the
component ID for the candidate, and MUST be between 1 and 10
inclusive. The stream ID is an integer, starting at 9, that
decrements by one for each media stream in the session. When
signaled in the SDP, the first m-line is the one with stream ID 9,
the next with stream ID 8, the next with stream ID 7, and so on. In
essence, the stream ID indicates the position of that media stream in
the SDP itself. The stream ID MUST be less than or equal to 9, and
therefore ICE only works with multimedia sessions with 10 or fewer
media streams. The local preference MUST be an integer from 0 to 9
inclusive. It represents a preference for the particular interface
from which the candidate was obtained, in cases where an agent is
multihomed. A nine represents the highest preference, and a zero,
the lowest. When there is only a single interface, this value SHOULD
be set to nine. Generally speaking, if there are multiple candidates
for a particular component for a particular media stream which have
the same type, the local preference MUST be unique for each one. In
this specification, this only happens for multi-homed hosts.
These rules guarantee that there is a unique priority for each
candidate. This priority will be used by ICE to determine the order
of the connectivity checks and the relative preference for
candidates. Consequently, what follows are some guidelines for
selection of these values.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
One criteria for selection of the type and local preference values is
the use of an intermediary. That is, if media is sent to that
candidate, will the media first transit an intermediate server before
being received. Relayed candidates are clearly one type of
candidates that involve an intermediary. Another are host candidates
obtained from a VPN interface. When media is transited through an
intermediary, it can increase the latency between transmission and
reception. It can increase the packet losses, because of the
additional router hops that may be taken. It may increase the cost
of providing service, since media will be routed in and right back
out of an intermediary run by the provider. If these concerns are
important, the type preference for relayed candidates can be set
lower than the type preference for reflexive and host candidates.
Indeed, it is RECOMMENDED that in this case, host candidates have a
type preference of nine, server reflexive candidates have a type
preference of 5, peer reflexive have a type prefence of 6, and
relayed candidates have a type preference of zero. Furthermore, if
an agent is multi-homed and has multiple interfaces, the local
preference for host candidates from a VPN interface SHOULD have a
priority of 0.
Another criteria for selection of preferences is IP address family.
ICE works with both IPv4 and IPv6. It therefore provides a
transition mechanism that allows dual-stack hosts to prefer
connectivity over IPv6, but to fall back to IPv4 in case the v6
networks are disconnected (due, for example, to a failure in a 6to4
relay) [22]. It can also help with hosts that have both a native
IPv6 address and a 6to4 address. In such a case, lower local
preferences could be assigned to the v6 interface, followed by the
6to4 interfaces, followed by the v4 interfaces. This allows a site
to obtain and begin using native v6 addresses immediately, yet still
fallback to 6to4 addresses when communicating with agents in other
sites that do not yet have native v6 connectivity.
Another criteria for selecting preferences is security. If a user is
a telecommuter, and therefore connected to their corporate network
and a local home network, they may prefer their voice traffic to be
routed over the VPN in order to keep it on the corporate network when
communicating within the enterprise, but use the local network when
communicating with users outside of the enterprise. In such a case,
a VPN interface would have a higher local preference than any other
interfaces.
Another criteria for selecting preferences is topological awareness.
This is most useful for candidates that make use of relays. In those
cases, if an agent has preconfigured or dynamically discovered
knowledge of the topological proximity of the relays to itself, it
can use that to assign higher local preferences to candidates
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 17]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
obtained from closer relays.
There may be transport-specific reasons for assigning preferences to
candidates. In such a case, specifications defining usage of ICE
with other transport protocols SHOULD document such considerations.
4.3. Choosing In-Use Candidates
A candidate is said to be "in-use" if it appears in the m/c-line of
an offer or answer. When communicating with an ICE peer, being in-
use implies that, should these candidates be selected by the ICE
algorithm, bidirectional media can flow and the candidates can be
used. If a candidate is selected by ICE but is not in-use, only
unidirectional media can flow and only for a brief time; the
candidate must be made in-use through an updated offer/answer
exchange. When communicating with a peer that is not ICE-aware, the
in-use candidates will be used exclusively for the exchange of media,
as defined in normal offer/answer procedures.
An agent MUST choose a set of candidates, one for each component of
each active media stream, to be in-use. A media stream is active if
it does not contain the a=inactive SDP attribute.
It is RECOMMENDED that in-use candidates be chosen based on the
likelihood of those candidates to work with the peer that is being
contacted. Unfortunately, it is difficult to ascertain which
candidates that might be. As an example, consider a user within an
enterprise. To reach non-ICE capable agents within the enterprise,
host candidates have to be used, since the enterprise policies may
prevent communication between elements using a relay on the public
network. However, when communicating to peers outside of the
enterprise, relayed candidates from a publically accessible STUN
server are needed.
Indeed, the difficulty in picking just one transport address that
will work is the whole problem that motivated the development of this
specification in the first place. As such, it is RECOMMENDED that
relayed candidates be selected to be in-use. Furthermore, ICE is
only truly effective when it is supported on both sides of the
session. It is therefore most prudent to deploy it to close-knit
communities as a whole, rather than piecemeal. In the example above,
this would mean that ICE would ideally be deployed completely within
the enterprise, rather than just to parts of it.
There may be transport-specific reasons for selection of an in-use
candidate. In such a case, specifications defining usage of ICE with
other transport protocols SHOULD document such considerations.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 18]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
4.4. Encoding the SDP
The agent includes a single a=candidate media level attribute in the
SDP for each candidate for that media stream. The a=candidate
attribute contains the IP address, port and transport protocol for
that candidate. A Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) for a host MAY
be used in place of a unicast address. In that case, when receiving
an offer or answer containing an FQDN in an a=candidate attribute,
the FQDN is looked up in the DNS using an A or AAAA record, and the
resulting IP address is used for the remainder of ICE processing.
The candidate attribute also includes the component ID for that
candidate. For media streams based on RTP, candidates for the actual
RTP media MUST have a component ID of 1, and candidates for RTCP MUST
have a component ID of 2. Other types of media streams which require
multiple components MUST develop specifications which define the
mapping of components to component IDs.
The candidate attribute also includes the priority, which is the
value determined for the candidate as described in Section 4.2, and
the foundation, which is the value determined for the candidate as
described in Section 4.1. The agent SHOULD include a type for each
candidate by populating the candidate-types production with the
appropriate value - "host" for host candidates, "srflx" for server
reflexive candidates, "prflx" for peer reflexive candidates (though
these never appear in an initial offer/answer exchange), and "relay"
for relayed candidates. The related address MUST NOT be included if
a type was not included. If a type was included, the related address
SHOULD be present for server reflexive, peer reflexive and relayed
candidates. If a candidate is server or peer reflexive, the related
address is equal to the base for that server or peer reflexive
candidate. If the candidate is relayed, the related address is equal
to the translation of the relayed address. If the candidiate is a
host candidate, there is no related address and the rel-addr
production MUST be omitted.
STUN connectivity checks between agents make use of a short term
credential that is exchanged in the offer/answer process. The
username part of this credential is formed by concatenating a
username fragment from each agent, separated by a colon. Each agent
also provides a password, used to compute the message integrity for
requests it receives. As such, an SDP MUST contain the ice-ufrag and
ice-pwd attributes, containing the username fragment and password
respectively. These can be either session or media level attributes,
and thus common across all candidates for all media streams, or all
candidates for a particular media stream, respectively. However, if
two media streams have identical ice-ufrag's, they MUST have
identical ice-pwd's. The ice-ufrag and ice-pwd attributes MUST be
chosen randomly at the beginning of a session. The ice-ufrag
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 19]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
attribute MUST contain at least 24 bits of randomness, and the ice-
pwd attribute MUST contain at least 128 bits of randomness. This
means that the ice-ufrag attribute will be at least 4 characters
long, and the ice-pwd at least 22 characters long, since the grammar
for these attributes allows for 6 bits of randomness per character.
The attributes MAY be longer than 4 and 21 characters respectively,
of course.
The m/c-line is populated with the candidates that are in-use. For
streams based on RTP, this is done by placing the RTP candidate into
the m and c lines respectively. If the agent is utilizing RTCP, it
MUST encode the RTCP candidate into the m/c-line using the a=rtcp
attribute as defined in RFC 3605 [2]. If RTCP is not in use, the
agent MUST signal that using b=RS:0 and b=RR:0 as defined in RFC 3556
[5].
There MUST be a candidate attribute for each component of the media
stream in the m/c-line.
Once an offer or answer are sent, an agent MUST be prepared to
receive both STUN and media packets on each candidate. As discussed
in Section 11.1, media packets can be sent to a candidate prior to
its appearence in the m/c-line.
5. Receiving the Initial Offer
When an agent receives an initial offer, it will check if the offeror
supports ICE, gather candidates, prioritize them, choose one for in-
use, encode and send an answer, and then form a check list and begin
connectivity checks.
5.1. Verifying ICE Support
The agent will proceed with the ICE procedures defined in this
specification if the following are both true:
o There is at least one a=candidate attribute for each media stream
in the SDP it just received.
o For each media stream, at least one of the candidates is a match
for its respective in-use component in the m/c-line.
If both of these conditions are not met, the agent MUST process the
SDP based on normal RFC 3264 procedures, without using any of the ICE
mechanisms described in the remainder of this specification, with the
exception of Section 10, which describes keepalive procedures.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 20]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
5.2. Gathering Candidates
The process for gathering candidates at the answerer is identical to
the process for the offerer as described in Section 4.1. It is
RECOMMENDED that this process begin immediately on receipt of the
offer, prior to user acceptance of a session. Such gathering MAY
even be done pre-emptively when an agent starts.
5.3. Prioritizing Candidates
The process for prioritizing candidates at the answerer is identical
to the process followed by the offerer, as described in Section 4.2.
5.4. Choosing In Use Candidates
The process for selecting in-use candidates at the answerer is
identical to the process followed by the offerer, as described in
Section 4.3.
5.5. Encoding the SDP
The process for encoding the SDP at the answerer is identical to the
process followed by the offerer, as described in Section 4.4.
5.6. Forming the Check List
Next, the agent forms the check list. The check list is a sequence
of STUN connectivity checks that are performed by the agent. To form
the check list, the agent forms candidate pairs, computes a candidate
pair priority, orders the pairs by priority, prunes them, and sets
their states. These steps are described in this section.
First, the agent takes each of its candidates (called local
candidates) and pairs them with the candidates it received from its
peer (called remote candidates). A local candidate is paired with a
remote candidate if and only if the two candidates are for the same
media stream, have the same component ID, and have the same IP
address version. It is possible that some of the local candidates
don't get paired with a remote candidate, and some of the remote
candidates don't get paired with local candidates. This can happen
if one agent didn't include candidates for the all of the components
for a media stream. In the case of RTP, for example, this would
happen when one agent provided candidates for RTCP, and the other did
not. If this happens, the number of components for that media stream
is effectively reduced, and considered to be equal to the minimum
across both agents of the maximum component ID provided by each agent
across all components for the media stream.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 21]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
Once the pairs are formed, a candidate pair priority is computed.
Let O-P be the priority for the candidate provided by the offerer.
Let A-P be the priority for the candidate provided by the answerer.
Let O-IP be the IP address (without the port) of the candidate
provided by the offerer. Let SZ be two to the power of 32 for IPv4
candidates, and two to the power of 128 for IPv6 candidates. The
priority for a pair is computed as:
pair priority = 10000*MIN(O-P,A-P) + MAX(O-P,A-P) + O-IP/SZ
OPEN ISSUE: This can be larger than 32 bits. Should consider ways
of reducing that.
This formula ensures a unique priority for each pair in most cases.
One the priority is assigned, the agent sorts the candidate pairs in
decreasing order of priority. If two pairs have identical priority,
the ordering amongst them is arbitrary.
This sorted list of candidate pairs is used to determine a sequence
of connectivity checks that will be performed. Each check involves
sending a request from a local candidate to a remote candidate.
Since an agent cannot send requests directly from a reflexive
candidate, but only from its base, the agent next goes through the
sorted list of candidate pairs. For each pair where the local
candidate is server reflexive, the server reflexive candidate MUST be
replaced by its base. Once this has been done, the agent MUST remove
redundant pairs. A pair is redundant if its local and remote
candidates are identical to the local and remote candidates of a pair
higher up on the priority list. The result is called the check list,
and each candidate pair on it is called a check.
Each check is also said to have a foundation, which is merely the
combination of the foundations of the local and remote candidates in
the check.
Finally, each check in the check list is associated with a state.
There are five potential values that the state can have:
Waiting: This check has not been performed, and can be performed as
soon as it is the highest priority Waiting check on the check
list.
In-Progress: A request has been sent for this check, but the
transaction is in progress.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 22]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
Succeeded: This check was already done and produced a successful
result.
Failed: This check was already done and failed, either never
producing any response or producing an unrecoverable failure
response.
Frozen: This check hasn't been performed, and it can't yet be
performed until some other check succeeds, allowing it to move
into the Waiting state.
First, the agent sets all of the checks to the Frozen state. Then,
it sets the first check in the check list to Waiting. It then finds
all of the other checks for the same media stream and with the same
component ID, but different foundations, and sets all of their states
to Waiting.
5.7. Performing Periodic Checks
An agent performs two types of checks. The first type are periodic
checks. These checks occur periodically, and involve choosing the
highest priority check in the Waiting state from the check list, and
performing it. The other type of check is called a triggered check.
This is a check that is performed on receipt of a connectivity check
from the peer. This section describes how periodic checks are
performed.
Once the agent has computed the check list as described in
Section 5.6, it sets a timer that fires every Ta seconds. This is
the same value used to pace the gathering of candidates, as described
in Section 4.1. The first timer fires immediately, so that the agent
performs a connectivity check the moment the offer/answer exchange
has been done, followed by the next periodic check Ta seconds later.
When the timer fires, the agent MUST find the highest priority check
in the check list that is in the Waiting state. The agent then sends
a STUN check from the local candidate of that check to the remote
candidate of that check. The procedures for forming the STUN request
for this purpose are described in Section 7.7.1. If none of the
checks in the check list are in the Waiting state, but there are
checks in the Frozen state, the highest priority check in the Frozen
state is moved into the Waiting state, and that check is performed.
When a check is performed, its state is set to In-Progress. If there
are no checks in either the Waiting or Frozen state, then timer Ta is
stopped.
Performing the connectivity check requires the agent to know the
username fragment for the local and remote candidates, and the
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 23]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
password for the remote candidate. For periodic checks, the remote
username fragment and password are learned directly from the SDP
received from the peer, and the local username fragment is known by
the agent.
6. Receipt of the Initial Answer
This section describes the procedures that an agent follows when it
receives the answer from the peer. It verifies that its peer
supports ICE, forms the check list and begins performing periodic
checks.
6.1. Verifying ICE Support
The offerer follows the same procedures described for the answerer in
Section 5.1.
6.2. Forming the Check List
The offerer follows the same procedures described for the answerer in
Section 5.6.
6.3. Performing Periodic Checks
The offerer follows the same procedures described for the answerer in
Section 5.7.
7. Connectivity Checks
This section describes how connectivity checks are performed.
Connectivity checks are a STUN usage, and the behaviors described
here meet the guidelines for definitions of new usages as outlined in
[11]
Note that all ICE implementations are required to be compliant to
[11], as opposed to the older [13].
7.1. Applicability
This STUN usage provides a connectivity check between two peers
participating in an offer/answer exchange. This check serves to
validate a pair of candidates for usage of exchange of media.
Connectivity checks also allow agents to discover reflexive
candidates towards their peers, called peer reflexive candidates.
Finally, connectivity checks serve to keep NAT bindings alive.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 24]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
It is fundamental to this STUN usage that the addresses and ports
used for media are the same ones used for the Binding Requests and
responses. Consequently, it will be necessary to demultiplex STUN
traffic from whatever the media traffic is. This demultiplexing is
done using the techniques described in [11].
7.2. Client Discovery of Server
The client does not follow the DNS-based procedures defined in [11].
Rather, the remote candidate of the check to be performed is used as
the IP address and port of the STUN server. Note that the STUN
server is a logical entity, and is not a physically distinct server
in this usage.
7.3. Server Determination of Usage
The server is aware of this usage because it signaled this port
through the offer/answer exchange. Any STUN packets received on this
port will be for the connectivity check usage.
7.4. New Requests or Indications
This usage does not define any new message types.
7.5. New Attributes
This usage defines a new attribute, PRIORITY. This attribute
indicates the priority that is to be associated with a peer reflexive
candidate, should one be discovered by this check. It is a 32 bit
unsigned integer, and has an attribute type of 0x0024.
7.6. New Error Response Codes
This usage does not define any new error response codes.
7.7. Client Procedures
This section defines additional procedures for the Binding Request
transaction, beyond those described in [11].
7.7.1. Sending the Request
The agent acting as the client generates a connectivity check either
periodically, or triggered. In either case, the check is generated
by sending a Binding Request from a local candidate, to a remote
candidate. The agent must know the username fragment for both
candidates and the password for the remote candidate.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 25]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
A Binding Request serving as a connectivity check MUST utilize a STUN
short term credential. Rather than being learned from a Shared
Secret request, the short term credential is exchanged in the offer/
answer procedures. In particular, the username is formed by
concatenating the username fragment provided by the peer with the
username fragment of the agent sending the request, separated by a
colon (":"). The password is equal to the password provided by the
peer. For example, consider the case where agent A is the offerer,
and agent B is the answerer. Agent A included a username fragment of
AFRAG for its candidates, and a password of APASS. Agent B provided
a username fragment of BFRAG and a password of BPASS. A connectivity
check from A to B (and its response of course) utilize the username
BFRAG:AFRAG and a password of BPASS. A connectivity check from B to
A (and its response) utilize the username AFRAG:BFRAG and a password
of APASS.
All Binding Requests for the connectivity check usage MUST contain
the PRIORITY attribute. This MUST be set equal to the priority that
would be assigned, based on the algorithm in Section 4.2, to a peer
reflexive candidate learned from this check. Such a peer reflexive
candidate has a stream ID, component ID and local preference that are
equal to the host candidate from which the check is being sent, but a
type preference equal to the value associated with peer reflexive
candidates.
The Binding Request by an agent MUST include the USERNAME and
MESSAGE-INTEGRITY attributes. That is, an agent MUST NOT wait to be
challenged for short term credentials. Rather, it MUST provide them
in the Binding Request right away.
7.7.2. Processing the Response
If the STUN transaction generates an unrecoverable failure response
or times out, the agent sets the state of the check to Failed. The
remainder of this section applies to processing of successful
responses (any response from 200 to 299).
The agent MUST check that the source IP address and port of the
response equals the destination IP address and port that the Binding
Request was sent to, and that the source IP address and port of the
request match the destination IP address and port that the Binding
Response was received on. If these do not match, the agent sets the
state of the check to Failed. The processing described in the
remainder of this section MUST NOT be performed.
Otherwise, the source transport address of the response matched the
destination transport address of the request. The agent changes the
state for this check to Succeeded. Next, the agent sees if the
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 26]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
success of this check can cause other checks to be unfrozen. If the
check had a component ID of one, the agent MUST change the states for
all other Frozen checks for the same media stream and same
foundation, but different component IDs, to Waiting. If the
component ID for the check was equal to the number of components for
the media stream, the agent MUST change the state for all other
Frozen checks for the first component of different media streams but
the same foundation, to Waiting.
Next, the agent checks the mapped address from the STUN response. If
the transport address does not match any of the local candidates that
the agent knows about, the mapped address representes a new peer
reflexive candidate. Its type is equal to peer reflexive. Its base
is set equal to the candidate from which the STUN check was sent.
Its username fragment and password are identical to the candidate
from which the check was sent. It is assigned the priority value
that was placed in the PRIORITY attribute of the request. Its
foundation is selected as described in Section 4.1. The peer
reflexive candidate is then added to the list of local candidates
known by the agent (though it is not paired with other remote
candidates at this time).
In addition, the agent creates a candidate pair whose local candidate
equals the mapped address of the response, and whose remote candidate
equals the destination address to which the request was sent. This
is called a validated pair, since it has been validated by a STUN
connectivity check. The agent will know, either from the SDP or
through the PRIORITY attribute that was present in a STUN request,
the priorities of the local and remote candidates of the validated
pair. Based on these priorities, a priority for the validated pair
itself is computed if it was not already known, using the algorithm
in Section 5.6, and the pair is added to the valid list.
7.8. Server Procedures
An agent MUST be prepared to receive a Binding Request on the base of
each candidate it included in its most recent offer or answer.
Receipt of a Binding Request on an IP address and port that the agent
had included in a candidate attribute is an indication that the
connectivity check usage applies to the request.
The agent MUST use a short term credential to authenticate the
request and perform a message integrity check. The agent MUST accept
a credential if the username consists of two values separated by a
colon, where the first value is equal to the username fragment
generated by the agent in an offer or answer for a session in-
progress, and the password is equal to the password for that username
fragment. It is possible (and in fact very likely) that an offeror
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 27]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
will receive a Binding Request prior to receiving the answer from its
peer. However, the request can be processed without receiving this
answer, and a response generated.
For requests being received on a relayed candidate, the source IP
address and port used for STUN processing (namely, generation of the
XOR-MAPPED-ADDRESS attribute) is the IP address and port as seen by
the relay. That source transport address will be present in the
REMOTE-ADDRESS attribute of a STUN Data Indication message, if the
Binding Request was delivered through a Data Indication. If the
Binding Request was not encapsulated in a Data Indication, that
source address is equal to the current active destination for the
STUN relay session.
When the agent receives a STUN Binding Request for which it generates
a successful response, the agent checks the source transport address
of the request. If this transport address does not match any
existing remote candidates, it represents a new peer reflexive remote
candidate. This candidate is given a priority equal to the PRIORITY
attribute from the request. The type of the candidate is equal to
peer reflexive. Its foundation is set to an arbitrary value,
different from the foundation for all other remote candidates. The
username fragment for this candidate is equal to the bottom half (the
part after the colon) of the username in the Binding Request that was
just received. The password for this username fragment is taken from
the SDP from the peer. If agent has not yet received this SDP (a
likely case for the offerer in the initial offer/answer exchange), it
MUST wait for the SDP to be received, and then proceed with rest of
the processing described in the remainder of this section. This
candidate is then added to the list of remote candidates. However,
it is not paired with any local candidates.
Next, the agent MUST generate a triggered check in the reverse
directon if it has not already sent such a check. The triggered
check has a local candidate equal to the candidate on which the STUN
request was received, and a remote candidate equal to the source
transport address where the request came from (which may be a newly
formed peer reflexive candidate). The agent knows the priorities for
the local and remote candidates of this check, and so can compute the
priority for the check itself. If there is already a check on the
check list with this same local and remote candidates, and the state
of that check is Waiting or Frozen, its state is changed to In-
Progress and the check is performed. If there was already a check on
the check list with this same local and remote candidates, and its
state was In-Progress, the agent SHOULD generate an immediate
retransmit of the Binding Request. This is to facilitate rapid
completion of ICE when both agents are behind NAT. If there was a
check in the list already and its state was Succeeded or Failed,
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 28]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
nothing further is done. If there was no matching check on the check
list, it is inserted into the check list based on its priority, its
state is set to In-Progress, and the check is performed.
7.9. Security Considerations for Connectivity Check
Security considerations for the connectivity check are discussed in
Section 15.
8. Completing the ICE Checks
When a pair is added to the valid list, and the agent was the offeror
in the most recent offer/answer exchange, the agent MUST check to see
if there is a pair on the validated list for each component of each
media stream. If there is, the offeror MUST stop timer Ta, and MUST
cease retransmitting any Binding Requests for transactions in
progress. It MUST ignore any responses which may subsequently arrive
to transactions previously in progress. The offeror MUST generate an
updated offer as described in Section 9. It does this regardless of
whether the highest priority pairs in the check list match the
current in-use candidate pairs.
When a pair is aded to the valid list, and the agent was the answerer
in the most recent offer/answer exchange, the agent MAY begin sending
media using that candidate pair, as described in Section 11.1. In
addition, if there is a candidate pair on the valid list for each
component of each media stream, the answerer MUST stop timer Ta, and
MUST cease retransmitting any Binding Requests for transactions in
progress. It MUST ignore any responses which may subsequently arrive
to transactions previously in progress.
Note that only agent that was the answerer in the most recent offer/
answer exchange gets to send media right away. The offeror must wait
for a subsequent offer/answer exchange if the valid candidates don't
match those in the m/c-line.
OPEN ISSUE: It is possible that higher priority checks may still
succeed, if we allowed things to continue. This can happen for
several reasons. First, an in-progress check of higher priority
had some packet loss and thus hasn't completed. Timer Tws was
meant to handle this (I removed this timer from -10 to simplify).
More interestingly, higher priority checks may have not been done
because a triggered check of lower priority succeeded. This
happens in cases where the number of checks at each agent are
assymetric. It is possible to fix both of these problems by
delaying the completion of the ICE procedures for a bit more time.
This adds complexity and latency. The basic algorithm would be
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 29]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
this. You take the lowest priority pair in the valid list. You
keep doing checks as long as there are higher priority checks on
the list in the Waiting state. If there are none, you wait a
brief time (say 50ms) and then consider ICE finished.
9. Subsequent Offer/Answer Exchanges
An agent MAY generate a subsequent offer at any time. However, the
rules in Section 7.7.2 will cause the offerer to generate an updated
offer when the candidates in the valid list are not all in-use.
9.1. Generating the Offer
When an agent generates an updated offer, the set of candidate
attributes to include depend on the state of ICE processing. If ICE
is "done", which occurs when the valid list includes a candidate pair
for each component of each media stream, the agent MUST include a
candidate attribute for each local candidate amongst the pairs in the
valid list (including peer reflexive candidates), and SHOULD NOT
include any others. This will cause STUN keepalives to be sent for
the in-use candidates, and thats it.
If, however, the valid list does not yet include a candidate pair for
each component of each media stream, the agent SHOULD include all
current candidates, including any peer reflexive candidates it has
learned since the last offer or answer it sent. This MAY include
candidates it did not offer previously, but which it has gathered
since the last offer/answer exchange.
If a candidate was sent in a previous offer/answer exchange, it
SHOULD have the same priority. For a peer reflexive candidate, the
priority SHOULD be the same as determined by the processing in
Section 7.7.2. The foundation SHOULD be the same. The username
fragments and passwords for a media stream SHOULD remain the same as
the previous offer or answer.
Population of the m/c-lines also depends on the state of ICE
processing. If, for a particular media stream, the valid list has
candidate pairs for all of the components of that media stream, those
pairs are used. In particular, the m/c-line would be constructed by
from the local candidate from each of those candidate pairs. In
addition, the agent MUST include the a=remote-candidates attribute
for that media stream, and include in it the remote candidates for
each of the pairs that were used.
If, for a particular media stream, the valid list does not have pairs
for all of the components of the stream, the agent SHOULD populate
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 30]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
the m/c-line for that media stream based on the considerations in
Section 4.3.
The agent MUST use the same ice-pwd and ice-ufrag for a media stream
as its previous offer or answer. Note that it is permissible to use
a session-level attribute in one offer, but to provide the same
password as a media-level attribute in a subsequent offer. This is
not a change in password, just a change in its representation.
9.2. Receiving the Offer and Generating an Answer
When the answerer generates its answer, it must decide what
candidates to include in the answer, and how to populate the m/c-
line.
For each media stream in the offer, the agent checks to see if the
stream contained the remote-candidates attribute. If it did, it
means that the offerer believed that ICE processing has completed for
that media stream. In this case, the remote-candidates attribute
contains the candidates that the answerer is supposed to use. It is
possible that the agent doesn't even know of these candidates yet;
they will be discovered shortly through a response to an in-progress
check. The agent MUST populate the m/c-line with the candidates from
the a=remote-candidates attribute. In addition, it MUST include an
a=candidate attribute in its answer for each candidate in the
a=remote-candidates attribute. If the agent is not aware of the
candidate yet, it will need to generate a priority value for it. The
type preference in the computation is peer-reflexive, and the stream
ID and component ID are known from the offer. The agent chooses an
arbitrary local preference value if it is multi-homed, since it won't
yet know the interface associated with this candidate.
If a media stream does not yet contain the a=remote-candidates
attribute, it means that the offerer believes that ICE checks are
still in progress for that media stream. In this case, the answerer
SHOULD include an a=candidate attribute for all of the candidates for
that media stream it knows about (including peer-reflexive
candidates). The m/c-line is populated based on the considerations
in Section 4.3.
Construction of the ice-pwd and ice-ufrag are identical to the
procedures followed by the offerer, as described in Section 9.1.
Note that the a=remote-candidates attribute SHOULD NOT be included in
the answer, and if included, will just be ignored by the offerer,
since it is not used in any processing of the answer.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 31]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
9.3. Updating the Check and Valid Lists
Once the subsequent offer/answer exchange has completed, each agent
needs to compute the new check list resulting from this exchange, and
then remove any pairs from the valid list which are no longer usable.
Once these adjustments are made, ICE processing continues using these
new lists.
Each agent recomputes the check list using the procedures described
in Section 5.6. If a check on this new check list was also on the
previous check list, and its state was Waiting, In-Progress,
Succeeded or Failed, its state is copied over. If a check on the new
check list does not have a state (because its a new check or its
state was not copied over), and it is for the component with
component ID 1 and for the media stream with stream ID 9, its state
is set to Waiting. All other pairs without a state have their state
set to Frozen.
Next, the agent goes through the check list, starting with the
highest priority check. If a check has a state of Succeeded, and it
has a component ID of 1, then all Frozen checks for the same media
stream and same foundation whose component IDs are not one, have
their state set to Waiting. If, for a particular media stream, there
are checks for each component of that media stream in the Succeeded
state, the agent moves the state of all Frozen checks for the first
component of all other media streams with the same foundation to
Waiting.
If a check was on the old check list, but was not on the new check
list, and had a state of In-Progress, the corresponding STUN
transaction is abandoned. No further retransmits will be sent for
the STUN request, and any response that might be received is ignored.
Next, the agent prunes the valid list. For each pair on the valid
list, the agent examines each candidate in the pair. If the
candidate was not peer reflexive, and was not present in the most
recent offer/answer exchange, the candidate pair is removed from the
valid list.
OPEN ISSUE: This means that you cannot forcefully remove a peer
reflexive candidate. This feature was possible, at much
complexity, in previous versions of the spec. An alternative is
to remove a peer reflexive candidate if it was not present in the
offer/answer, and was discovered more than 500ms ago.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 32]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
10. Keepalives
STUN connectivity checks are also used to keep NAT bindings open once
a session is underway. This is accomplished by periodically re-
starting the check process, as described in this section.
Once the initial offer/answer exchange has taken place, the agent
sets a timer to fire in Tr seconds. Tr SHOULD be configurable and
SHOULD have a default of 15 seconds. When Tr fires, the agent MUST
reset the states for all of the checks in the check list using the
procedures defined in Section 5.6 and then begin performing periodic
checks as described in Section 5.7. By the time the timer fires for
the first time, the check list will include only the in-use
candidates. Reperforming these checks will therefore performing a
period keepalive.
OPEN ISSUE: ICE isn't saying anything about what happens if these
periodic keepalives should fail. It they do, something really bad
has happened, like a NAT reboot or failure. I think we should
keep that out of scope.
When an ICE agent is communicating with an agent that is not ICE-
aware, keepalives still need to be utilized. Indeed, these
keepalives are essential even if neither endpoint implements ICE. As
such, this specification defines keepalive behavior generally, for
endpoints that support ICE, and those that do not.
All endpoints MUST send keepalives for each media session. These
keepalives MUST be sent regardless of whether the media stream is
currently inactive, sendonly, recvonly or sendrecv. The keepalive
SHOULD be sent using a format which is supported by its peer. ICE
endpoints allow for STUN-based keepalives for UDP streams, and as
such, STUN keepalives MUST be used when an agent is communicating
with a peer that supports ICE. An agent can determine that its peer
supports ICE by the presence of the a=candidate attributes for each
media session. If the peer does not support ICE, the choice of a
packet format for keepalives is a matter of local implementation. A
format which allows packets to easily be sent in the absence of
actual media content is RECOMMENDED. Examples of formats which
readily meet this goal are RTP No-Op [27] and RTP comfort noise [23].
If the peer doesn't support any formats that are particularly well
suited for keepalives, an agent SHOULD send RTP packets with an
incorrect version number, or some other form of error which would
cause them to be discarded by the peer.
STUN-based keepalives will be sent periodically every Tr seconds as
described above. If STUN keepalives are not in use (because the peer
does not support ICE), an agent SHOULD ensure that a media packet is
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 33]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
sent every Tr seconds. If one is not sent as a consequence of normal
media communications, a keepalive packet using one of the formats
discussed above SHOULD be sent.
11. Media Handling
11.1. Sending Media
Agents always send media using a candidate pair. An agent will send
media to the remote candidate in the pair (setting the destination
address and port of the packet equal to that remote candidate), and
will send it from the local candidate. When the local candidate is
server or peer reflexive, media is originated from the base. Media
sent from a relayed candidate is sent through that relay, using
procedures defined in [12].
If an agent was the offerer in the most recent offer/answer exchange,
when it sends media, it MUST use the candidates in the m/c-line for
each media stream. However, it MUST only send media once those
candidates also appear in the valid list. If the candidates in the
m/c-line are not the ones that are ultimately selected by ICE, this
implies that the offerer will need to wait for the subsequent offer/
answer exchange to complete before it can send media.
If an agent was the answerer in the most recent offer/answer
exchange, the rules are different. When the agent wishes to send
media, and the candidate pairs in the m/c-lines are also the highest
priority ones in the valid list for each media stream, it uses those
candidate pairs. If, however, the highest priority pairs in the
valid list for a media stream are not the same as the ones in the
m/c-lines, the agent MUST use the highest priority pairs in the valid
list. However, the agent MUST discontinue using those candidate
pairs Tlo seconds after the next opportunity its peer would have to
send an updated offer. In the case of an answer delivered in a 200
OK to an offer in a SIP INVITE (regardless of whether that same
answer appeared in an earlier unreliable provisional response), this
would be Tlo seconds after receipt of the ACK. Tlo SHOULD be
configurable and SHOULD have a default of 5 seconds. This time
represents the amount of time it should take the offerer to perform
its connectivity checks, arrive at the same conclusion about the
candidate pair, and then generate an updated offer. If, after Tlo
seconds, no updated offer arrives, the answerer MUST cease sending
media, and will need to wait for the updated offer.
OPEN ISSUE: In previous versions of ICE, once this timer fired,
you just sent media to the one in the m/c-line. This causes the
media streams to flip back and forth between addresses, which I am
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 34]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
trying to avoid. Since this timer should never go off anyway, I
removed this feature.
ICE has interactions with jitter buffer adaptation mechanisms. An
RTP stream can begin using one candidate, and switch to another one,
though this happens rarely with ICE. The newer candidate may result
in RTP packets taking a different path through the network - one with
different delay characteristics. As discussed below, agents are
encouraged to re-adjust jitter buffers when there are changes in
source or destination address. Furthermore, many audio codecs use
the marker bit to signal the beginning of a talkspurt, for the
purposes of jitter buffer adaptation. For such codecs, it is
RECOMMENDED that the sender change the marker bit when an agent
switches transmission of media from one candidate pair to another.
11.2. Receiving Media
ICE implementations MUST be prepared to receive media on any
candidates provided in the most recent offer/answer exchange. In
order to avoid attacks described in Section 15, when an agent
receives a media packet, and it knows its peer supports ICE, it MUST
verify that it has received a check (for which a successful response
was generated) on the same 5-tuple as the received media packet (that
is, the source and destination transport addresses of the media
packet match those of the check). If no such check has succeeded,
the agent MUST silently discard the media packet.
It is RECOMMENDED that, when an agent receives an RTP packet with a
new source or destination IP address for a particular media stream,
that the agent re-adjust its jitter buffers.
RFC 3550 [20] describes an algorithm in Section 8.2 for detecting
SSRC collisions and loops. These algorithms are based, in part, on
seeing different source IP addresses and ports with the same SSRC.
However, when ICE is used, such changes will sometimes occur as the
media streams switch between candidates. An agent will be able to
determine that a media stream is from the same peer as a consequence
of the STUN exchange that proceeds media transmission. Thus, if
there is a change in source IP address and port, but the media
packets come from the same peer agent, this SHOULD NOT be treated as
an SSRC collision.
12. Usage with SIP
12.1. Latency Guidelines
ICE requires a series of STUN-based connectivity checks to take place
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 35]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
between endpoints. These checks start from the answerer on
generation of its answer, and start from the offerer when it receives
the answer. These checks can take time to complete, and as such, the
selection of messages to use with offers and answers can effect
perceived user latency. Two latency figures are of particular
interest. These are the post-pickup delay and the post-dial delay.
The post-pickup delay refers to the time between when a user "answers
the phone" and when any speech they utter can be delivered to the
caller. The post-dial delay refers to the time between when a user
enters the destination address for the user, and ringback begins as a
consequence of having succesfully started ringing the phone of the
called party.
To reduce post-dial delays, it is RECOMMENDED that the caller begin
gathering candidates prior to actually sending its initial INVITE.
This can be started upon user interface cues that a call is pending,
such as activity on a keypad or the phone going offhook.
If an offer is received in an INVITE request, the callee SHOULD
immediately gather its candidates and then generate an answer in a
provisional response. When reliable provisional responses are not
used, the SDP in the provisional response is the answer, and that
exact same answer reappears in the 200 OK. To deal with possible
losses of the provisional response, it SHOULD be retransmitted until
some indication of receipt. This indication can either be through
PRACK [9], or through the receipt of a successful STUN Binding
Request. Even if PRACK is not used, the provisional response SHOULD
be retransmitted using the exponential backoff described in [9].
Furthermore, once the answer has been sent, the agent SHOULD begin
its connectivity checks. Once candidate pairs for each component of
a media stream enter the valid list, the callee can begin sending
media on that media stream.
However, prior to this point, any media that needs to be sent towards
the caller (such as SIP early media [25] cannot be transmitted. For
this reason, implementations SHOULD delay alerting the called party
until candidates for each component of each media stream have entered
the valid list. In the case of a PSTN gateway, this would mean that
the setup message into the PSTN is delayed until this point. Doing
this increases the post-dial delay, but has the effect of eliminating
'ghost rings'. Ghost rings are cases where the called party hears
the phone ring, picks up, but hears nothing and cannot be heard.
This technique works without requiring support for, or usage of,
preconditions [6], since its a localized decision. It also has the
benefit of guaranteeing that not a single packet of media will get
clipped, so that post-pickup delay is zero. If an agent chooses to
delay local alerting in this way, it SHOULD generate a 180 response
once alerting begins.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 36]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
Based on the rules in Section 11.1, the offerer will not be able to
send media until the highest priority valid candidates match the m/c-
line. When used with SIP, if the initial offer is sent in the
INVITE, and the answer is sent in both the provisional and final 200
OK response, the offerer will generally not be able to send media
until it sends a re-INVITE and receives the 200 OK response to that
re-INVITE. This can take several hundred milliseconds. If this
latency is an issue (it is generally not considered an issue for
voice systems), reliable provisional responses [9] MAY be used, in
which case an UPDATE [24] can be used to send an updated offer prior
to the call being answered.
As discussed in Section 15, offer/answer exchanges SHOULD be secured
against eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks. To do that, the
usage of SIPS [3] is RECOMMENDED when used in concert with ICE.
12.2. Interactions with Forking
ICE interacts very well with forking. Indeed, ICE fixes some of the
problems associated with forking. Without ICE, when a call forks and
the caller receives multiple incoming media streams, it cannot
determine which media stream corresponds to which callee.
With ICE, this problem is resolved. The connectivity checks which
occur prior to transmission of media carry username fragments, which
in turn are correlated to a specific callee. Subsequent media
packets which arrive on the same 5-tuple as the connectivity check
will be associated with that same callee. Thus, the caller can
perform this correlation as long as it has received an answer.
Section 11.2 introduces a requirement for agents receiving media;
namely, that media should be discarded until a check has been
received from that peer. Unfortunately, this mechanism doesn't work
well in forking situations where a subset of the recipients are not
ICE-aware. Those recipients will not send checks, and media from
them will be discarded.
OPEN ISSUE: Obviously this is an issue. Need to either remove
this feature of ICE or find a way to make it work better in
forking situations.
12.3. Interactions with Preconditions
Quality of Service (QoS) preconditions, which are defined in RFC 3312
[6] and RFC 4032 [7], apply only to the IP addresses and ports listed
in the m/c lines in an offer/answer. If ICE changes the address and
port where media is received, this change is reflected in the m/c
lines of a new offer/answer. As such, it appears like any other re-
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 37]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
INVITE would, and is fully treated in RFC 3312 and 4032, which apply
without regard to the fact that the m/c lines are changing due to ICE
negotiations ocurring "in the background".
Indeed, an agent SHOULD NOT indicate that Qos preconditions have been
met until the ICE checks have completed and selected the candidate
pairs to be used for media.
ICE also has (purposeful) interactions with connectivity
preconditions [26]. Those interactions are described there.
OPEN ISSUE: Are these preconditions really needed with ICE? ICE
provides a connectivity precondition on its own using the
mechanisms described above.
12.4. Interactions with Third Party Call Control
ICE works with Flows I and IV as described in [16]. Flow I works
without the controller supporting or being aware of ICE. Flow IV
will work as long as the controller passes along the ICE attributes
without alteration. Flow III may disrupt ICE processing, since it
will distort the stream ID values used in the computation of
priorities. When there is but a single media stream, Flow III will
work as long as the controller passes through the ICE attributes
unmodified. Flow II is fundamentally incompatible with ICE; each
agent will believe itself to be the answerer and thus never generate
a re-INVITE.
OPEN ISSUE: Its really too bad flow III doesn't work with
multimedia; should consider ways to make it work. There are
several ways.
The flows for continued operation, as described in Section 7 of RFC
3725, require additional behavior of ICE implementations to support.
In particular, if an agent receives a mid-dialog re-INVITE that
contains no offer, it MUST go through the process of gathering
candidates, prioritizing them and generating an offer, as if this was
an initial offer for a session. Furthermore, that list of candidates
SHOULD include the ones currently in-use.
13. Grammar
This specification defines four new SDP attributes - the "candidate",
"remote-candidates", "ice-ufrag" and "ice-pwd" attributes.
The candidate attribute is a media-level attribute only. It contains
a transport address for a candidate that can be used for connectivity
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 38]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
checks.
The syntax of this attribute is defined using Augmented BNF as
defined in RFC 4234 [8]:
candidate-attribute = "candidate" ":" foundation SP component-id SP
transport SP
priority SP
connection-address SP ;from RFC 4566
port ;port from RFC 4566
[SP cand-type]
[SP rel-addr]
[SP rel-port]
*(SP extension-att-name SP
extension-att-value)
foundation = 1*ice-char
component-id = 1*DIGIT
transport = "UDP" / transport-extension
transport-extension = token ; from RFC 3261
priority = 1*DIGIT
cand-type = "typ" SP candidate-types
candidate-types = "host" / "srflx" / "prflx" / "relay" / token
rel-addr = "raddr" SP connection-address
rel-port = "rport" SP port
extension-att-name = byte-string ;from RFC 4566
extension-att-value = byte-string
ice-char = ALPHA / DIGIT / "+" / "/"
The foundation is composed of one or more ice-char. The component-id
is a positive integer, which identifies the specific component for
which the transport address is a candidate. It MUST start at 1 and
MUST increment by 1 for each component of a particular candidate.
The connect-address production is taken from RFC 4566 [10], allowing
for IPv4 addresses, IPv6 addresses and FQDNs. The port production is
also taken from RFC 4566 [10]. The token production is taken from
RFC 3261 [3]. The transport production indicates the transport
protocol for the candidate. This specification only defines UDP.
However, extensibility is provided to allow for future transport
protocols to be used with ICE, such as TCP or the Datagram Congestion
Control Protocol (DCCP) [28].
The cand-type production encodes the type of candidate. This
specification defines the values "host", "srflx", "prflx" and "relay"
for host, server reflexive, peer reflexive and relayed candidates,
respectively. The set of candidate types is extensible for the
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 39]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
future. Inclusion of the candidate type is optional. The rel-addr
and rel-port productions convey information the related transport
addresses. Rules for inclusion of these values is described in
Section 4.4.
The a=candidate attribute can itself be extended. The grammar allows
for new name/value pairs to be added at the end of the attribute. An
implementation MUST ignore any name/value pairs it doesn't
understand.
The syntax of the "remote-candidates" attribute is defined using
Augmented BNF as defined in RFC 4234 [8]. The remote-candidates
attribute is a media level attribute only.
remote-candidate-att = "remote-candidates" ":" remote-candidate
0*(SP remote-candidate)
remote-candidate = component-ID SP connection-address SP port
The attribute contains a connection-address and port for each
component. The ordering of components is irrelevant. However, a
value MUST be present for each component of a media stream.
The syntax of the "ice-pwd" and "ice-ufrag" attributes are defined
as:
ice-pwd-att = "ice-pwd" ":" password
ice-ufrag-att = "ice-ufrag" ":" ufrag
password = 22*ice-char
ufrag = 4*ice-char
The "ice-pwd" and "ice-ufrag" attributes can appear at either the
session-level or media-level. When present in both, the value in the
media-level takes precedence. Thus, the value at the session level
is effectively a default that applies to all media streams, unless
overriden by a media-level value.
14. Example
Two agents, L and R, are using ICE. Both agents have a single IPv4
interface. For agent L, it is 10.0.1.1, and for agent R, 192.0.2.1.
Both are configured with a single STUN server each (indeed, the same
one for each), which is listening for STUN requests at an IP address
of 192.0.2.2 and port 3478. This STUN server supports both the
Binding Discovery usage and the Relay usage. Agent L is behind a
NAT, and agent R is on the public Internet. The NAT has an endpoint
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 40]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
independent mapping property and an address dependent filtering
property. The public side of the NAT has an IP address of 192.0.2.3.
To facilitate understanding, transport addresses are listed using
variables that have mnemonic names. The format of the name is
entity-type-seqno, where entity refers to the entity whose interface
the transport address is on, and is one of "L", "R", "STUN", or
"NAT". The type is either "PUB" for transport addresses that are
public, and "PRIV" for transport addresses that are private.
Finally, seq-no is a sequence number that is different for each
transport address of the same type on a particular entity. Each
variable has an IP address and port, denoted by varname.IP and
varname.PORT, respectively, where varname is the name of the
variable.
The STUN server has advertised transport address STUN-PUB-1 (which is
192.0.2.2:3478) for both the binding discovery usage and the relay
usage. However, neither agent is using the relay usage.
In the call flow itself, STUN messages are annotated with several
attributes. The "S=" attribute indicates the source transport
address of the message. The "D=" attribute indicates the destination
transport address of the message. The "MA=" attribute is used in
STUN Binding Response messages and refers to the mapped address.
The call flow examples omit STUN authentication operations and RTCP,
and focus on RTP for a single media stream.
L NAT STUN R
|RTP STUN alloc. | |
|(1) STUN Req | | |
|S=$L-PRIV-1 | | |
|D=$STUN-PUB-1 | | |
|------------->| | |
| |(2) STUN Req | |
| |S=$NAT-PUB-1 | |
| |D=$STUN-PUB-1 | |
| |------------->| |
| |(3) STUN Res | |
| |S=$STUN-PUB-1 | |
| |D=$NAT-PUB-1 | |
| |MA=$NAT-PUB-1 | |
| |<-------------| |
|(4) STUN Res | | |
|S=$STUN-PUB-1 | | |
|D=$L-PRIV-1 | | |
|MA=$NAT-PUB-1 | | |
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 41]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
|<-------------| | |
|(5) Offer | | |
|------------------------------------------->|
| | | |RTP STUN alloc.
| | |(6) STUN Req |
| | |S=$R-PUB-1 |
| | |D=$STUN-PUB-1 |
| | |<-------------|
| | |(7) STUN Res |
| | |S=$STUN-PUB-1 |
| | |D=$R-PUB-1 |
| | |MA=$R-PUB-1 |
| | |------------->|
|(8) answer | | |
|<-------------------------------------------|
| |(9) Bind Req | |
| |S=$R-PUB-1 | |
| |D=L-PRIV-1 | |
| |<----------------------------|
| |Dropped | |
|(10) Bind Req | | |
|S=$L-PRIV-1 | | |
|D=$R-PUB-1 | | |
|------------->| | |
| |(11) Bind Req | |
| |S=$NAT-PUB-1 | |
| |D=$R-PUB-1 | |
| |---------------------------->|
| |(12) Bind Res | |
| |S=$R-PUB-1 | |
| |D=$NAT-PUB-1 | |
| |MA=$NAT-PUB-1 | |
| |<----------------------------|
|(13) Bind Res | | |
|S=$R-PUB-1 | | |
|D=$L-PRIV-1 | | |
|MA=$NAT-PUB-1 | | |
|<-------------| | |
|(14) Offer | | |
|------------------------------------------->|
|(15) Answer | | |
|<-------------------------------------------|
| |(16) Bind Req | |
| |S=$R-PUB-1 | |
| |D=$NAT-PUB-1 | |
| |<----------------------------|
|(17) Bind Req | | |
|S=$R-PUB-1 | | |
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 42]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
|D=$L-PRIV-1 | | |
|<-------------| | |
|(18) Bind Res | | |
|S=$L-PRIV-1 | | |
|D=$R-PUB-1 | | |
|MA=$R-PUB-1 | | |
|------------->| | |
| |(19) Bind Res | |
| |S=$NAT-PUB-1 | |
| |D=$R-PUB-1 | |
| |MA=$R-PUB-1 | |
| |---------------------------->|
|RTP flows | | |
Figure 9
First, agent L obtains a host candidate from its local interface (not
shown), and from that, sends a STUN Binding Request to the STUN
server to get a server reflexive candidate (messages 1-4). Recall
that the NAT has the address and port independent mapping property.
Here, it creates a binding of NAT-PUB-1 for this UDP request, and
this becomes the server reflexive candidate for RTP.
Agent L sets a type preference of 9 for the host candidate and 5 for
the server reflexive. The local preference is 9. Based on this, the
priority of the host candidate is 9909 and for the server reflexive
candidate is 5909. The host candidate is assigned a foundation of 1,
and the server reflexive, a foundation of 2. It chooses its server
reflexive candidate as the in-use candidate, and encodes it into the
m/c-line. The resulting offer (message 5) looks like (lines folded
for clarity):
v=0
o=jdoe 2890844526 2890842807 IN IP4 $L-PRIV-1.IP
s=
c=IN IP4 $NAT-PUB-1.IP
t=0 0
a=ice-pwd:asd88fgpdd777uzjYhagZg
a=ice-ufrag:8hhY
m=audio $NAT-PUB-1.PORT RTP/AVP 0
a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000
a=candidate:1 1 UDP 9909 $L-PRIV-1.IP $L-PRIV-1.PORT typ local
a=candidate:2 1 UDP 5909 $NAT-PUB-1.IP $NAT-PUB-1.PORT typ srflx raddr
$L-PRIV-1.IP rport $L-PRIV-1.PORT
The offer, with the variables replaced with their values, will look
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 43]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
like (lines folded for clarity):
v=0
o=jdoe 2890844526 2890842807 IN IP4 10.0.1.1
s=
c=IN IP4 192.0.2.3
t=0 0
a=ice-pwd:asd88fgpdd777uzjYhagZg
a=ice-ufrag:8hhY
m=audio 45664 RTP/AVP 0
a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000
a=candidate:1 1 UDP 9909 10.0.1.1 8998 typ local
a=candidate:2 1 UDP 5909 192.0.2.3 45664 typ srflx raddr
10.0.1.1 rport 8998
This offer is received at agent R. Agent R will obtain a host
candidate, and from it, obtain a server reflexive candidate (messages
6-7). Since R is not behind a NAT, this candidate is identical to
its host candidate, and they share the same base. It therefore
discards this candidate and ends up with a single host candidate.
With identical type and local preferences as L, the priority for this
candidate is 9909. It chooses a foundation of 1 for its single
candidate. Its resulting answer looks like:
v=0
o=bob 2808844564 2808844564 IN IP4 $R-PUB-1.IP
s=
c=IN IP4 $R-PUB-1.IP
t=0 0
a=ice-pwd:YH75Fviy6338Vbrhrlp8Yh
a=ice-ufrag:9uB6
m=audio $R-PUB-1.PORT RTP/AVP 0
a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000
a=candidate:1 1 UDP 9909 $R-PUB-1.IP $R-PUB-1.PORT typ local
With the variables filled in:
v=0
o=bob 2808844564 2808844564 IN IP4 192.0.2.1
s=
c=IN IP4 192.0.2.1
t=0 0
a=ice-pwd:YH75Fviy6338Vbrhrlp8Yh
a=ice-ufrag:9uB6
m=audio 3478 RTP/AVP 0
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 44]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000
a=candidate:1 1 UDP 9909 192.0.2.1 3478 typ local
Agents L and R both pair up the candidates. They both initially have
two. However, agent L will prune the pair containing its server
reflexive candidate, resulting in just one. At agent L, this pair
(the check) has a local candidate of $L_PRIV_1 and remote candidate
of $R_PUB_1, and has a candidate pair priority of 99099909.039. At
agent R, there are two checks. The highest priority has a local
candidate of $R_PUB_1 and remote candidate of $L_PRIV_1 and has a
priority of 99099909.039, and the second has a local candidate of
$R_PUB_1 and remote candidate of $NAT_PUB_1 and priority 59099909.75.
Agent R begins its connectivity check (message 9) for the first pair
(between the two host candidates). The host candidate from agent L
is private and behind a different NAT, and thus this check is
discarded.
When agent L gets the answer, it performs its one and only
connectivity check (messages 10-13). This will succeed. This causes
agent L to create a new pair, whos local candidate is from the mapped
address in the binding response (NAT-PUB-1 from message 13) and whose
remote candidate is the destination of the request (R-PUB-1 from
message 10). This is added to the valid list. At this point, agent
L examines the valid list and sees that there is a candidate there
for each component of each media stream (which is just RTP for the
single audio stream). It therefore considers ICE checks complete and
sends an updated offer (message 14). This offer serves only to
remove the candidate that was not selected and indicate the remote
candidates; the m/c-line remains unchanged. This offer looks like:
v=0
o=jdoe 2890844528 2890842809 IN IP4 10.0.1.1
s=
c=IN IP4 192.0.2.3
t=0 0
a=ice-pwd:asd88fgpdd777uzjYhagZg
a=ice-ufrag:8hhY
m=audio 45664 RTP/AVP 0
a=remote-candidates 1 192.0.2.1 3478
a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000
a=candidate:2 1 UDP 5909 192.0.2.3 45664 typ srflx raddr
10.0.1.1 rport 8998
Agent R can construct the answer. Since the remote-candidates listed
in the offer match the ones that agent R had already selected for the
m/c-line in the previous answer, there is no change there. Its
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 45]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
answer therefore looks like:
v=0
o=bob 2808844565 2808844566 IN IP4 192.0.2.1
s=
c=IN IP4 192.0.2.1
t=0 0
a=ice-pwd:YH75Fviy6338Vbrhrlp8Yh
a=ice-ufrag:9uB6
m=audio 3478 RTP/AVP 0
a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000
a=candidate:1 1 UDP 9909 192.0.2.1 3478 typ local
Upon receipt of the check from agent L (message 11), agent R will
generate its triggered check. This check happens to match the next
one on its check list - from its host candidate to agent L's server
reflexive candidate. This check (messages 16-19) will succeed.
Consequently, agent R constructs a new candidate pair using the
mapped address from the response as the local candidate (R-PUB-1) and
the destination of the request (NAT-PUB-1) as the remote candidate.
This pair is added to the valid list. Since this pair matches the
pair in the m/c-lines, agent R can send media as well.
15. Security Considerations
There are several types of attacks possible in an ICE system. This
section considers these attacks and their countermeasures.
15.1. Attacks on Connectivity Checks
An attacker might attempt to disrupt the STUN connectivity checks.
Ultimately, all of these attacks fool an agent into thinking
something incorrect about the results of the connectivity checks.
The possible false conclusions an attacker can try and cause are:
False Invalid: An attacker can fool a pair of agents into thinking a
candidate pair is invalid, when it isn't. This can be used to
cause an agent to prefer a different candidate (such as one
injected by the attacker), or to disrupt a call by forcing all
candidates to fail.
False Valid: An attacker can fool a pair of agents into thinking a
candidate pair is valid, when it isn't. This can cause an agent
to proceed with a session, but then not be able to receive any
media.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 46]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
False Peer-Reflexive Candidate: An attacker can cause an agent to
discover a new peer reflexive candidate, when it shouldn't have.
This can be used to redirect media streams to a DoS target or to
the attacker, for eavesdropping or other purposes.
False Valid on False Candidate: An attacker has already convinced an
agent that there is a candidate with an address that doesn't
actually route to that agent (for example, by injecting a false
peer reflexive candidate or false server reflexive candidate). It
must then launch an attack that forces the agents to believe that
this candidate is valid.
Of the various techniques for creating faked STUN messages described
in [11], many are not applicable for the connectivity checks.
Compromises of STUN servers are not much of a concern, since the STUN
servers are embedded in endpoints and distributed throughout the
network. Thus, compromising the STUN server is equivalent to
comprimising the endpoint, and if that happens, far more problematic
attacks are possible than those against ICE. Similarly, DNS attacks
are usually irrelevant since STUN servers are not typically
discovered via DNS, they are signaled via IP addresses embedded in
SDP. Injection of fake responses and relaying modified requests all
can be handled in ICE with the countermeasures discussed below.
To force the false invalid result, the attacker has to wait for the
connectivity check from one of the agents to be sent. When it is,
the attacker needs to inject a fake response with an unrecoverable
error response, such as a 600. However, since the candidate is, in
fact, valid, the original request may reach the peer agent, and
result in a success response. The attacker needs to force this
packet or its response to be dropped, through a DoS attack, layer 2
network disruption, or other technique. If it doesn't do this, the
success response will also reach the originator, alerting it to a
possible attack. Fortunately, this attack is mitigated completely
through the STUN message integrity mechanism. The attacker needs to
inject a fake response, and in order for this response to be
processed, the attacker needs the password. If the offer/answer
signaling is secured, the attacker will not have the password.
Forcing the fake valid result works in a similar way. The agent
needs to wait for the Binding Request from each agent, and inject a
fake success response. The attacker won't need to worry about
disrupting the actual response since, if the candidate is not valid,
it presumably wouldn't be received anyway. However, like the fake
invalid attack, this attack is mitigated completely through the STUN
message integrity and offer/answer security techniques.
Forcing the false peer reflexive candidate result can be done either
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 47]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
with fake requests or responses, or with replays. We consider the
fake requests and responses case first. It requires the attacker to
send a Binding Request to one agent with a source IP address and port
for the false candidate. In addition, the attacker must wait for a
Binding Request from the other agent, and generate a fake response
with a XOR-MAPPED-ADDRESS attribute containing the false candidate.
Like the other attacks described here, this attack is mitigated by
the STUN message integrity mechanisms and secure offer/answer
exchanges.
Forcing the false peer reflexive candidate result with packet replays
is different. The attacker waits until one of the agents sends a
check. It intercepts this request, and replays it towards the other
agent with a faked source IP address. It must also prevent the
original request from reaching the remote agent, either by launching
a DoS attack to cause the packet to be dropped, or forcing it to be
dropped using layer 2 mechanisms. The replayed packet is received at
the other agent, and accepted, since the integrity check passes (the
integrity check cannot and does not cover the source IP address and
port). It is then responded to. This response will contain a XOR-
MAPPED-ADDRESS with the false candidate, and will be sent to that
false candidate. The attacker must then intercept it and relay it
towards the originator.
The other agent will then initiate a connectivity check towards that
false candidate. This validation needs to succeed. This requires
the attacker to force a false valid on a false candidate. Injecting
of fake requests or responses to achieve this goal is prevented using
the integrity mechanisms of STUN and the offer/answer exchange.
Thus, this attack can only be launched through replays. To do that,
the attacker must intercept the check towards this false candidate,
and replay it towards the other agent. Then, it must intercept the
response and replay that back as well.
This attack is very hard to launch unless the attacker themself is
identified by the fake candidate. This is because it requires the
attacker to intercept and replay packets sent by two different hosts.
If both agents are on different networks (for example, across the
public Internet), this attack can be hard to coordinate, since it
needs to occur against two different endpoints on different parts of
the network at the same time.
If the attacker themself is identified by the fake candidate the
attack is easier to coordinate. However, if SRTP is used [21], the
attacker will not be able to play the media packets, they will only
be able to discard them, effectively disabling the media stream for
the call. However, this attack requires the agent to disrupt packets
in order to block the connectivity check from reaching the target.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 48]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
In that case, if the goal is to disrupt the media stream, its much
easier to just disrupt it with the same mechanism, rather than attack
ICE.
15.2. Attacks on Address Gathering
ICE endpoints make use of STUN for gathering candidates rom a STUN
server in the network. This is corresponds to the Binding Discovery
usage of STUN described in [11]. As a consequence, the attacks
against STUN itself that are described in that specification can
still be used against the binding discovery usage when utilized with
ICE.
However, the additional mechanisms provided by ICE actually
counteract such attacks, making binding discovery with STUN more
secure when combined with ICE than without ICE.
Consider an attacker which is able to provide an agent with a faked
mapped address in a STUN Binding Request that is used for address
gathering. This is the primary attack primitive described in [11].
This address will be used as a server reflexive candidate in the ICE
exchange. For this candidate to actually be used for media, the
attacker must also attack the connectivity checks, and in particular,
force a false valid on a false candidate. This attack is very hard
to launch if the false address identifies a third party, and is
prevented by SRTP if it identifies the attacker themself.
If the attacker elects not to attack the connectivity checks, the
worst it can do is prevent the server reflexive candidate from being
used. However, if the peer agent has at least one candidate that is
reachable by the agent under attack, the STUN connectivity checks
themselves will provide a peer reflexive candidate that can be used
for the exchange of media. Peer reflexive candidates are generally
preferred over server reflexive candidates. As such, an attack
solely on the STUN address gathering will normally have no impact on
a session at all.
15.3. Attacks on the Offer/Answer Exchanges
An attacker that can modify or disrupt the offer/answer exchanges
themselves can readily launch a variety of attacks with ICE. They
could direct media to a target of a DoS attack, they could insert
themselves into the media stream, and so on. These are similar to
the general security considerations for offer/answer exchanges, and
the security considerations in RFC 3264 [4] apply. These require
techniques for message integrity and encryption for offers and
answers, which are satisfied by the SIPS mechanism [3] when SIP is
used. As such, the usage of SIPS with ICE is RECOMMENDED.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 49]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
15.4. Insider Attacks
In addition to attacks where the attacker is a third party trying to
insert fake offers, answers or stun messages, there are several
attacks possible with ICE when the attacker is an authenticated and
valid participant in the ICE exchange.
15.4.1. The Voice Hammer Attack
The voice hammer attack is an amplification attack. In this attack,
the attacker initiates sessions to other agents, and includes the IP
address and port of a DoS target in the m/c-line of their SDP. This
causes substantial amplification; a single offer/answer exchange can
create a continuing flood of media packets, possibly at high rates
(consider video sources). This attack is not specific to ICE, but
ICE can help provide remediation.
Specifically, if ICE is used, the agent receiving the malicious SDP
will first peform connectivity checks to the target of media before
sending it there. If this target is a third party host, the checks
will not succeed, and media is never sent.
Unfortunately, ICE doesn't help if its not used, in which case an
attacker could simply send the offer without the ICE parameters.
However, in environments where the set of clients are known, and
limited to ones that support ICE, the server can reject any offers or
answers that don't indicate ICE support.
15.4.2. STUN Amplification Attack
The STUN amplification attack is similar to the voice hammer.
However, instead of voice packets being directed to the target, STUN
connectivity checks are directed to the target. This attack is
accomplished by having the offerer send an offer with a large number
of candidates, say 50. The answerer receives the offer, and starts
its checks, which are directed at the target, and consequently, never
generate a response. The answerer will start a new connectivity
check every 50ms, and each check is a STUN transaction consisting of
9 retransmits of a message 65 bytes in length (plus 28 bytes for the
IP/UDP header) that runs for 7.9 seconds, for a total of 105 bytes/
second per transaction on average. In the worst case, there can be
158 transactions in progress at once (7.9 seconds divided by 50ms),
for a total of 132 kbps, just for STUN requests.
It is impossible to eliminate the amplification, but the volume can
be reduced through a variety of heuristics. For example, agents can
limit the number of candidates they'll accept in an offer or answer,
they can increase the value of Ta, or exponentially increase Ta as
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 50]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
time goes on. All of these ultimately trade off the time for the ICE
exchanges to complete, with the amount of traffic that gets sent.
OPEN ISSUE: Need better remediation for this. Especially an issue
if we reduce Ta to be as fast as media packets themselves, in
which case this attack is as equally devastating as the voice
hammer.
16. IANA Considerations
This specification defines four new SDP attributes per the procedures
of Section 8.2.4 of [10]. The required information for the
registrations are included here.
16.1. candidate Attribute
Contact Name: Jonathan Rosenberg, jdrosen@jdrosen.net.
Attribute Name: candidate
Long Form: candidate
Type of Attribute: media level
Charset Considerations: The attribute is not subject to the charset
attribute.
Purpose: This attribute is used with Interactive Connectivity
Establishment (ICE), and provides one of many possible candidate
addresses for communication. These addresses are validated with
an end-to-end connectivity check using Simple Traversal Underneath
NAT (STUN).
Appropriate Values: See Section 13 of RFC XXXX [Note to RFC-ed:
please replace XXXX with the RFC number of this specification].
16.2. remote-candidates Attribute
Contact Name: Jonathan Rosenberg, jdrosen@jdrosen.net.
Attribute Name: remote-candidates
Long Form: remote-candidates
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 51]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
Type of Attribute: media level
Charset Considerations: The attribute is not subject to the charset
attribute.
Purpose: This attribute is used with Interactive Connectivity
Establishment (ICE), and provides the identity of the remote
candidates that the offerer wishes the answerer to use in its
answer.
Appropriate Values: See Section 13 of RFC XXXX [Note to RFC-ed:
please replace XXXX with the RFC number of this specification].
16.3. ice-pwd Attribute
Contact Name: Jonathan Rosenberg, jdrosen@jdrosen.net.
Attribute Name: ice-pwd
Long Form: ice-pwd
Type of Attribute: session or media level
Charset Considerations: The attribute is not subject to the charset
attribute.
Purpose: This attribute is used with Interactive Connectivity
Establishment (ICE), and provides the password used to protect
STUN connectivity checks.
Appropriate Values: See Section 13 of RFC XXXX [Note to RFC-ed:
please replace XXXX with the RFC number of this specification].
16.4. ice-ufrag Attribute
Contact Name: Jonathan Rosenberg, jdrosen@jdrosen.net.
Attribute Name: ice-ufrag
Long Form: ice-ufrag
Type of Attribute: session or media level
Charset Considerations: The attribute is not subject to the charset
attribute.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 52]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
Purpose: This attribute is used with Interactive Connectivity
Establishment (ICE), and provides the fragments used to construct
the username in STUN connectivity checks.
Appropriate Values: See Section 13 of RFC XXXX [Note to RFC-ed:
please replace XXXX with the RFC number of this specification].
17. IAB Considerations
The IAB has studied the problem of "Unilateral Self Address Fixing",
which is the general process by which a agent attempts to determine
its address in another realm on the other side of a NAT through a
collaborative protocol reflection mechanism [19]. ICE is an example
of a protocol that performs this type of function. Interestingly,
the process for ICE is not unilateral, but bilateral, and the
difference has a signficant impact on the issues raised by IAB.
Indeed, ICE can be considered a B-SAF (Bilateral Self-Address Fixing)
protocol, rather than an UNSAF protocol. Regardless, the IAB has
mandated that any protocols developed for this purpose document a
specific set of considerations. This section meets those
requirements.
17.1. Problem Definition
From RFC 3424 any UNSAF proposal must provide:
Precise definition of a specific, limited-scope problem that is to
be solved with the UNSAF proposal. A short term fix should not be
generalized to solve other problems; this is why "short term fixes
usually aren't".
The specific problems being solved by ICE are:
Provide a means for two peers to determine the set of transport
addresses which can be used for communication.
Provide a means for resolving many of the limitations of other
UNSAF mechanisms by wrapping them in an additional layer of
processing (the ICE methodology).
Provide a means for a agent to determine an address that is
reachable by another peer with which it wishes to communicate.
17.2. Exit Strategy
From RFC 3424, any UNSAF proposal must provide:
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 53]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
Description of an exit strategy/transition plan. The better short
term fixes are the ones that will naturally see less and less use
as the appropriate technology is deployed.
ICE itself doesn't easily get phased out. However, it is useful even
in a globally connected Internet, to serve as a means for detecting
whether a router failure has temporarily disrupted connectivity, for
example. ICE also helps prevent certain security attacks which have
nothing to do with NAT. However, what ICE does is help phase out
other UNSAF mechanisms. ICE effectively selects amongst those
mechanisms, prioritizing ones that are better, and deprioritizing
ones that are worse. Local IPv6 addresses can be preferred. As NATs
begin to dissipate as IPv6 is introduced, server reflexive and
relayed candidates (both forms of UNSAF mechanisms) simply never get
used, because higher priority connectivity exists to the native host
candidates. Therefore, the servers get used less and less, and can
eventually be remove when their usage goes to zero.
Indeed, ICE can assist in the transition from IPv4 to IPv6. It can
be used to determine whether to use IPv6 or IPv4 when two dual-stack
hosts communicate with SIP (IPv6 gets used). It can also allow a
network with both 6to4 and native v6 connectivity to determine which
address to use when communicating with a peer.
17.3. Brittleness Introduced by ICE
From RFC3424, any UNSAF proposal must provide:
Discussion of specific issues that may render systems more
"brittle". For example, approaches that involve using data at
multiple network layers create more dependencies, increase
debugging challenges, and make it harder to transition.
ICE actually removes brittleness from existing UNSAF mechanisms. In
particular, traditional STUN (as described in RFC 3489 [13]) has
several points of brittleness. One of them is the discovery process
which requires a agent to try and classify the type of NAT it is
behind. This process is error-prone. With ICE, that discovery
process is simply not used. Rather than unilaterally assessing the
validity of the address, its validity is dynamically determined by
measuring connectivity to a peer. The process of determining
connectivity is very robust.
Another point of brittleness in traditional STUN and any other
unilateral mechanism is its absolute reliance on an additional
server. ICE makes use of a server for allocating unilateral
addresses, but allows agents to directly connect if possible.
Therefore, in some cases, the failure of a STUN server would still
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 54]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
allow for a call to progress when ICE is used.
Another point of brittleness in traditional STUN is that it assumes
that the STUN server is on the public Internet. Interestingly, with
ICE, that is not necessary. There can be a multitude of STUN servers
in a variety of address realms. ICE will discover the one that has
provided a usable address.
The most troubling point of brittleness in traditional STUN is that
it doesn't work in all network topologies. In cases where there is a
shared NAT between each agent and the STUN server, traditional STUN
may not work. With ICE, that restriction is removed.
Traditional STUN also introduces some security considerations.
Fortunately, those security considerations are also mitigated by ICE.
Consequently, ICE serves to repair the brittleness introduced in
other UNSAF mechanisms, and does not introduce any additional
brittleness into the system.
17.4. Requirements for a Long Term Solution
From RFC 3424, any UNSAF proposal must provide:
Identify requirements for longer term, sound technical solutions
-- contribute to the process of finding the right longer term
solution.
Our conclusions from STUN remain unchanged. However, we feel ICE
actually helps because we believe it can be part of the long term
solution.
17.5. Issues with Existing NAPT Boxes
From RFC 3424, any UNSAF proposal must provide:
Discussion of the impact of the noted practical issues with
existing, deployed NA[P]Ts and experience reports.
A number of NAT boxes are now being deployed into the market which
try and provide "generic" ALG functionality. These generic ALGs hunt
for IP addresses, either in text or binary form within a packet, and
rewrite them if they match a binding. This interferes with
traditional STUN. However, the update to STUN [11] uses an encoding
which hides these binary addresses from generic ALGs. Since [11] is
required for all ICE implementations, this NAPT problem does not
impact ICE.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 55]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
Existing NAPT boxes have non-deterministic and typically short
expiration times for UDP-based bindings. This requires
implementations to send periodic keepalives to maintain those
bindings. ICE uses a default of 15s, which is a very conservative
estimate. Eventually, over time, as NAT boxes become compliant to
behave [30], this minimum keepalive will become deterministic and
well-known, and the ICE timers can be adjusted. Having a way to
discover and control the minimum keepalive interval would be far
better still.
18. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Flemming Andreasen, Rohan Mahy, Dean
Willis, Eric Cooper, Dan Wing, Douglas Otis, Tim Moore, and Francois
Audet for their comments and input. A special thanks goes to Bill
May, who suggested several of the concepts in this specification,
Philip Matthews, who suggested many of the key performance
optimizations in this specification, Eric Rescorla, who drafted the
text in the introduction, and Magnus Westerlund, for doing several
detailed reviews on the various revisions of this specification.
19. References
19.1. Normative References
[1] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[2] Huitema, C., "Real Time Control Protocol (RTCP) attribute in
Session Description Protocol (SDP)", RFC 3605, October 2003.
[3] Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston, A.,
Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E. Schooler, "SIP:
Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261, June 2002.
[4] Rosenberg, J. and H. Schulzrinne, "An Offer/Answer Model with
Session Description Protocol (SDP)", RFC 3264, June 2002.
[5] Casner, S., "Session Description Protocol (SDP) Bandwidth
Modifiers for RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) Bandwidth", RFC 3556,
July 2003.
[6] Camarillo, G., Marshall, W., and J. Rosenberg, "Integration of
Resource Management and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)",
RFC 3312, October 2002.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 56]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
[7] Camarillo, G. and P. Kyzivat, "Update to the Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP) Preconditions Framework", RFC 4032, March 2005.
[8] Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", RFC 4234, October 2005.
[9] Rosenberg, J. and H. Schulzrinne, "Reliability of Provisional
Responses in Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC 3262,
June 2002.
[10] Handley, M., Jacobson, V., and C. Perkins, "SDP: Session
Description Protocol", RFC 4566, July 2006.
[11] Rosenberg, J., "Simple Traversal Underneath Network Address
Translators (NAT) (STUN)", draft-ietf-behave-rfc3489bis-04
(work in progress), July 2006.
[12] Rosenberg, J., "Obtaining Relay Addresses from Simple Traversal
of UDP Through NAT (STUN)", draft-ietf-behave-turn-01 (work in
progress), June 2006.
19.2. Informative References
[13] Rosenberg, J., Weinberger, J., Huitema, C., and R. Mahy, "STUN
- Simple Traversal of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) Through
Network Address Translators (NATs)", RFC 3489, March 2003.
[14] Senie, D., "Network Address Translator (NAT)-Friendly
Application Design Guidelines", RFC 3235, January 2002.
[15] Srisuresh, P., Kuthan, J., Rosenberg, J., Molitor, A., and A.
Rayhan, "Middlebox communication architecture and framework",
RFC 3303, August 2002.
[16] Rosenberg, J., Peterson, J., Schulzrinne, H., and G. Camarillo,
"Best Current Practices for Third Party Call Control (3pcc) in
the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)", BCP 85, RFC 3725,
April 2004.
[17] Borella, M., Lo, J., Grabelsky, D., and G. Montenegro, "Realm
Specific IP: Framework", RFC 3102, October 2001.
[18] Borella, M., Grabelsky, D., Lo, J., and K. Taniguchi, "Realm
Specific IP: Protocol Specification", RFC 3103, October 2001.
[19] Daigle, L. and IAB, "IAB Considerations for UNilateral Self-
Address Fixing (UNSAF) Across Network Address Translation",
RFC 3424, November 2002.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 57]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
[20] Schulzrinne, H., Casner, S., Frederick, R., and V. Jacobson,
"RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time Applications",
RFC 3550, July 2003.
[21] Baugher, M., McGrew, D., Naslund, M., Carrara, E., and K.
Norrman, "The Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP)",
RFC 3711, March 2004.
[22] Carpenter, B. and K. Moore, "Connection of IPv6 Domains via
IPv4 Clouds", RFC 3056, February 2001.
[23] Zopf, R., "Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) Payload for
Comfort Noise (CN)", RFC 3389, September 2002.
[24] Rosenberg, J., "The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) UPDATE
Method", RFC 3311, October 2002.
[25] Camarillo, G. and H. Schulzrinne, "Early Media and Ringing Tone
Generation in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC 3960,
December 2004.
[26] Andreasen, F., "Connectivity Preconditions for Session
Description Protocol Media Streams",
draft-ietf-mmusic-connectivity-precon-02 (work in progress),
June 2006.
[27] Andreasen, F., "A No-Op Payload Format for RTP",
draft-ietf-avt-rtp-no-op-00 (work in progress), May 2005.
[28] Kohler, E., Handley, M., and S. Floyd, "Datagram Congestion
Control Protocol (DCCP)", RFC 4340, March 2006.
[29] Hellstrom, G. and P. Jones, "RTP Payload for Text
Conversation", RFC 4103, June 2005.
[30] Audet, F. and C. Jennings, "NAT Behavioral Requirements for
Unicast UDP", draft-ietf-behave-nat-udp-07 (work in progress),
June 2006.
[31] Jennings, C. and R. Mahy, "Managing Client Initiated
Connections in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)",
draft-ietf-sip-outbound-04 (work in progress), June 2006.
Appendix A. Design Motivations
ICE contains a number of normative behaviors which may themselves be
simple, but derive from complicated or non-obvious thinking or use
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 58]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
cases which merit further discussion. Since these design motivations
are not neccesary to understand for purposes of implementation, they
are discussed here in an appendix to the specification. This section
is non-normative.
A.1. Applicability to Gateways and Servers
Section 4.1 discusses procedures for gathering candidates, including
host, server reflexive and relayed. In that section, recommendations
are given for when an agent should obtain each of these three types.
In particular, for agents embedded in PSTN gateways, media servers,
conferencing servers, and so on, ICE specifies that an agent can
stick with just host candidates, since it has a public IP address.
This leads to an important question - why would such an endpoint even
bother with ICE? If it has a public IP address, what additional
value do the ICE procedures bring? There are many, actually.
First, doing so greatly facilitates NAT traversal for clients that
connect to it. Consider a PC softphone behind a NAT whose mapping
policy is address and port dependent. The softphone initiates a call
through a gateway that implements ICE. The gateway doesn't obtain
any server reflexive or relayed candidates, but it implements ICE,
and consequently, is prepared to receive STUN connectivity checks on
its host candidates. The softphone will send a STUN connectivity
check to the gateway, which passes through the intervending NAT.
This causes the NAT to allocate a new binding for the softphone. The
connectivity is received by the gateway, and will cause it gateway to
send a check back to the softphone, at this newly created candidate.
A successful response confirms that this candidate is usable, and the
gateway can send media immediately to the softphone. This allows
direct media transmission between the gateway and softphone, without
the need for relays, even though the softphone was behind a 'bad'
NAT.
Second, implementation of the STUN connectivity checks allows for NAT
bindings along the way to be kept open. Keeping these bindings open
is essential for continued communications between the gateway and
softphone.
Third, ICE prevents a fairly destructive attack in multimedia
systems, called the voice hammer. The STUN connectivity check used
by an ICE endpoint allows it to be certain that the target of media
packets is, in fact, the same entity that requested the packets
through the offer/answer exchange. See Section 15 for a more
complete discussion on this attack.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 59]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
A.2. Pacing of STUN Transactions
STUN transactions used to gather candidates and to verify
connectivity are paced out at an approximate rate of one new
transaction every Ta seconds, where Ta has a default of 50ms. Why
are these transactions paced, and why was 50ms chosen as default?
Sending of these STUN requests will often have the effect of creating
bindings on NAT devices between the client and the STUN servers.
Experience has shown that many NAT devices have upper limits on the
rate at which they will create new bindings. Furthermore,
transmission of these packets on the network makes use of bandwidth
and needs to be rate limited by the agent. As a consequence, the
pacing ensures that the NAT devices does not get overloaded and that
traffic is kept at a reasonable rate.
Another aspect of the STUN requests is their bandwidth usage. In
ICE, each STUN request contains the STUN 20 byte header, in addition
to the USERNAME, MESSAGE-INTEGRITY and PRIORITY attributes. The
USERNAME attribute contains a 4-byte attribute overhead, plus the
username value itself. This username is the concatenation of the two
fragments, plus a colon. Each fragment is supposed to be at least 4
bytes long, making the total length of the USERNAME attribute (4*2 +
1 + 4) = 13 bytes. The MESSAGE-INTEGRITY attribute is 4 bytes of
overhead plus 20 bytes value, for 24 bytes. The PRIORITY attribute
is 4 bytes of overhead plus 4 bytes of value, for 8 bytes. Thus, the
total length of the STUN Binding Request is (20 + 13 + 24 + 8) = 65
bytes, with 28 bytes of overhead for IP and UDP for a total of 93
bytes. The response contains the STUN 20 byte header, the XOR-
MAPPED-ADDRESS, and MESSAGE-INTEGRITY attributes. XOR-MAPPED-ADDRESS
has 4 bytes overhead plus an 8 byte value, for a total of 12 bytes.
Thus, each STUN response is (20 + 12 + 24) = 56 bytes plus 28 bytes
of UDP/IP overhead for a total of 84 bytes. Checks typically fall
into one of two cases. If a check works, each transaction has a
single request and a single response, for a total of 2 packets and
177 bytes over one RTT interval. Assuming a fairly agressive RTT of
70ms, this produces 20.23 kbps, but only briefly. If a check fails
because the pair is invalid, there will be nine requests and no
responses. This produces 837 bytes over 7.9s, for a total of 105.9
bps, but over a long period of time.
OPEN ISSUE: The bandwidth computations are pretty complex because
ICE is not a CBR stream, and its bandwidth utilization depends on
how many transactions it ends up generating before it finishes.
Need to work this model more.
Given that these numbers are close to, if not greater than, the
bandwidths utilized by many voice codecs, this seems a reasonable
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 60]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
value to use.
OPEN ISSUE: There is some debate about whether to reduce this
pacing interval smaller, say 20ms, to speed up ICE, or perhaps
make it equal to the bandwidth that would be utilized by the media
streams themselves.
A.3. Candidates with Multiple Bases
Section 4.1 talks about merging together candidates that are
identical but have different bases. When can an agent have two
candidates that have the same IP address and port, but different
bases? Consider the topology of Figure 16:
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 61]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
+----------+
| STUN Srvr|
+----------+
|
|
-----
// \\
| |
| B:net10 |
| |
\\ //
-----
|
|
+----------+
| NAT |
+----------+
|
|
-----
// \\
| A |
|192.168/16 |
| |
\\ //
-----
|
|
|192.168.1.1 -----
+----------+ // \\ +----------+
| | | | | |
| Offerer |---------| C:net10 |---------| Answerer |
| |10.0.1.1 | | 10.0.1.2 | |
+----------+ \\ // +----------+
-----
Figure 16
In this case, the offerer is multi-homed. It has one interface,
10.0.1.1, on network C, which is a net 10 private network. The
Answerer is on this same network. The offerer is also connected to
network A, which is 192.168/16. The offerer has an interface of
192.168.1.1 on this network. There is a NAT on this network, natting
into network B, which is another net10 private network, but not
connected to network C. There is a STUN server on network B.
The offerer obtains a host candidate on its interface on network C
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 62]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
(10.0.1.1:2498) and a host candidate on its interface on network A
(192.168.1.1:3344). It performs a STUN query to its configured STUN
server from 192.168.1.1:3344. This query passes through the NAT,
which happens to assign the binding 10.0.1.1:2498. The STUN server
reflects this in the STUN Binding Response. Now, the offerer has
obtained a server reflexive candidate with a transport address that
is identical to a host candidate (10.0.1.1:2498). However, the
server reflexive candidate has a base of 192.168.1.1:3344, and the
host candidate has a base of 10.0.1.1:2498.
A.4. Purpose of the Translation
When a candidate is relayed, the SDP offer or answer contain both the
relayed candidate and its translation. However, the translation is
never used by ICE itself. Why is it present in the message?
There are two motivations for its inclusion. The first is
diagnostic. It is very useful to know the relationship between the
different types of candidates. By including the translation, an
agent can know which relayed candidate is associated with which
reflexive candidate, which in turn is associated with a specific host
candidate. When checks for one candidate succeed and not the others,
this provides useful diagnostics on what is going on in the network.
The second reason has to do with off-path Quality of Service (QoS)
mechanisms. When ICE is used in environments such as PacketCable 2.0
[[TODO: need PC2.0 reference]], proxies will, in addition to
performing normal SIP operations, inspect the SDP in SIP messages,
and extract the IP address and port for media traffic. They can then
interact, through policy servers, with access routers in the network,
to establish guaranteed QoS for the media flows. This QoS is
provided by classifying the RTP traffic based on 5-tuple, and then
providing it a guaranteed rate, or marking its Diffserv codepoints
appropriately. When a residential NAT is present, and a relayed
candidate gets selected for media, this relayed candidate will be a
transport address on an actual STUN relay. That address says nothing
about the actual transport address in the access router that would be
used to classify packets for QoS treatment. Rather, the translation
of that relayed address is needed. By carrying the translation in
the SDP, the proxy can use that transport address to request QoS from
the access router.
A.5. Importance of the STUN Username
ICE requires the usage of message integrity with STUN using its short
term credential functionality. The actual short term credential is
formed by exchanging username fragments in the SDP offer/answer
exchange. The need for this mechanism goes beyond just security; it
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 63]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
is actual required for correct operation of ICE in the first place.
Consider agents A, B, and C. A and B are within private enterprise 1,
which is using 10.0.0.0/8. C is within private enterprise 2, which
is also using 10.0.0.0/8. As it turns out, B and C both have IP
address 10.0.1.1. A sends an offer to C. C, in its answer, provides
A with its host candidates. In this case, those candidates are
10.0.1.1:8866 and 10.0.1.1:8877. As it turns out, B is in a session
at that same time, and is also using 10.0.1.1:8866 and 10.0.1.1:8877
as host candidates. This means that B is prepared to accept STUN
messages on those ports, just as C is. A will send a STUN request to
10.0.1.1:8866 and and another to 10.0.1.1:8877. However, these do
not go to C as expected. Instead, they go to B! If B just replied
to them, A would believe it has connectivity to C, when in fact it
has connectivity to a completely different user, B. To fix this, the
STUN short term credential mechanisms are used. The username
fragments are sufficiently random that it is highly unlikely that B
would be using the same values as A. Consequently, B would reject the
STUN request since the credentials were invalid. In essence, the
STUN username fragments provide a form of transient host identifiers,
bound to a particular offer/answer session.
An unfortunate consequence of the non-uniqueness of IP addresses is
that, in the above example, B might not even be an ICE agent. It
could be any host, and the port to which the STUN packet is directed
could be any ephemeral port on that host. If there is an application
listening on this socket for packets, and it is not prepared to
handle malformed packets for whatever protocol is in use, the
operation of that application could be affected. Fortunately, since
the ports exchanged in SDP are ephemeral and usually drawn from the
dynamic or registered range, the odds are good that the port is not
used to run a server on host B, but rather is the agent side of some
protocol. This decreases the probability of hitting a port in-use,
due to the transient nature of port usage in this range. However,
the possibility of a problem does exist, and network deployers should
be prepared for it. Note that this is not a problem specific to ICE;
stray packets can arrive at a port at any time for any type of
protocol, especially ones on the public Internet. As such, this
requirement is just restating a general design guideline for Internet
applications - be prepared for unknown packets on any port.
A.6. The Candidate Pair Sequence Number Formula
The sequence number for a candidate pair has an odd form. It is:
PAIR-SN = 10000*MAX(O-SN,A-SN) + MIN(O-SN,A-SN) + O-IP/SZ
Why is this? When the candidate pairs are sorted based on this
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 64]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
value, the resulting sorting has the MAX/MIN property. This means
that the pairs are first sorted based on increasing value of the
maximum of the two sequence numbers. For pairs that have the same
value of the maximum sequence number, the minimum sequence number is
used to sort amongst them. If the max and the min sequence numbers
are the same, the IP address of the offerers candidate serves as a
tie breaker. The factor of 1000 is used since there will always be
fewer than a 1000 candidates, and thus the largest value a sequence
number (and thus the minimum sequence number) can have is always less
than 1000. This creates the desired sorting property.
Recall that candidate sequence numbers are assigned such that, for a
particular set of candidates of the same type, the RTP components
have lower sequence numbers than the corresponding RTCP component.
Also recall that, if an agent prefers host candidates to server
reflexive to relayed, sequence numbers for host candidates are always
lower than server reflexive which are always lower than relayed.
Because of this,
A.7. The Frozen State
The Frozen state is used for two purposes. Firstly, it allows ICE to
first perform checks for the first component of a media stream. Once
a successful check has completed for the first component, the other
components of the same type and local preference will get performed.
Secondly, when there are multiple media streams, it allows ICE to
first check candidates for a single media stream, and once a set of
candidates has been found, candidates of that same type for other
media streams can be checked first. This effectively 'caches' the
results of a check for one media stream, and applies them to another.
For example, if only the relayed candidates for audio (which were the
last resort candidates) succeed, ICE will check the relayed
candidates for video first.
A.8. The remote-candidates attribute
The a=remote-candidates attribute exists to eliminate a race
condition between the updated offer and the response to the STUN
Binding Request that moved a candidate into the Valid list. This
race condition is shown in Figure 17. On receipt of message 4, agent
A adds a candidate pair to the valid list. If there was only a
single media stream with a single component, agent A could now send
an updated offer. However, the check from agent B has not yet
generated a response, and agent B receives the updated offer (message
7) before getting the response (message 10). Thus, it does not yet
know that this particular pair is valid. To eliminate this
condition, the actual candidates at B that were selected by the
offerer (the remote candidates) are included in the offer itself.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 65]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
Note, however, that agent B will not send media until it has received
this STUN response.
Agent A Network Agent B
|(1) Offer | |
|------------------------------------------>|
|(2) Answer | |
|<------------------------------------------|
|(3) STUN Req. | |
|------------------------------------------>|
|(4) STUN Res. | |
|<------------------------------------------|
|(5) STUN Req. | |
|<------------------------------------------|
|(6) STUN Res. | |
|-------------------->| |
| |Lost |
|(7) Offer | |
|------------------------------------------>|
|(8) Answer | |
|<------------------------------------------|
|(9) STUN Req. | |
|<------------------------------------------|
|(10) STUN Res. | |
|------------------------------------------>|
Figure 17
A.9. Why are Keepalives Needed?
Once media begins flowing on a candidate pair, it is still necessary
to keep the bindings alive at intermediate NATs for the duration of
the session. Normally, the media stream packets themselves (e.g.,
RTP) meet this objective. However, several cases merit further
discussion. Firstly, in some RTP usages, such as SIP, the media
streams can be "put on hold". This is accomplished by using the SDP
"sendonly" or "inactive" attributes, as defined in RFC 3264 [4]. RFC
3264 directs implementations to cease transmission of media in these
cases. However, doing so may cause NAT bindings to timeout, and
media won't be able to come off hold.
Secondly, some RTP payload formats, such as the payload format for
text conversation [29], may send packets so infrequently that the
interval exceeds the NAT binding timeouts.
Thirdly, if silence suppression is in use, long periods of silence
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 66]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
may cause media transmission to cease sufficiently long for NAT
bindings to time out.
For these reasons, the media packets themselves cannot be relied
upon. ICE defines a simple periodic keepalive that operates
indpendently of media transmission. This makes its bandwidth
requirements highly predictable, and thus amenable to QoS
reservations.
A.10. Why Prefer Peer Reflexive Candidates?
Section 4.2 describes procedures for computing the priority of
candidate based on its type and local preferences. That section
requires that the type preference for peer reflexive candidates
always be lower than server reflexive. Why is that? The reason has
to do with the security considerations in Section 15. It is much
easier for an attacker to cause an agent to use a false server
reflexive candidate than it is for an attacker to cause an agent to
use a false peer reflexive candidate. Consequently, attacks against
the STUN binding discovery usage are thwarted by ICE by preferring
the peer reflexive candidates.
A.11. Why Can't Offerers Send Media When a Pair Validates
Section 11.1 describes rules for sending media. The rules are
asymmetric, and not the same for offerers and answerers. In
particular, an answerer can send media right away to a candidate pair
once it validates, even if it doesnt match the pairs in the m/c-line.
THe offerer cannot - it must wait for an updated offer/answer
exchange. Why is that?
This, in fact, relates to a bigger question - why is the updated
offer/answer exchange needed at all? Indeed, in a pure offer/answer
environment, it would not be. The offerer and answerer will agree on
the candidates to use through ICE, and then can begin using them. As
far as the agents themselves are concerned, the updated offer/answer
provides no new information. However, in practice, numerous
components along the signaling path look at the SDP information.
These include entities performing off-path QoS reservations, NAT
traversal components such as ALGs and Session Border Controllers
(SBCs) and diagnostic tools that passively monitor the network. For
these tools to continue to function without change, the core property
of SDP - that the m/c-lines represent the addresses used for media -
must be retained. For this reason, an updated offer must be sent.
To ensure that an updated offerer is sent, ICE purposefully prevents
the offerer from sending media until that offer is sent. It
furthermore restricts the answerer in how long it can send media
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 67]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
until an updated offer is received. This provides protocol
incentives for sending the updated offer.
The updated offer also helps ensure that ICE did the right thing. In
very unusual cases, the offerer and answerer might not agree on the
candidates selected by ICE. This would be detected in the updated
offer/answer exchange, allowing them to restart ICE procedures to fix
the problem.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 68]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
Author's Address
Jonathan Rosenberg
Cisco Systems
600 Lanidex Plaza
Parsippany, NJ 07054
US
Phone: +1 973 952-5000
Email: jdrosen@cisco.com
URI: http://www.jdrosen.net
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 69]
Internet-Draft ICE August 2006
Intellectual Property Statement
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information
on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
http://www.ietf.org/ipr.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at
ietf-ipr@ietf.org.
Disclaimer of Validity
This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006). This document is subject
to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and
except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.
Acknowledgment
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
Rosenberg Expires March 4, 2007 [Page 70]
