Network Working Group                                           A. Niemi
Internet-Draft                                                     Nokia
Intended status: Standards Track                             May 2, 2007
Expires: November 3, 2007


An Extension to Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Events for Conditional
                           Event Notification
                     draft-ietf-sip-subnot-etags-00

Status of this Memo

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on November 3, 2007.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007).

Abstract

   The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) events framework enables
   receiving asynchronous notification of various events from other SIP
   user agents.  This framework defines the procedures for creating,
   refreshing and terminating subscriptions, as well as fetching and
   periodic polling of resource state.  These procedures have a serious
   deficiency in that they do not allow state to persist over a
   subscription refresh, or between two consecutive polls.  This



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   inability to suppress notifications of state already known to the
   subscriber results in superfluous traffic in the network.  This memo
   defines an extension to SIP events that allows the subscriber to
   condition the subscription request to whether the state has changed
   since the previous notification was received.  When such a condition
   is true, either the body of an event notification or the entire
   notification message is suppressed.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.1.  Document Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.  Motivations and Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     2.1.  Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     2.2.  Problem Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     2.3.  Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   3.  Overview of Operation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   4.  Subscriber Behavior  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     4.1.  Indicating Support for Entity Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     4.2.  Generating Conditional SUBSCRIBEs  . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     4.3.  Polling or Fetching Resource State . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     4.4.  Resuming a Subscription  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     4.5.  Refreshing a Subscription  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     4.6.  Terminating a Subscription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   5.  Notifier Behavior  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     5.1.  Generating Entity-tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     5.2.  Suppressing NOTIFY Bodies  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     5.3.  Suppressing NOTIFY Requests  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     5.4.  State Differentials  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
     5.5.  List Subscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   6.  Protocol Element Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
     6.1.  204 (No Notification) Response Code  . . . . . . . . . . . 17
     6.2.  Suppress-Notify-If-Match Header Field  . . . . . . . . . . 18
     6.3.  Suppress-Body-If-Match Header Field  . . . . . . . . . . . 18
     6.4.  Grammar  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   7.  Open Issues and Todo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   8.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
     8.1.  "subnot-etags" Option Tag  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
     8.2.  204 (No Notification) Response Code  . . . . . . . . . . . 19
     8.3.  Suppress-Body-If-Match Header Field  . . . . . . . . . . . 19
     8.4.  Suppress-Notify-If-Match Header Field  . . . . . . . . . . 20
   9.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   10. Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
     11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
     11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21



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   Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 22


















































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1.  Introduction

   The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) events framework provides an
   extensible facility for requesting notification of certain events
   from other SIP user agents.  This framework includes procedures for
   creating, refreshing and terminating of subscriptions, as well as the
   possibility to fetch or periodically poll the event resource.

   Several instantiations of this framework, called event packages have
   been defined, e.g., for presence [6], message waiting indications [7]
   and registrations [8].

   By default, every SUBSCRIBE request generates a NOTIFY request
   containing the latest event state.  Typically, a SUBSCRIBE request is
   issued whenever a subscription is installed, periodically refreshed
   or terminated.  Once the subscription has been installed, the
   majority of the NOTIFYs generated by the subscription refreshes are
   superfluous; the subscriber usually is in possession of the event
   state already, except in the unlikely case where a state change
   exactly coincides with the periodic subscription refresh.  In most
   cases, the final event state generated upon terminating the
   subscription similarly contains resource state that the subscriber
   already has.

   Fetching or polling of resource state behaves in a similarly
   suboptimal way in cases where the state has not changed since the
   previous poll occurred.  In general, the problem lies in with the
   inability to persist state across a SUBSCRIBE request.

   This memo defines an extension to the SIP events framework allowing a
   notifier to issue versioning in the form of entity tags to
   notifications, and the subscriber to condition the SUBSCRIBE request
   for actual changes since the last notification carrying that entity
   tag was issued.  The solution is almost identical to conditional
   requests defined in the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) [9], and
   follows the mechanism already defined for the PUBLISH [1] method for
   issuing conditional event publications.

1.1.  Document Conventions

   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 BCP 14, RFC 2119 [2]
   and indicate requirement levels for compliant implementations.







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2.  Motivations and Background

2.1.  Overview

   A SUBSCRIBE request creates a subscription with a finite lifetime.
   This lifetime is negotiated using the Expires header field, and
   unless the subscription is refreshed by the subscriber before the
   expiration is met, the subscription is terminated.  The frequency of
   these subscription refreshes depends on the event package, and
   typically ranges from minutes to hours.

   Changes in connectivity represent another impetus for a subscriber
   re-subscribing.  If the subscriber's point of attachment to the
   Internet changes, e.g., due to dynamic address allocation, the
   subscriber needs to re-subscribe in order to update the dialog
   endpoint, which is carried in the Contact header field of the
   SUBSCRIBE request.

      Another option for reducing connectivity induced subscription
      refreshes is to use the Globally Routable User Agent (UA) URI
      (GRUU) [10] as a stable endpoint contact for subscriptions.

2.2.  Problem Description

   In spite of being somewhat distinct operations, the SIP events
   framework does not include different protocol methods for initiating
   and terminating of subscriptions, subscription refreshes and fetches
   inside and outside of the SIP dialog.  Instead, the SUBSCRIBE method
   is overloaded to perform all of these functions, and the notifier
   behavior is identical in each of them; each SUBSCRIBE request
   generates a NOTIFY request containing the latest resource state.  In
   fact, the only difference between a fetch that does not create a
   (lasting) subscription, and a SUBSCRIBE that creates one is in the
   Expires header field value of the SUBSCRIBE; a zero-expiry SUBSCRIBE
   only generates a single NOTIFY, after which the subscription
   immediately terminates.

   Some subscriber implementations may choose to operate in semi-
   stateless mode, in which they immediately upon receiving and
   processing the NOTIFY forget the resource state.  This operation
   necessarily needs every NOTIFY to carry the full resource state.
   However, for an implementation that stores the resource state
   locally, this mode of operation is inefficient.

   There are certain conditions that aggravate the problem.  Such
   conditions usually entail such things as:





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   o  Large entity bodies in the payloads of notifications

   o  High rate of subscription refreshes

   o  Relatively low rate of actual notifications triggered by actual
      state changes

   In effect, for an event package that generates few state changes, and
   is refreshed relatively often the majority of traffic generated may
   be related to subscription maintenance.  Especially in networks where
   bandwidth consumption and traffic count is at a premium, the high
   overhead of subscription maintenance becomes a barrier for
   deployment.

   The same problem affects fetching and polling of resource state as
   well.  As a benchmark, if we look at the performance of HTTP [9] in
   similar scenarios, it performs substantially better using conditional
   requests.  When resources are tagged with an entity-tag, and each GET
   is a conditional one using the "If-None-Match" header field, the
   entity body need not be sent more than once; if the resource has not
   changed between successive polls, an error response is returned
   indicating this fact, and the resource entity is not transmitted
   again.

   The SIP PUBLISH [1] method also contains a similar feature, where a
   refresh of a publication is done by reference to its assigned entity-
   tag, instead of retransmitting the event state each time the
   publication expiration is extended.

2.3.  Requirements

   As a summary, here is the required functionality to solve the
   presented issues:

   REQ1:   It must be possible to suppress the NOTIFY request (or at a
           minimum the event body therein) if the subscriber is already
           in possession of the latest event state of the resource.

   REQ2:   This mechanism must apply to initial subscriptions, in which
           the subscriber is attempting to "resume" an earlier
           subscription.

   REQ3:   This mechanism must apply to refreshing a subscription.

   REQ4:   This mechanism must apply to terminating a subscription
           (i.e., an unsubscribe).





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   REQ5:   This mechanism must apply to fetching or polling of resource
           state.


3.  Overview of Operation

   Whenever a subscriber initiates a subscription, it issues a SUBSCRIBE
   request.  If the subscriber supports the conditional subscription
   mechanism described in this memo, it can include a "subnot-etags" tag
   in the Supported header field.  The SUBSCRIBE request is sent, routed
   and processed by the notifier normally, i.e., according to RFC3261
   [3], RFC3265 [4].

   If the notifier receiving the SUBSCRIBE request supports conditional
   subscriptions, it generates a unique entity tag for the resource
   state, and attaches that tag in a SIP-ETag header field of every
   NOTIFY request.  The entity tag is unique for that particular
   resource and event notification.

   Entity-tags are independent of subscriptions; the notifier remembers
   the entity-tag of the resource state regardless of whether or not
   there are any active subscription to that resource.  This allows
   notifications generated to a fetch or a poll to have valid entity-
   tags even across subsequent fetches of the resource state.

   The subscriber will store the entity-tag received in the notification
   along with the resource state.  It can then later use this entity-tag
   to make a SUBSCRIBE contain a condition in the form of a header
   field.  Unlike the "If-Match" condition in a PUBLISH [1] request,
   which applies to whether the PUBLISH succeeds or returns an error,
   this condition applies to the notifications that are sent after the
   SUBSCRIBE request has been processed.

   The two types of conditions available for a SUBSCRIBE are a Suppress-
   Body-If-Match and a Suppress-Notify-If-Match; each of these header
   fields contains the last entity-tag seen by the subscriber.  If the
   condition evaluates to true, the first of these conditions will
   instruct the notifier to suppress the body of the next notification
   and the second the entire notification.  The condition is evaluated
   by matching the value of the header field against the current entity-
   tag of the resource state.  There is also a wildcard entity-tag with
   a special value of "*" that always matches.









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          Subscriber                               Notifier
          ----------                               --------

          (1) SUBSCRIBE       -------->
              Supported: subnot-etags
              Expires: 3600
                              <--------       (2) 202

                              <--------       (3) NOTIFY
                                                  SIP-ETag: ffee2
          (4) 200             -------->

             ...

          (5) SUBSCRIBE       -------->                \ if "ffee2"
              Suppress-Notify-If-Match: ffee2          |   matches
              Supported: subnot-etags                  |   local
              Expires: 3600                            |   entity-tag
                                                       |
                              <--------       (6) 204  / then

             ...

                              <--------       (7) NOTIFY
                                                  SIP-ETag: ca89a
          (8) 200             -------->

             ...

          (9) SUBSCRIBE       -------->                \ if "ca89"
              Suppress-Notify-If-Match: ca89a          |   matches
              Supported: subnot-etags                  |   local
              Expires: 0                               |   entity-tag
                                                       |
                              <--------      (10) 204  / then


                      Figure 1: Example Message Flow

   Figure 1 describes a typical message flow for conditional SUBSCRIBEs:

   1.   The subscriber initiates a subscription by sending a SUBSCRIBE
        request for a resource.  The request can contain a Supported tag
        of "subnot-etags" to indicate support for conditional
        subscriptions.

   2.   After proper authentication and authorization, the the notifier
        accepts the subscription.



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   3.   The notifier then immediately sends the initial resource state
        in a notification.  And since the subscriber supports the
        mechanism, it includes a resource-specific entity-tag in a SIP-
        ETag header field.

   4.   The subscriber accepts the notification and stores the entity-
        tag value along with the resource state.

   5.   Later, the subscriber refreshes the subscription by a
        reSUBSCRIBE, and includes an entity-tag in a Suppress-Notify-If-
        Match header field.

   6.   The notifier evaluates the condition by matching its entity-tag
        for the resource against the value of the Suppress-Notify-If-
        Match header field.  If the condition evaluates to true, the
        notifier informs the subscriber that the notification was
        blocked.

   7.   At some point, the state of the resource changes, e.g., the
        presence status of a user changes from online to busy.  This
        triggers an event notification with a new value in the SIP-ETag
        header field.

   8.   The subscriber accepts the notification and stores the new
        entity-tag along with the resource state.

   9.   After a while, the subscriber decides to terminate the
        subscription with an unSUBSCRIBE.  It adds a condition for
        Suppress-Notify-If-Match, and includes the entity-tag it
        received in the previous NOTIFY.

   10.  The notifier evaluates the condition by matching its entity-tag
        for the resource against the value of the Suppress-Notify-If-
        Match header field.  If the condition evaluates to true, the
        notifier informs the subscriber that the notification was
        blocked.  This concludes the subscription.

   The benefit of using conditional subscriptions in this example is in
   the reduction of the number of NOTIFY requests the subscriber can
   expect to receive.  Each event notification that the subscriber has
   already seen is blocked by the notifier.  This example illustrates
   only one use case for the mechanism; the same principles can be used
   to optimize workflows related to other use cases of event
   notification.







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4.  Subscriber Behavior

   This section augments the subscriber behavior defined in RFC3265 [4].
   It first discusses general issues related to indicating support for
   the mechanism (Section 4.1) and creating conditions in SUBSCRIBE
   requests (Section 4.2); it then describes the workflows for the main
   three use cases for making the subscription conditional.

4.1.  Indicating Support for Entity Tags

   The mechanism defined in this memo is backwards compatible with SIP
   events [4] in that a notifier supporting this mechanism will insert a
   SIP entity-tag in its NOTIFY requests, and a subscriber that
   understands this mechanism will know how to use it in creating a
   conditional request.

   Unaware subscribers will simply ignore the entity-tag, make requests
   without conditions and receive the default treatment from the
   notifier.

   However, to explicitly advertise the support for conditional
   subscriptions, the subscriber MAY use the Supported header field in
   advertising support for receiving entity tags in notifications.

   Example:

      Supported: subnot-etags

4.2.  Generating Conditional SUBSCRIBEs

   When creating a conditional SUBSCRIBE request, the subscriber MUST
   include a conditional header field including an entity-tag to the
   request.  The condition is evaluated by comparing the entity-tag of
   the subscribed resource with the entity-tag carried in the
   conditional header field.  If they match, the condition evaluates to
   true.

   Unlike the condition introduced for the SIP PUBLISH [1] method, these
   conditions do not apply to the SUBSCRIBE request itself, but to the
   resulting NOTIFY request.  When true, the condition drives the
   notifier to change its behavior with regards to sending the first
   notification after the SUBSCRIBE.

   There are two types of conditional header fields defined in this
   specification:






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   Suppress-Body-If-Match:  if this condition evaluates to true, the
      notifier is instructed to suppress (i.e., remove) the body of the
      first NOTIFY request following the SUBSCRIBE.  If false, the
      notifier follows the default behavior.

   Suppress-Notify-If-Match:  if this condition evaluates to true, the
      notifier is instructed to suppress (i.e., block) the entire first
      NOTIFY request following the SUBSCRIBE, and instead send a 204 (No
      Notification) response.  If false, the notifier again follows the
      default behavior.

   The value of these header-fields is an entity-tag, which is an opaque
   token that the subscriber simply copies from a previously received
   NOTIFY request.

   Examples:

      Suppress-Body-If-Match: b4cf7

      Suppress-Notify-If-Match: 628736

   The conditional header field can also be wildcarded using the special
   "*" entity-tag value.  Such a condition always evaluates to true
   regardless of the value of the current entity-tag for the resource.

   Example:

      Suppress-Notify-If-Match: *

4.3.  Polling or Fetching Resource State

   Polling with conditional notification allows a user agent to
   efficiently poll resource state.  This is accomplished using the
   Suppress-Notify-If-Match condition:

















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          Subscriber                               Notifier
          ----------                               --------

          (1) SUBSCRIBE       -------->
              Supported: subnot-etags
              Expires: 0
                              <--------       (2) 202

                              <--------       (3) NOTIFY
                                                  SIP-ETag: f2e45

          (4) 200             -------->


          ... poll interval elapses


          (5) SUBSCRIBE       -------->
              Supported: subnot-etags
              Suppress-Notify-If-Match: f2e45
              Expires: 0

                              <--------       (6) 204


                     Figure 2: Polling Resource State

   1.  The subscriber polls for resource state by sending a SUBSCRIBE
       with zero expiry (expires immediately).

   2.  The notifier accepts the SUBSCRIBE with a 202 (Accepted)
       response.

   3.  The notifier then immediately sends a first (and last) NOTIFY
       request with the current resource state, and the current entity-
       tag in the SIP-ETag header field.

   4.  The subsciber accepts the notification with a 200 (OK) response.

   5.  After some arbitrary poll interval, the subscriber sends another
       SUBSCRIBE with a Suppress-Notify-If-Match header field that
       includes the entity-tag received in the previous NOTIFY.

   6.  Since the resource state has not changed since the previous poll
       occurred, the notifier sends a 204 (No Notification) response,
       which concludes the poll.

   Fetching resource state using conditional notification and the



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   wildcard entity-tag allows two other types of operations as well:

   Liveliness check:  this allows a user agent to periodically check
      whether a resource is still available.  This is accomplished using
      the Suppress-Notify-If-Match header field and the wildcard entity-
      tag.

   Meta-information query:  this allows a user agent to query the latest
      meta-information related to a resource.  This is accomplished
      using the Suppress-Body-If-Match header field and the wildcard
      entity-tag.

4.4.  Resuming a Subscription

   Resuming a subscription means the ability to continue an earlier
   subscription that either closed abruptly, or was explicitly
   terminated.  When resuming, the subscription is established without
   transmitting the resource state.  This is accomplished with
   conditional notification and the Suppress-Body-If-Match header field:


          Subscriber                               Notifier
          ----------                               --------

          (1) SUBSCRIBE       -------->
              Supported: subnot-etags
              Suppress-Body-If-Match: ega23
              Expires: 3600
                              <--------       (2) 202

                              <--------       (3) NOTIFY
                                                  SIP-ETag: ega23
                                                  Content-Length: 0
          (4) 200             -------->


                     Figure 3: Resuming a Subscription

   1.  The subscriber attempts to resume an earlier subscription by
       including a Suppress-Body-If-Match header field with the entity-
       tag it last received.

   2.  The notifier accepts the subscription after proper authentication
       and authorization, by sending a 202 (Accepted) (Accepted)
       response.

   3.  The notifier then immediately sends an initial NOTIFY request
       that now has no body.  It also mirrors the current entity-tag of



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       the resource in the SIP-ETag header field.

   4.  The subscriber accepts the NOTIFY and sends a 200 (OK) response.

   Had the entity-tag not been valid any longer, the condition would
   have evaluated to false, and the NOTIFY would have had a body
   containing the latest resource state.

4.5.  Refreshing a Subscription

   To refresh a subscription using conditional notification, the
   subscriber creates a subscription refresh before the subscription is
   about to expire, and uses the Suppress-Notify-If-Match header field:


          Subscriber                               Notifier
          ----------                               --------

          (1) SUBSCRIBE       -------->
              Supported: subnot-etags
              Suppress-Notify-If-Match: aba91
              Expires: 3600

                              <--------       (2) 204
                                                  Expires: 3600


                    Figure 4: Refreshing a Subscription

   1.  Before the subscription is about to expire, the subscriber sends
       a SUBSCRIBE request that includes the Suppress-Notify-If-Match
       header field with the latest entity-tag it has seen.

   2.  If the condition evaluates to true, the notifier sends a 204 (No
       Notification) response sends no NOTIFY request.  The Expires
       header field of the 204 (No Notification) indicates the new
       expiry time.

4.6.  Terminating a Subscription

   To terminate a subscription using conditional notification, the
   subscriber creates a SUBSCRIBE request with a Suppress-Notify-If-
   Match condition:








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          Subscriber                               Notifier
          ----------                               --------

          (1) SUBSCRIBE       -------->
              Supported: subnot-etags
              Suppress-Notify-If-Match: ega23
              Expires: 0

                              <--------       (2) 204


                   Figure 5: Terminating a Subscription

   1.  The subscriber decides to terminate the subscription and sends a
       SUBSCRIBE request with the Suppress-Notify-If-Match condition
       with the entity-tag it has last seen.

   2.  If the condition evaluates to true, the notifier sends a 204 (No
       Notification) response, which concludes the subscription, and the
       subscriber can clear all state related to the subscription.


5.  Notifier Behavior

   This section augments the notifier behavior as specified in RFC3265
   [4].

5.1.  Generating Entity-tags

   A notifier MUST generate entity tags for each resource it is
   responsible for.

      The views might correspond to different groups of users that have
      varying levels of access rights to the resource state, or to
      subscribers that have modified their subscription using event
      notification filtering [11].  For example, in presence [6]
      watchers may get different levels of accuracy in geolocation
      information, based on the presentity's privacy settings.

   An entity-tag is a token carried in the SIP-ETag header field, and it
   is opaque to the client.  The notifier is free to decide the means
   for generating an entity-tag, except for the special "*" value.  For
   example, one possible method is to implement the entity-tag as a
   simple counter, incrementing it by one for each generated
   notification per resource.

   An entity-tag is valid for as long as the resource state is valid.
   The notifier MUST remember the entity-tag of a resource as long as



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   the associated resource state is valid.  The notifier MAY remember
   the entity-tag longer than this, e.g., for implementing journaled
   state differentials (Section 5.4).

   The entity tag values used in publications are not necessarily shared
   with the entity tag values used in subscriptions.  This is because
   there may not always be a one-to-one mapping between a publication
   and a notification; there may be several sources to the event
   composition process.

5.2.  Suppressing NOTIFY Bodies

   When a condition for suppressing a NOTIFY body is true, i.e., the
   local entity-tag for the resource state and the subscriber provided
   entity-tag in a Suppress-Body-If-Match header field match, the
   notifier MUST suppress the body of the resulting NOTIFY request.
   That is, the resulting NOTIFY contains no Content-Type header field,
   the Content-Length is set to zero, and no payload is attached to the
   message.

   Suppressing the entity body of a NOTIFY does not change the current
   entity-tag of the resource.  Hence, the NOTIFY MUST contain a SIP-
   Etag header field that contains the unchanged entity-tag of the event
   state resource.

   A Suppress-Body-If-Match header field that includes an entity-tag
   with the value of "*" MUST always evaluate to true.

5.3.  Suppressing NOTIFY Requests

   When a condition in a SUBSCRIBE request to suppress a NOTIFY request
   is true, i.e., the local entity-tag of the resource and the entity-
   tag in a Suppress-Notify-If-Match header field of a SUBSCRIBE request
   match, the notifier MUST suppress the resulting NOTIFY request, and
   generate a 204 (No Notification) "No Notification" response.

   Such a successful conditional SUBSCRIBE request MUST extend the
   subscription expiry time.

   Suppressing the entire NOTIFY has no effect on the entity-tag of the
   resource.  In other words, it remains unchanged.

   A Suppress-Body-If-Match header field that includes an entity-tag
   with the value of "*" MUST always evaluate to true.







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5.4.  State Differentials

   Some event packages may support a scheme where notifications contain
   state differentials, or state deltas [4] instead of complete resource
   state.

   A notifier can optionally keep track of the state changes of a
   resource, e.g., storing the changes in a journal.  If a condition
   fails, the notifier MAY send a state differential in the NOTIFY
   rather than the full state of the event resource.  This is only
   possible if the event package and the subscriber both support a
   payload format that has this capability.

   When state differentials are sent, the SIP-ETag header field MUST
   contain an entity-tag that corresponds to the full resource state.

5.5.  List Subscriptions

   OPEN ISSUE: What approach should we take in defining how conditional
   notification works in RLSs?  Seems there are roughly three different
   approaches:

   1.  Treat meta-information as independent of the actual resource
       state, don't apply conditional notification to meta-information
       at all.

   2.  Treat everything as a single resource, and update the etag
       whenever either meta or real info changes.

   3.  Have separate etags for meta and real information.


6.  Protocol Element Definitions

   This section describes the protocol extensions required for
   conditional notification.

6.1.  204 (No Notification) Response Code

   The 204 (No Notification) response code indicates that the request
   was successful, but the notification associated with the request will
   not be sent.

   The response code is added to the "Success" production rule in the
   SIP [3] message grammar.






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6.2.  Suppress-Notify-If-Match Header Field

   The Suppress-Notify-If-Match header field is added to the definition
   of the "message-header" rule in the SIP [3] grammar.  Its use is
   described in Section 4 and Section 5.3.

   This header field is allowed to appear in any request, but it's
   behavior is only defined for the SUBSCRIBE request.

6.3.  Suppress-Body-If-Match Header Field

   The Suppress-Body-If-Match header field is added to the definition of
   the "message-header" rule in the SIP [3] grammar.  Its use is
   described in Section 4 and Section 5.2.

   This header field is allowed to appear in any request, but it's
   behavior is only defined for the SUBSCRIBE request.

6.4.  Grammar

   This section defines the formal syntax for extensions described in
   this memo in Augmented BNF (ABNF) [5].  The rules defined here
   augment and reference the syntax defined in RFC3261 [3] and RFC3903
   [1].

   Success           =/ "204"  ;  No Notification

         ; Success is defined in RFC3261.

   message-header    =/ Suppress-Body-If-Match
   message-header    =/ Suppress-Notify-If-Match

         ; message-header is defined in RFC3261.

   Suppress-Body-If-Match   =  "Suppress-Body-If-Match" ":"
                               entity-tag / "*"
   Suppress-Notify-If-Match =  "Suppress-Notify-If-Match" ":"
                               entity-tag / "*"

         ; entity-tag is defined in RFC3903.



7.  Open Issues and Todo

   o  The applicability of subnot-etags to RLS subscriptions should be
      clarified.  In particular, how does the entity-tag relate to RLMI
      vs. the resource state?



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   o  Should add detailed examples of all of the different use cases for
      conditional notification presented in this document.


8.  IANA Considerations

   This document registers a new SIP option-tag, a new response code and
   two new header field names.

      Note to IANA and the RFC editor: please replace all occurrences of
      RFCXYZ in this section with the RFC number of this specification
      upon publication.

8.1.  "subnot-etags" Option Tag

   This document registers a new SIP option tag.  This option tag is
   defined by the following information, which has been added to the
   option-tags sub-registry under
   http://www.iana.org/assignments/sip-parameters.

   +--------------+----------------------------------------+-----------+
   | Name         | Description                            | Reference |
   +--------------+----------------------------------------+-----------+
   | subnot-etags | This option tag indicates support for  | [RFCXYZ]  |
   |              | entity-tags and conditional            |           |
   |              | notifications in SIP events.           |           |
   +--------------+----------------------------------------+-----------+

8.2.  204 (No Notification) Response Code

   This document registers a new response code.  This response code is
   defined by the following information, which has been added to the
   methods and response-codes sub-registry under
   http://www.iana.org/assignments/sip-parameters.

     This information is to be added under "Successful 2xx" category.

                    +---------------------+-----------+
                    | Response Code       | Reference |
                    +---------------------+-----------+
                    | 204 No Notification | [RFCXYZ]  |
                    +---------------------+-----------+

8.3.  Suppress-Body-If-Match Header Field

   This document registers two new SIP header field names.  These
   headers are defined by the following information, which has been
   added to the header fields sub-registry under



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   http://www.iana.org/assignments/sip-parameters.

             +------------------------+---------+-----------+
             | Header Name            | Compact | Reference |
             +------------------------+---------+-----------+
             | Suppress-Body-If-Match |         | [RFCXYZ]  |
             +------------------------+---------+-----------+

8.4.  Suppress-Notify-If-Match Header Field

   This document registers two new SIP header field names.  These
   headers are defined by the following information, which has been
   added to the header fields sub-registry under
   http://www.iana.org/assignments/sip-parameters.

            +--------------------------+---------+-----------+
            | Header Name              | Compact | Reference |
            +--------------------------+---------+-----------+
            | Suppress-Notify-If-Match |         | [RFCXYZ]  |
            +--------------------------+---------+-----------+


9.  Security Considerations

   The security considerations for SIP event notification are
   extensively discussed in RFC 3265 [4].  This specification introduces
   an optimization to SIP event notification, which in itself does not
   alter the security properties of the protocol.


10.  Acknowledgments

   The following people have contributed corrections and suggestions to
   this document: Adam Roach, Sean Olson, Johnny Vrancken, Pekka Pessi,
   Eva Leppanen, Krisztian Kiss, Peili Xu, Avshalom Houri, David
   Viamonte and the SIP and SIMPLE working groups.


11.  References

11.1.  Normative References

   [1]   Niemi, A., "Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Extension for
         Event State Publication", RFC 3903, October 2004.

   [2]   Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
         Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.




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   [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]   Roach, A., "Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-Specific Event
         Notification", RFC 3265, June 2002.

   [5]   Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
         Specifications: ABNF", RFC 4234, October 2005.

11.2.  Informative References

   [6]   Rosenberg, J., "A Presence Event Package for the Session
         Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC 3856, August 2004.

   [7]   Mahy, R., "A Message Summary and Message Waiting Indication
         Event Package for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)",
         RFC 3842, August 2004.

   [8]   Rosenberg, J., "A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Event
         Package for Registrations", RFC 3680, March 2004.

   [9]   Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L.,
         Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol --
         HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.

   [10]  Rosenberg, J., "Obtaining and Using Globally Routable User
         Agent (UA) URIs (GRUU) in the  Session Initiation Protocol
         (SIP)", draft-ietf-sip-gruu-12 (work in progress), March 2007.

   [11]  Khartabil, H., Leppanen, E., Lonnfors, M., and J. Costa-
         Requena, "Functional Description of Event Notification
         Filtering", RFC 4660, September 2006.


Author's Address

   Aki Niemi
   Nokia
   P.O. Box 407
   NOKIA GROUP, FIN  00045
   Finland

   Phone: +358 50 389 1644
   Email: aki.niemi@nokia.com






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