SIPPING D. Petrie
Internet-Draft Pingtel Corp.
Expires: April 21, 2004 October 22, 2003
A Framework for SIP User Agent Profile Delivery
draft-ietf-sipping-config-framework-01.txt
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document defines the application of a set of protocols for
providing profile data to SIP user agents. The objective is to
define a means for automatically providing profile data a user agent
needs to be functional without user or administrative intervention.
The framework for discovery, delivery, notification and updates of
user agent profile data is defined here. As part of this framework a
new SIP event package is defined here for the notification of profile
changes. This framework is also intended to ease ongoing
administration and upgrading of large scale deployments of SIP user
agents. The contents and format of the profile data to be defined is
outside the scope of this document.
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Table of Contents
1. Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1 Requirements Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2 Profile Delivery Framework Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Profile Change Event Notification Package . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1 Event Package Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2 Event Package Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.3 SUBSCRIBE Bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.4 Subscription Duration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.5 NOTIFY Bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.6 Notifier processing of SUBSCRIBE requests . . . . . . . . . 8
3.7 Notifier generation of NOTIFY requests . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.8 Subscriber processing of NOTIFY requests . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.9 Handling of forked requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.10 Rate of notifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.11 State Agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.12 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.13 Use of URIs to Retrieve State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4. Profile Delivery Framework Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.1 Discovery of Subscription URI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.2 Enrollment with Profile Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.3 Notification of Profile Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.4 Retrieval of Profile Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.5 Upload of Profile Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.1 Symmetric Encryption of Profile Data . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.2 Client Certificate Authentication with HTTPS . . . . . . . . 15
6.3 HTTPS Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
7. Differences from Simple XCAP Package . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
8. Open Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9. Change History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9.1 Changes from draft-ietf-sipping-config-framework-00.txt . . 16
9.2 Changes from draft-petrie-sipping-config-framework-00.txt . 17
9.3 Changes from draft-petrie-sip-config-framework-01.txt . . . 17
9.4 Changes from draft-petrie-sip-config-framework-00.txt . . . 17
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
A. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . 21
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1. Motivation
Today all SIP user agent vendors use proprietary means of delivering
user or device profiles to the user agent. The profile delivery
framework defined in this document is intended to enable a first
phase migration to a standard means of providing profiles to SIP user
agents. It is expected that UA vendors will be able to use this
framework as a means of delivering their existing proprietary user
and device data profiles (i.e. using their existing proprietary
binary or text formats). This in itself is a tremendous advantage in
that a SIP environment can use a single profile delivery server for
profile data to user agents from multiple vendors. Follow-on
standardization activities can:
1. define a standard profile content format framework (e.g. XML with
name spaces [??] or name-value pairs [RFC0822]).
2. specify the content (i.e. name the profile data parameters, xml
schema, name spaces) of the data profiles.
One of the objectives of the framework described in this document is
to provide a start up experience similar to that of users of an
analog telephone. When you plug in an analog telephone it just works
(assuming the line is live and the switch has been provisioned).
There is no end user configuration required to make analog phone work
(at least in a basic sense). So the objective here is to be able to
take a new SIP user agent out of the box, plug it in (or install the
software) and have it get its profiles without human intervention
(other than security measures). This is necessary for cost effective
deployment of large numbers of user agents.
Another objective is to provide a scalable means for on going
administration of profiles. Administrators and users are likely to
want to make changes to user and device profiles.
Additional requirements for the framework defined in this document
are described in: [I-D.ietf-sipping-ua-prof-framewk-reqs],
[I-D.sinnreich-sipdev-req]
2. Introduction
2.1 Requirements Terminology
Keywords "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT" and
"MAY" that appear in this document are to be interpreted as described
in RFC 2119[RFC2119].
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2.2 Profile Delivery Framework Terminology
profile - data set specific to a user or device.
device - SIP user agent, either software or hardware appliance.
profile content server - The server that provides the content of the
profiles using the protocol specified by the URL scheme.
notifier - The SIP user agent server which processes SUBSCRIBE
requests for events and sends NOTIFY requests with profile URL(s).
profile delivery server - The logical collection of the SIP notifier
and the server which provides the contents of the profile URL(s).
2.3 Overview
The profile life cycle can be described by five functional steps.
These steps are not necessarily discrete. However it is useful to
describe these steps as logically distinct. These steps are named
as follows:
Discovery - discover a profile delivery server
Enrollment - enroll with the profile delivery server
Profile Retrieval - retrieve profile data
Profile Change Notification - receive notification of profile changes
Profile Change Upload - upload profile data changes back to the
profile delivery server
Discovery is the process by which a UA SHOULD find the address and
port at which it SHOULD enroll with the profile delivery server. As
there is no single discovery mechanism which will work in all network
environments, a number of discovery mechanisms are defined with a
prescribed order in which the UA SHOULD try them until one succeeds.
Enrollment is the process by which a UA SHOULD make itself known to
the profile delivery server. In enrolling the UA MUST provide
identity information, name requested profile type(s) and supported
protocols for profile retrieval. It SHOULD also subscribe to a
mechanism for notification of profile changes. As a result of
enrollment, the UA receives a URL for each of the profiles that the
profile delivery server is able to provide. Each profile type (set)
requires a separate enrollment or SUBSCRIBE session.
Profile Retrieval is the process of retrieving the content for each
of the profiles the UA requested.
Profile Change Notification is the process by which the profile
delivery server notifies the UA that the content of one or more of
the profiles has changed. Subsequently the UA SHOULD retrieve the
profile from the specified URL upon receipt of the change
notification.
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Profile Upload is the process by which a UA or other entity (e.g.
OSS, corporate directory or configuration management server) pushes a
change to the profile data back up to the profile delivery server.
This framework defines a new SIP event package [RFC3265] to solve
enrollment and profile change notification steps.
The question arises as to why SIP should be used for the profile
delivery framework. In this document SIP is used for only a small
portion of the framework. Other existing protocols are more
appropriate for transport of the profile contents (upstream and
downstream of the user agent) and are suggested in this document.
The discovery step is simply a specified order and application of
existing protocols. SIP is only needed for the enrollment and change
notification functionality of the profile delivery framework. In
many SIP environments (e.g. carrier/subscriber and multi-site
enterprise) firewall, NAT and IP addressing issues make it difficult
to get messages between the profile delivery server and the user
agent requiring the profiles.
With SIP the users and devices already are assigned globally routable
addresses. In addition the firewall and NAT problems are already
presumably solved in the environments in which SIP user agents are to
be used. Therefore SIP is the best solution for allowing the user
agent to enroll with the profile delivery server which may require
traversal of multiple firewalls and NATs. For the same reason the
notification of profile changes is best solved by SIP.
It is assumed that the content delivery server MUST be either in the
public network or accessible through a DMZ. The user agents
requiring profiles may be behind firewalls and NATs and many
protocols, such as HTTP, may be used for profile content retrieval
without special consideration in the firewalls and NATs.
A conscious separation of user and device profiles is made in this
document. This is useful to provide features such as hoteling as
well as securing or restricting user agent functionality. By
maintaining this separation, a user may walk up to someone else's
user agent and direct that user agent to get their profile data. In
doing so the user agent can replace the previous user's profile data
while still keeping the devices profile data that may be necessary
for core functionality and communication described in this document.
3. Profile Change Event Notification Package
This section defines a new SIP event package [RFC3265]. The purpose
of this event package is to send to subscribers notification of
content changes to the profile(s) of interest and to provide the
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location of the profile(s) via content indirection
[I-D.ietf-sip-content-indirect-mech].
3.1 Event Package Name
The name of this package is "sip-profile". This value appears in the
Event header field present in SUBSCRIBE and NOTIFY requests for this
package as defined in [RFC3265].
3.2 Event Package Parameters
This package defines the following new parameters for the event
header: profile-type, vendor, model, version, effective-by. The
effective-by parameter is for use in NOTIFY requests only. The
others are for use in the SUBSCRIBE request, but may be used in
NOTIFY requests as well.
The profile-type parameter is used to indicate the profile type the
user agent wishes to obtain URLs for and be notified of change. This
parameter allows the URL semantics to be opaque to the subscribing
user agent as all it needs to know is the token value for this
parameter. This document defines two type categories of profiles.
The contents or format of the profiles is outside the scope of this
document. The two types of profiles define here are "user" and
"device". Specifying device type profile(s) indicates the desire for
the URL(s) and change notification of all profiles that are specific
to the device or user agent. Specifying user type profile(s)
indicates the desire for the URL(s) and change notification of all
profile(s) that are specific to the user. The user or device is
identified in the URI of the SUBSCRIBE request. The Accept header of
the SUBSCRIBE request MUST include the MIME types for all profile
content types that the subscribing user agent wishes to retrieve
profiles or receive change notifications.
The user or device token in the profile-type parameter may
represent a class or set of profiles as opposed to a single
profile. As standards are defined for specific profile contents
related to the user or device, it may be desirable to define
additional tokens for the profile-type header. This is to allow a
user agent to subscribe to that specific profile as opposed to the
entire class or set of user or device profiles.
The rational for the separation of user and device type profiles is
provided in section Section 2.3. It should be noted that either type
may indicate that zero or more URLs are provided in the NOTIFY
request. As discussed, a default user may be assigned to a device.
In this scenario the profile delivery server may provide the URL(s)
in the NOTIFY request for the default user when subscribing to the
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device profile type. Effectively the device profile type becomes a
superset of the user profile type subscription. The user type is
still useful in this scenario to allow the user agent to obtain
profile URLs for a user other than the default user. This provides
the ability to support a hoteling function where a user may "login"
to any user agent and have it use a users profile(s).
The vendor, model and version parameters are tokens specified by the
vendor of the user agent. These parameters are useful to the profile
delivery server to effect the profiles provided. In some scenarios
it is desirable to provide different profiles based upon these
parameters. For example feature parameter X in a profile may work
differently on two versions of user agent. This gives the profile
deliver server the ability to compensate for or take advantage of the
differences.
The "effective-by" parameter in the Event header of the NOTIFY
specifies the maximum number of seconds before the user agent MUST
make the new profile effective. A value of 0 (zero) indicates that
the user agent MUST make the profiles effective immediately (despite
possible service interruptions). This gives the profile delivery
server the power to control when the profile is effective. This may
be important to resolve an emergency problem or disable a user agent
immediately.
SUBSCRIBE request example:
Event: sip-profile;profile-type=device;
vendor=acme;model=Z100;version=1.2.3
NOTIFY request examples:
Event:sip-profile;effective-by=0
Event:sip-profile;effective-by=3600
3.3 SUBSCRIBE Bodies
This package defines no new use of the SUBSCRIBE request body.
3.4 Subscription Duration
As profiles are generally static with infrequent changes, it is
recommended that default subscription duration be 86400 seconds (one
day).
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3.5 NOTIFY Bodies
The size of profile content is likely to be hundreds to several
thousand bytes in size. Frequently even with very modest sized SDP
bodies, SIP messages get fragmented causing problems for many user
agents. For this reason the NOTIFY body MUST use content indirection
[I-D.ietf-sip-content-indirect-mech] for providing the profiles.
The profile delivery server MUST include the Content-ID defined in
[I-D.ietf-sip-content-indirect-mech] for each profile URL. This is
to avoid unnecessary download of the profiles. Some user agents are
not able to make a profile effective without rebooting or restarting.
Rebooting is probably something to be avoided on a user agent
performing services such as telephony. In this way the Content-ID
allows the user agent to avoid unnecessary interruption of service as
well. The Content-Type MUST be specified for each URL.
Initially it is expected that most user agent vendors will use a
proprietary content type for the profiles retrieved from the
URLs(s). It is hoped that over time a standard content type will
be specified that will be adopted by vendors of user agents. One
direction that appears to be promising for this content is to use
XML with name spaces [??] to segment the data into sets that the
user agent implementer may choose to support based upon desired
feature set. The specification of the content is out of the scope
of this document.
Likewise the URL scheme used in the content indirection is outside
the scope of this document. This document is agnostic to the URL
schemes as the profile content may dictate what is required. It is
expected that TFTP [RFC3617], FTP [??], HTTP [RFC2616], HTTPS
[RFC2818], LDAP [RFC3377], XCAP [I-D.rosenberg-simple-xcap] and other
URL schemes are supported by this package and framework.
3.6 Notifier processing of SUBSCRIBE requests
The general rules for processing SUBSCRIBE requests [RFC3265] apply
to this package. The notifier does not need to authenticate the
subscription as the profile content is not transported in the
SUBSCRIBE or NOTIFY transaction messages. Only URLs are transported
in the NOTIFY request which may be secured using the techniques in
section Section 6.
The behavior of the profile delivery server is left to the
implementer. The profile delivery server may be as simple as a SIP
SUBSCRIBE UAS and NOTIFY UAC front end to a simple HTTP server
delivering static files that are hand edited. At the other extreme
the profile delivery server can be part of a configuration management
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system that integrates with a corporate directory and IT system or
carrier OSS, where the profiles are automatically generated. The
design of this framework intentionally provides the flexibility of
implementation from simple/cheap to complex/expensive.
If the user or device is not known to the profile delivery server,
the implementer MAY accept the subscription or reject it. It is
recommended that the implementer accept the subscription. It is
useful for the profile delivery server to maintain the subscription
as an administrator may add the user or device to the system,
defining the profile contents. This allow the profile delivery
server to immediately send a NOTIFY request with the profile URLs.
If the profile delivery server does not accept the subscription from
an unknown user or device, the administer or user must manually
provoke the user agent to reSUBSCRIBE. This may be difficult if the
user agent and administrator are at different sites.
3.7 Notifier generation of NOTIFY requests
As in [RFC3265], the profile delivery server MUST always send a
NOTIFY request upon accepting a subscription. If the device or user
is unknown to the profile delivery server and it chooses to accept
the subscription, the implementer has two choices. A NOTIFY MAY be
sent with no body or content indirection containing the profile
URL(s). Alternatively a NOTIFY MAY be sent with URL(s) pointing to a
default data set. Typically this data set allows for only limited
functionality of the user agent (e.g. a phone user agent with data to
call help desk and emergency services.). This is an implementation
and business policy decision.
A user or device known and fully provisioned on the profile delivery
server SHOULD send a NOTIFY with content indirection containing URLs
for all of the profiles associated with the user or device (i.e.
which ever specified in the profile-type parameter). The device may
be associated with a default user. The URL(s) for this default user
profiles MAY be included with the URL(s) of the device if the profile
type specified is device.
A user agent can provide Hoteling by collecting a users AOR and
credentials needed to SUBSCRIBE and retrieve the user profiles from
the URL(s). Hoteling functionality is achieved by subscribing to the
AOR and specifying the "user" profile type. This same mechanism can
be used to secure a user agent, requiring a user to login to enable
functionality beyond the default users restricted functionality.
The profile delivery server MAY specify when the new profiles MUST be
made effective by the user agent. By default the user agent makes
the profiles effective as soon as it thinks that it is non-obtrusive.
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However the profile delivery server MAY specify a maximum time in
seconds (zero or more), in the effective-by event header parameter,
by which the user agent MUST make the new profiles effective.
3.8 Subscriber processing of NOTIFY requests
The user agent subscribing to this event package MUST adhere to the
NOTIFY request processing behavior specified in [RFC3265]. The user
agent MUST make the profiles effective as specified in the NOTIFY
request (see section Section 3.7). The user agent SHOULD use one of
the techniques specified in section [RFC3265] to securely retrieve
the profiles.
3.9 Handling of forked requests
This event package allows the creation of only one dialog as a result
of an initial SUBSCRIBE request. The techniques to achieve this are
described in section 4.4.9 of [RFC3265].
3.10 Rate of notifications
It is anticipated that the rate of change for user and device
profiles will be very infrequent (i.e. days or weeks apart). For
this reason no throttling or minimum period between NOTIFY requests
is specified for this package.
3.11 State Agents
State agents are not applicable to this event package.
3.12 Examples
SUBSCRIBE sip:00df1e004cd0@example.com SIP/2.0
Event: sip-profile;profile-type=device;vendor=acme;
model=Z100;version=1.2.3
From: sip:00df1e004cd0@acme.com;tag=1234
To: sip:00df1e004cd0@acme.com;tag=abcd
Call-ID: 3573853342923422@10.1.1.44
CSeq: 2131 SUBSCRIBE
Contact: sip:00df1e004cd0@10.1.1.44
Content-Length: 0
NOTIFY sip:00df1e004cd0@10.1.1.44 SIP/2.0
Event: sip-profile;effective-by=3600
From: sip:00df1e004cd0@acme.com;tag=abcd
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To: sip:00df1e004cd0@acme.com;tag=1234
Call-ID: 3573853342923422@10.1.1.44
CSeq: 321 NOTIFY
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=boundary42
Content-Length: ...
--boundary42
Content-Type: message/external-body;
access-type="URL";
expiration="Mon, 24 June 2002 09:00:00 GMT";
URL="http://www.example.com/devices/fsmith";
size=2222
Content-Type: application/z100-user-profile
Content-ID: <69ADF2E92@example.com>
--boundary42
Content-Type: message/external-body;
access-type="URL";
expiration="Mon, 24 June 2002 09:00:00 GMT";
URL="http://www.example.com/devices/ff00000036c5";
size=1234
Content-Type: application/z100-device-profile
Content-ID: <39EHF78SA@example.com>
--boundary42--
3.13 Use of URIs to Retrieve State
The profile type specified determines what goes in the user part of
the SUBSRIBE URI. If the profile type requested is "device", the
user part is an identity that MUST be unique across all user agents
from all vendors. This identity must be static over time so that the
profile delivery server can keep it associated with its profiles.
For Ethernet hardware type user agents supporting only a single user
at a time this is most easily accomplished using its MAC address.
Software based user agents running on general purpose hardware may
also be able to use the MAC address for identity. However in
situations where multiple instance of user agents are running on the
same hardware it may be necessary to use a another scheme, such as
using a unique serial number for the software.
If the profile type request is "user" the URI in the SUBSCRIBE
request is the address of record for the user. This allows the user
to specify (e.g. login) to the user agent by simply entering their
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known identity.
4. Profile Delivery Framework Details
The following describes how different functional steps of the profile
delivery framework work. Also described here is how the event
package defined in this document provides the enrollment and
notification functions within the framework.
4.1 Discovery of Subscription URI
The discovery function is needed to bootstrap user agents to the
point of knowing where to enroll with the profile delivery server.
Section Section 3.13 describes how to form the URI used to sent the
SUBSCRIBE request for enrollment. However the bootstrapping problem
for the user agent (out of the box) is what to use for the host and
port in the URI. Due to the wide variation of environments in which
the enrolling user agent may reside (e.g. behind residential router,
enterprise LAN, ISP, dialup modem) and the limited control that the
administrator of the profile delivery server (e.g. enterprise,
service provider) may have over that environment, no single discovery
mechanism works everywhere. Therefore a number of mechanisms SHOULD
be tried in the specified order: SIP DHCP option [RFC3361], SIP DNS
SRV [RFC3263], DNS A record and manual.
1. The first discovery mechanizm that SHOULD be tried is to
construct the SUBSCRIBE URI as described in Section 3.13 using
the host and port of out bound proxy discovered by the SIP DHCP
option as described in [RFC3361]. If the SIP DHCP option is not
provided in the DHCP response, no SIP response or a SIP failure
response other than for authorization is received for the
SUBSCRIBE request to the sip-profile event, the next discovery
mechanism SHOULD be tried.
2. The local IP network domain for the user agent, either configured
or discovered via DHCP, should be used with the technique in
[RFC3263] to obtain a host and port to use in the SUBSCRIBE URI.
If no SIP response or a SIP failure response other than for
authorization is received for the SUBSCRIBE request to the
sip-profile event, the next discovery mechanism SHOULD be tried.
3. The fully qualified host name constructed using the host name
"sipuaconfig" and concatenated with the local IP network domain
should be tried next using the technique in [RFC3263] to obtain a
host and port to use in the SUBSCRIBE URI. If no SIP response or
a SIP failure response other than for authorization is received
for the SUBSCRIBE request to the sip-profile event, the next
discovery mechanism SHOULD be tried.
4. If all other discovery techniques fail, the user agent MUST
provide a manual means for the user to enter the host and port
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used to construct the SUBSCRIBE URI.
Once a user agent has successfully discovered, enrolled, received a
NOTIFY response with profile URL(s), the user agent SHOULD cache the
SUBCRIBE URI to avoid having to rediscover the profile delivery
server again in the future. The user agent SHOULD NOT cache the
SUBSCRIBE URI until it receives a NOTIFY with profile URL(s). The
reason for this is that a profile delivery server may send 202
responses to SUBSCRIBE requests and NOTIFY responses to unknown user
agent (see section Section 3.6) with no URLs. Until the profile
delivery server has sent a NOTIFY request with profile URL(s), it has
not agreed to provide profiles.
To illustrate why the user agent should not cache the SUBSCRIBE
URI until profile URL(s) are provided in the NOTIFY, consider the
following example: a user agent running on a laptop plugged into
a visited LAN in which a foreign profile delivery server is
discovered. The profile delivery server never provides profile
URLs in the NOTIFY request as it is not provisioned to accept the
user agent. The user then takes the laptop to their enterprise
LAN. If the user agent cached the SUBSCRIBE URI from the visited
LAN (which did not provide profiles), the user agent would not
attempt to discover the profile delivery server in the enterprise
LAN which is provisioned to provide profiles to the user agent..
4.2 Enrollment with Profile Server
Enrollment is accomplished by subscribing to the event package
described in section Section 3. The enrollment process is useful to
the profile delivery server as it makes the server aware of user
agent to which it may delivery profiles (those user agents the
profile delivery server is provisioned to provide profiles to; those
present that the server may be provide profiles in the future; and
those that the server can automatically provide default profiles).
It is an implementation choice and business policy as to whether the
profile delivery server provides profiles to user agents that it is
not provisioned to do so. However the profile server SHOULD accept
(with 2xx response) SUBSCRIBE requests from any user agent.
4.3 Notification of Profile Changes
The NOTIFY request in the sip-profile event package server two
purposes. First it provides the user agent with a means to obtain
the URL(s) for desired profiles without requiring the end user to
manually enter them. It also provides the means for the profile
delivery server to notify the user agent that the content of the
profiles have changed and should be made effective.
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4.4 Retrieval of Profile Data
The user agent retrieves it's needed profile(s) via the URL(s)
provide in the NOTIFY request as specified in section Section 3.5.
The profile delivery server SHOULD secure the content of the profiles
using one of the techniques described in Section 6. The user agent
SHOULD make the new profiles effective in the timeframe described in
section Section 3.2.
The contents of the profiles SHOULD be cached by the user agent.
This it to avoid the situation where the content delivery server is
not available, leaving the user agent non-functional.
4.5 Upload of Profile Changes
The user agent or other service MAY push changes up to the profile
delivery server using the technique appropriate to the profile's URL
scheme (e.g. HTTP PUT method, FTP put command). The technique for
pushing incremental or atomic changes MUST be described by the
specific profile data framework.
5. IANA Considerations
[TBD]
6. Security Considerations
Profiles may contain sensitive data such as user credentials. The
protection of this data is accomplished via the profile retrieval
function. This simplifies the security solution as the SIP event
package does not need to authenticate, authorize or protect the
contents of the SIP messages. Effectively the profile delivery
server will provide profile URL(s) to any one. The URLs themselves
are protected via authentication, authorization and snooping. Three
options for secure retrieval of profiles are follow:
6.1 Symmetric Encryption of Profile Data
One security technique is to encrypted the profiles on the content
delivery server using the AES symmetric encryption algorithm using a
key formed by a MD5 hash of the following: username ":" password.
The encrypted profiles are delivered by the content delivery server
via the URLs provided in the NOTIFY requests. Using this technique
the profile delivery server does not need to provide authentication
or authorization for the retrieval as the profiles are obscured. The
user agent must obtain the username and password from the user to
generate the key and perform AES decryption the profiles. This is
the simplest security technique as it does not require any public key
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infrastructure or TLS implementation on the user agent (which often
has limited resources).
6.2 Client Certificate Authentication with HTTPS
In another technique the content delivery server authenticates the
user or user agent by requesting the client's certificate in the TLS
connection established as described by the profile URL. The content
delivery server authorizes the profile retrieval using the
certificate identity and business policy choices provide by the
server implementer. The profile data is obscured from snooping using
the encryption mechanisms provide by the TLS connect. This has nice
properties of not requiring end user intervention, but has a higher
administrative cost for user agent certificate management and
distribution. It also requires the certificates to be in place
before enabling profile delivery.
6.3 HTTPS Authentication
Alternatively the authentication mechanizms described in [RFC2617]
are used. The content delivery server authorizes the profile
retrieval using the certificate identity and business policy choices
provide by the server implementer. The profile data is obscure from
snooping using the encryption mechanisms provide by the TLS connect.
This also requires the overhead of a TLS implementation on the user
agent.
For all of these techniques the user agent should take care in how it
stores or caches the profiles to avoid theft. It is recommended that
a symmetric encryption technique such as that described in section
Section 6.1 be used. This also requires the overhead of a TLS
implementation on the user agent.
7. Differences from Simple XCAP Package
The author of this document had an action item from the July 2003
IETF SIPPING WG meeting to consider resolving the differences of the
sip-profile and simple XCAP package [I-D.ietf-simple-xcap-package].
It is the author's opinion that XCAP [I-D.rosenberg-simple-xcap] can
be supported by the framework and event package defined in this
document as it is simply a URL using the HTTP or HTTPS scheme. The
following lists the differences between the event packaged defined in
this document vs. the one defined in [I-D.ietf-simple-xcap-package].
The simple XCAP package requires that the relative path be known and
specified by the user agent when subscribing for change notification.
The event package in this document requires a token be known and
specified when subscribing. The advantage of the latter is that
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bootstrapping is easier and well defined. It also leaves the freedom
of specifying the entire path of the profile URL up to the profile
delivery server.
The event package defined in this document allows multiple URLs to be
provided in the NOTIFY request body as a result of a single token
specified in the SUBSCRIBE event parameter: profile-type. This
allows the profile delivery server to provide sets of profiles that
the user agent may not have enough information to specify in the
SUBSCRIBE URI (e.g. at boot strapping time the user agent may not
know the user's identity, but the profile delivery server may know
the default user for the device's identity) or the doc-component of
the simple XCAP package.
The simple XCAP package provides profile data changes or deltas in
the body of the NOTIFY request. This is a desirable feature, but
approach in the simple XCAP package has a few disadvantages:
o SIP signaling requires authentication, authorization and
encryption (SIPS) to protect the profiles where the event package
in this document does not. SIPS may require more resources than
are available on many user agents.
o The content of a profile change may be large, causing
fragmentation and problems or constraints when using UDP.
The feature of providing profile data changes or deltas can be
provided in the package proposed in this document by providing two
URLs in the NOTIFY request for each profile (i.e. a URL for the
complete profile and another for the changes).
All other functional differences between
draft-ietf-sipping-config-framework-00 and
draft-ietf-simple-xcap-package-00 are believed to be resolved in this
version of this document.
8. Open Issues
9. Change History
9.1 Changes from draft-ietf-sipping-config-framework-00.txt
This version of the document was entirely restructured and re-written
from the previous version as it had been micro edited too much.
All of the aspects of defining the event package are now organized in
one section and is believed to be complete and up to date with
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[RFC3265].
The URI used to subscribe to the event package is now either the user
or device address or record.
The user agent information (vendor, model, MAC and serial number) are
now provided as event header parameters.
Added a mechanism to force profile changes to be make effective by
the user agent in a specified maximum period of time.
Changed the name of the event package from sip-config to sip-profile
Three high level securityapproaches are now specified.
9.2 Changes from draft-petrie-sipping-config-framework-00.txt
Changed name to reflect SIPPING work group item
Synchronized with changes to SIP DHCP [RFC3361], SIP [RFC3261] and
[RFC3263], SIP Events [RFC3265] and content indirection
[I-D.ietf-sip-content-indirect-mech]
Moved the device identity parameters from the From field parameters
to User-Agent header parameters.
Many thanks to Rich Schaaf of Pingtel, Cullen Jennings of Cisco and
Adam Roach of Dyamicsoft for the great comments and input.
9.3 Changes from draft-petrie-sip-config-framework-01.txt
Changed the name as this belongs in the SIPPING work group.
Minor edits
9.4 Changes from draft-petrie-sip-config-framework-00.txt
Many thanks to those who contributed and commented on the previous
draft. Detailed comments were provided by Henning Schulzrinne from
Columbia U., Cullen Jennings from Cisco, Rohan Mahy from Cisco, Rich
Schaaf from Pingtel.
Split the enrollment into a single SUBSCRIBE dialog for each profile.
The 00 draft sent a single SUBSCRIBE listing all of the desired.
These have been split so that each enrollment can be routed
differently. As there is a concept of device specific and
user specific profiles, these may also be managed on separate
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servers. For instance in a roaming situation the device might get
it's profile data from a local server which knows the LAN specific
profile data. At the same time the user specific profiles might come
from the user's home environment profile delivery server.
Removed the Config-Expires header as it is largely superfluous with
the SUBSCRIBE Expires header.
Eliminated some of the complexity in the discovery mechanism.
Suggest caching information discovered about a profile delivery
server to avoid an avalanche problem when a whole building full of
devices powers up.
Added the User-Profile From header field parameter so that the device
can a request a user specific profile for a user that is different
from the device's default user.
References
[I-D.ietf-simple-xcap-package]
Rosenberg, J., "A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Event
Package for Modification Events for the Extensible Markup
Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP)
Managed Documents", draft-ietf-simple-xcap-package-00
(work in progress), June 2003.
[I-D.ietf-sip-content-indirect-mech]
Olson, S., "A Mechanism for Content Indirection in Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP) Messages",
draft-ietf-sip-content-indirect-mech-03 (work in
progress), June 2003.
[I-D.ietf-sipping-ua-prof-framewk-reqs]
Petrie, D. and C. Jennings, "Requirements for SIP User
Agent Profile Delivery Framework",
draft-ietf-sipping-ua-prof-framewk-reqs-00 (work in
progress), March 2003.
[I-D.rosenberg-simple-xcap]
Rosenberg, J., "The Extensible Markup Language (XML)
Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP)",
draft-rosenberg-simple-xcap-00 (work in progress), May
2003.
[I-D.sinnreich-sipdev-req]
Butcher, I., Lass, S., Petrie, D., Sinnreich, H. and C.
Stredicke, "SIP Telephony Device Requirements,
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Configuration and Data", draft-sinnreich-sipdev-req-02
(work in progress), October 2003.
[RFC0822] Crocker, D., "Standard for the format of ARPA Internet
text messages", STD 11, RFC 822, August 1982.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2131] Droms, R., "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol", RFC
2131, March 1997.
[RFC2132] Alexander, S. and R. Droms, "DHCP Options and BOOTP Vendor
Extensions", RFC 2132, March 1997.
[RFC2246] Dierks, T., Allen, C., Treese, W., Karlton, P., Freier, A.
and P. Kocher, "The TLS Protocol Version 1.0", RFC 2246,
January 1999.
[RFC2616] 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.
[RFC2617] Franks, J., Hallam-Baker, P., Hostetler, J., Lawrence, S.,
Leach, P., Luotonen, A. and L. Stewart, "HTTP
Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication",
RFC 2617, June 1999.
[RFC2818] Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818, May 2000.
[RFC3261] 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.
[RFC3263] Rosenberg, J. and H. Schulzrinne, "Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP): Locating SIP Servers", RFC 3263, June
2002.
[RFC3265] Roach, A., "Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-Specific
Event Notification", RFC 3265, June 2002.
[RFC3361] Schulzrinne, H., "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
(DHCP-for-IPv4) Option for Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP) Servers", RFC 3361, August 2002.
[RFC3377] Hodges, J. and R. Morgan, "Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol (v3): Technical Specification", RFC 3377,
September 2002.
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[RFC3617] Lear, E., "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) Scheme and
Applicability Statement for the Trivial File Transfer
Protocol (TFTP)", RFC 3617, October 2003.
Author's Address
Daniel Petrie
Pingtel Corp.
400 W. Cummings Park
Suite 2200
Woburn, MA 01801
US
Phone: "Dan Petrie (+1 781 970 0111)"<sip:dpetrie@pingtel.com>
EMail: dpetrie@pingtel.com
URI: http://www.pingtel.com/
Appendix A. Acknowledgments
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