SIPPING                                                     J. Rosenberg
Internet-Draft                                                     Cisco
Intended status: Informational                         February 24, 2008
Expires: August 27, 2008


  Identification of Communications Services in the Session Initiation
                             Protocol (SIP)
              draft-ietf-sipping-service-identification-01

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2008).

Abstract

   This document considers the problem of service identification in the
   Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).  Service identification is the
   process of determining the user-level use case that is driving the
   signaling being utilized by the user agent.  This document discusses
   the uses of service identification, and outlines several
   architectural principles behind the process.  It identifies several
   perils associated with service identification, including fraud,



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   interoperability failures and stifling of innovation.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  Services and Service Identification  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.  Example Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     3.1.  IPTV vs. Multimedia  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     3.2.  Gaming vs. Voice Chat  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     3.3.  Configuration vs. Pager Messaging  . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   4.  Using Service Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     4.1.  Application Invocation in the User Agent . . . . . . . . .  6
     4.2.  Application Invocation in the Network  . . . . . . . . . .  8
     4.3.  Network Quality of Service Authorization . . . . . . . . .  8
     4.4.  Service Authorization  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     4.5.  Accounting and Billing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     4.6.  Negotiation of Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     4.7.  Dispatch to Devices  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   5.  Key Principles of Service Identification . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     5.1.  Services are a By-Product of Signaling . . . . . . . . . . 10
     5.2.  Identical Signaling Produces Identical Services  . . . . . 11
     5.3.  Do What I Say, not What I Mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
     5.4.  Explicit Service Identifiers are Redundant . . . . . . . . 12
   6.  Perils of Explicit Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     6.1.  Fraud  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     6.2.  Systematic Interoperability Failures . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     6.3.  Stifling of Service Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   7.  Recommendations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   8.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   9.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   11. Informational References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 19
















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1.  Introduction

   The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) [RFC3261] defines mechanisms
   for initiating and managing communications sessions between agents.
   SIP allows for a broad array of session types between agents.  It can
   manage audio sessions, ranging from low bitrate voice-only up to
   multi-channel hi fidelity music.  It can manage video sessions,
   ranging from small, "talking-head" style video chat, up to high
   definition multipoint video conferencing, to low bandwidth user-
   generated content, up to high definition movie and TV content.  SIP
   endpoints can be anything - adaptors that convert an old analog
   telephone to Voice over IP (VoIP), dedicated hardphones, fancy
   hardphones with rich displays and user entry capabilities, softphones
   on a PC, buddylist and presence applications on a PC, dedicated
   videoconferencing peripherals, and speakerphones.

   This breadth of applicability is SIP's greatest asset, but it also
   introduces numerous challenges.  One of these is that, when an
   endpoint generates a SIP INVITE for a session, or receives one, that
   session can potentially be within the context of any number of
   different use cases and endpoint types.  For example, a SIP INVITE
   with a single audio stream could represent a Push-To-Talk session
   between mobile devices, a VoIP session between softphones, or audio-
   based access to stored content on a server.

   These differing use cases have driven implementors and system
   designers to seek techniques for service identification.  Service
   identification is the process of determining and/or signaling the
   specific use case that is driving the signaling being generated by a
   user agent.  At first glance, this seems harmless and easy enough.
   It is tempting to define a new header, "Service-ID", for example, and
   have a user agent populate it with any number of well-known tokens
   which define what the service is.  It could then be consumed for any
   number of purposes.  A service identifier placed into the signaling
   is called an explicit service identifier.

   Explicit service identifiers have many problems, however.  They are
   redundant with the signaling itself (which is the ultimate expression
   of the service that is desired), and are an example of Do-What-I-Mean
   (DWIM).  Consequently, their usage can lead to fraud, systemic
   interoperability failures, and a complete stifling of the innovation
   that SIP was meant to achieve.  The purpose of this document is to
   describe service identification in more detail and describe how these
   problems arise.

   Section 2 begins by defining a service and the service identification
   problem.  Section 3 gives some concrete examples of services and why
   they can be challenging to identify.  Section 4 explores the ways in



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   which a service identification can be utilized within a network.
   Next, Section 5 discusses the key architectural principles of service
   identification.  Section 6 describes how explicit service identifiers
   can lead to fraud, interoperability failures, and stifling of service
   innovation.


2.  Services and Service Identification

   The problem of identifying services within SIP is not a new one.  The
   problem has been considered extensively in the context of presence.
   In particular, the presence data model for SIP [RFC4479] defines the
   concept of a service as one of the core notions that presence
   describes.  Services are described in Section 3.3 of RFC 4479.

   Essentially, the service is the user-visible use case that is driving
   the behavior of the user-agents and servers in the SIP network.
   Being user-visible means that there is a difference in user
   experience between two services that are different.  That user
   experience can be part of the call, or outside of the call.  Within a
   call, the user experience can be based on different media types (an
   audio call vs. a video chat), different content within a particular
   media type (stored content, such as a movie or TV session), different
   devices (a wireless device for "telephony" vs. a PC application for
   "voice-chat"), different user interfaces (a buddy list view of voice
   on a PC application vs. a software emulation of a hard phone),
   different communities that can be accessed (voice chat with other
   users that have the same voice chat client, vs. voice communications
   with any endpoint on the PSTN), or different applications that are
   invoked by the user (manually selecting a push-to-talk application
   from a wireless phone vs. a telephony application).  Outside of a
   call, the difference in user experience can be a billing one (cheaper
   for one service than other), a notification feature for one and not
   another (for example, an IM that gets sent whenever a user makes a
   call), and so on.

   In some cases, there is very little difference in the underlying
   technology that will support two different services, and in other
   cases, there are big differences.  However, for purposes of this
   discussion, the key definition is that two services are distinct when
   there is a perceived difference by the user in the two services.

   This leads naturally to the desire to perform service identification.
   Service identification is defined as the process of (1) determination
   of the underlying service which is driving a particular signaling
   exchange, (2) associating that service with some kind of moniker, and
   (3) attaching that moniker to a signaling message (typically a SIP
   INVITE), and then utilizing it for various purposes within the



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   network.  Service identification can be done in the endpoints, in
   which case the UA would insert the moniker directly into the
   signaling message based on its awareness of the service.  Or, it can
   be done within a server in the network (such as a proxy), based on
   inspection of the SIP message, or based on hints placed into the
   message by the user.


3.  Example Services

   It is very useful to consider several example services, especially
   ones that appear difficult to differentiate from each other.

3.1.  IPTV vs. Multimedia

   IP Television (IPTV) is the usage of IP networks to access
   traditional television content, such as movies and shows.  SIP can be
   utilized to establish a session to a media server in a network, which
   then serves up multimedia content and streams it as an audio and
   video stream towards the client.  Whether SIP is ideal for IPTV is,
   in itself, a good question.  However, such a discussion is outside
   the scope of this document.

   Consider multimedia conferencing.  The user accesses a voice and
   video conference at a conference server.  The user might join in
   listen-only mode, in which case the user receives audio and video
   streams, but does not send.

   These two services - IPTV and listen-only multimedia conferencing,
   clearly appear as different services.  They have different user
   experiences and applications.  A user is unlikely to ever be confused
   about whether a session is IPTV or listen-only multimedia
   conferencing.  Indeed, they are likely to have different software
   applications or endpoints for the two services.

   However, these two services look remarkably alike based on the
   signaling.  Both utilize audio and video.  Both could utilize the
   same codecs.  Both are unidirectional streams (from a server in the
   network to the client).  Thus, it would appear on the surface that
   there is no way to differentiate them, based on inspection of the
   signaling alone.

3.2.  Gaming vs. Voice Chat

   Consider an interactive game, played between two users from their
   mobile devices.  The game involves the users sending each other game
   moves, using a messaging channel, in addition to voice.  In another
   service, users have a voice and IM chat conversation using a buddy



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   list application on their PC.

   In both services, there are two media streams - audio and messaging.
   The audio uses the same codecs.  Both use the Message Session Relay
   Protocol (MSRP) [RFC4975].  In both cases, the caller would send an
   INVITE to the Address of Record (AOR) of the target user.  However,
   these represent fairly different services, in terms of user
   experience.

3.3.  Configuration vs. Pager Messaging

   The SIP MESSAGE method [RFC3428] provides a way to send one-shot
   messages to a particular AOR.  This specification is primarily aimed
   at Short Message Service (SMS) style messaging, commonly found in
   wireless phones.  Receipt of a MESSAGE request would cause the
   messaging application on a phone to launch, allowing the user to
   browse message history and respond.

   However, MESSAGE is sometimes used for the delivery of content to a
   device for other purposes.  For example, some providers use it to
   deliver configuration updates, such as new phone settings or
   parameters, or to indicate that a new version of firmware is
   available.  Though not designed for this purpose, MESSAGE gets used
   since, in existing wireless networks, SMS is used for this purpose,
   and MESSAGE is the SIP equivalent of SMS.

   Consequently, the MESSAGE request sent to a phone can be for two
   different services.  One would require invocation of a messaging app,
   whereas the other would be consumed by the software in the phone,
   without any user interaction at all.


4.  Using Service Identification

   It is important to understand what the service identity would be
   utilized for, if known.  This section discusses the primary uses.
   These are application invocation in user agents and the network,
   Quality of Service authorization, service authorization, accounting
   and billing, service negotiation, and device dispatch.

4.1.  Application Invocation in the User Agent

   In some of the examples above, there were multiple software
   applications executing on the host.  One common way of achieving this
   is to utilize a common SIP user agent implementation that listens for
   requests on a single port.  When an incoming INVITE or MESSAGE
   arrives, it must be delivered to the appropriate application
   software.  When each service is bound to a distinct software



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   application, it would seem that the service identity is needed to
   dispatch the message to the appropriate piece of software.  This is
   shown in Figure 1.

                            +---------------------------------+
                            |                                 |
                            | +-------------+ +-------------+ |
                            | |     UI      | |     UI      | |
                            | +-------------+ +-------------+ |
                            | +-------------+ +-------------+ |
                            | |             | |             | |
                            | |  Service 1  | |  Service 2  | |
                            | |             | |             | |
                            | +-------------+ +-------------+ |
                            | +-----------------------------+ |
                            | |                             | |
                            | |             SIP             | |
                            | |            Layer            | |
                            | |                             | |
                            | +-----------------------------+ |
                            |                                 |
                            +---------------------------------+

                                      Physical Device

                                 Figure 1

   The role of the SIP layer is to parse incoming messages, handle the
   SIP state machinery for transactions and dialogs, and then dispatch
   request to the appropriate service.  This software architecture is
   analagous to the way web servers frequently work.  An HTTP server
   listens on port 80 for requests, and based on the HTTP Request-URI,
   dispatches the request to a number of disparate applications.  The
   same is happening here.  For the example services in Section 3.2, an
   incoming INVITE for the gaming service would be delivered to the
   gaming application software.  An incoming INVITE for the voice chat
   service would be delivered to the voice chat application software.
   For the examples in Section 3.3, a MESSAGE request for user to user
   messaging would be delivered to the messaging or SMS app, and a
   MESSAGE request containing configuration data would be delivered to a
   configuration update application.

   Unlike the web, however, in all three use cases, the user initiating
   communications has only a single identifier for the recipient - their
   AOR.  Consequently, the SIP Request-URI cannot be used for
   dispatching, as it is identical in all three cases.





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4.2.  Application Invocation in the Network

   Another usage of a service identifier would be to cause servers in
   the SIP network to provide additional processing, based on the
   service.  For example, an INVITE issued by a user agent for IPTV
   would pass through a server that does some kind of content rights
   management, authorizing whether the user is allowed to access that
   content.  On the other hand, an INVITE issued by a user for
   multimedia conferencing would pass through a server providing
   "traditional" telephony features, such as outbound call screening and
   call recording.  It would make no sense for the INVITE associated
   with IPTV to have outbound call screening and call recording applied,
   and it would make no sense for the multimedia conferencing INVITE to
   be processed by the content rights management server.  Indeed, in
   these cases, it's not just an efficiency issue (invoking servers when
   not needed), but rather, truly incorrect behavior can occur.  For
   example, if an outbound call screening application is set to block
   outbound calls to everything except for the phone numbers of friends
   and family, an IPTV request that gets processed by such a server
   would be blocked (as it's not targeted to the AOR of a friend or
   family member).  This would block a user's attempt to access IPTV
   services, when that was not the goal at all.

   Similarly, a MESSAGE request from Section 3.3 might need to pass
   through a message server for filtering when it is associated with
   chat, but not when it is associated with config.  Consider a filter
   which gets applied to MESSAGE requests, and that filter runs in a
   server in the network.  The filter operation prevents user Joe from
   sending messages to user Bob that contain the words "stock" or
   "purchase", due to some regulations that disallow Joe and Bob from
   discussing stock trading.  However, a MESSAGE for configuration
   purposes might contain an XML document that uses the token "stock" as
   some kind of attribute.  This configuration update would be discarded
   by the filtering server, when it should not have been.

4.3.  Network Quality of Service Authorization

   The IP network can provide differing levels of Quality of Service
   (QoS) to IP packets.  This service can include guaranteed throughput,
   latency, or loss characteristics.  Typically, the user agent will
   make some kind of QoS request, either using explicit signaling
   protocols (such as RSVP) or through marking of Diffserv value in
   packets.  The network will need to make a policy decision based on
   whether these QoS treatments are authorized or not.  One common
   authorization policy is to check if the user has invoked a service
   using SIP that they are authorized to invoke, and that this service
   requires the level of QoS treatment the user has requested.




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   For example, consider IPTV and multimedia conferencing as described
   in Section 3.1.  IPTV is a non-real time service.  Consequently,
   media traffic for IPTV would be authorized for bandwidth guarantees,
   but not for latency or loss guarantees.  On the other hand,
   multimedia conferencing is real time.  Its traffic would require
   bandwidth, loss and latency guarantees from the network.

   Consequently, if a user should make an RSVP reservation for a media
   stream, and ask for latency guarantees for that stream, the network
   would like to be able to authorize it if the service was multimedia
   conferencing, but not if it was IPTV.  This would require the server
   performing the QoS authorization to know the service associated with
   the INVITE that set up the session.

4.4.  Service Authorization

   Frequently, a network administrator will want to authorize whether a
   user is allowed to invoke a particular service.  Not all users will
   be authorized to use all services that are provided.  For example, a
   user may not be authorized to access IPTV services, whereas they are
   authorized to utilize multimedia processing.  A user might not be
   able to utilize a multiplayer gaming service, whereas they are
   authorized to utilize voice chat services.

   Consequently, when an INVITE arrives at a server in the network, the
   server will need to determine what the requested service is, so that
   the server can make an authorization decision.

4.5.  Accounting and Billing

   Service authorization and accounting/billing go hand in hand.  One of
   the primary reasons for authorizing that a user can utilize a service
   is that they are being billed differently based on the type of
   service.  Consequently, one of the goals of a service identity is to
   be able to include it in accounting records, so that the appropriate
   billing model can be applied.

   For example, in the case of IPTV, a service provider can bill based
   on the content (US $5 per movie, perhaps), whereas for multimedia
   conferencing, they can bill by the minute.  This requires the
   accounting streams to indicate which service was invoked for the
   particular session.

4.6.  Negotiation of Service

   In some cases, when the caller initiates a session, they don't
   actually know which service will be utilized.  Rather, they might
   like to offer up all of the services they have available to the



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   called party, and then let the called party decide, or let the system
   make a decision based on overlapping service capabilities.

   As an example, a user can do both the game and the voice chat service
   of Section 3.2.  They initiate a session to a target AOR, but the
   devices used by that user can only support voice chat.  The called
   device returns, in its call acceptance, an indication that only voice
   chat can be used.  Consequently, voice chat gets utilized for the
   session.

4.7.  Dispatch to Devices

   When a user has multiple devices, each with varying capabilities in
   terms of service, it is useful to dispatch an incoming request to the
   right device based on whether the device can support the service that
   has been requested.

   For example, if a user initiates a gaming session with voice chat,
   and the target user has two devices - one that can support the gaming
   service, and the other that cannot, the INVITE should be dispatched
   to the device which supports the gaming session.


5.  Key Principles of Service Identification

   In this section, we describe three key principles of service
   identification:

   1.  Services are a by-product of signaling

   2.  Identical signaling produces identical services

   3.  Explicit service identifiers are an example of Do-What-I-Mean
       (DWIM)

   4.  Explicit service identifiers are redundant

5.1.  Services are a By-Product of Signaling

   Almost always, the first solution that people consider is to add some
   kind of field to the signaling messages which indicates what the
   service is.  This field would then be inserted by the user agent, and
   then can be used by the proxies and other user agent as a service
   identifier.

   This approach, however, misses a key point, which cannot be stressed
   enough, and which represents the core architectural principle to be
   understood here:



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      A service is the by-product of the signaling and the context
      around it (the user profile, time-of-day and so on) - the effects
      of the signaling message once launched into the network.  The
      service identity is therefore always derivable from the signaling
      and its context without additional identifiers.

   When a user sends an INVITE request to the network, and targets that
   request at an IPTV server, and includes SDP for audio and video
   streaming, the *result* of sending such an INVITE is that an IPTV
   session occurs.  The entire purpose of the INVITE is to establish
   such a session, and therefore, invoke the service.  Thus, a service
   is not something that is different from the rest of the signaling
   message.  A service is what the user gets after the network and other
   user agents have processed a signaling message.

5.2.  Identical Signaling Produces Identical Services

   This principle is a natural conclusion of the previous assertion.  If
   a service is the byproduct of signaling, how can a user have
   different experiences and different services when the signaling
   message is the same?  They cannot.

   But how can that be?  From the examples in Section 3, it would seem
   that there are services which are different, but have identical
   signaling.  If we hold true to the assertion, there is in fact only
   one logical conclusion:

      If two services are different, but their signaling appears to be
      the same, it is because there is in fact something different that
      has been overlooked, or something has been implied from the
      signaling which should have been signaled explicitly.

   To illustrate this, let us take each of the example services in
   Section 3 and investigate whether there is, or should be, something
   different in the signaling in each case.

   IPTV vs. Multimedia Conferencing:  The two services in Section 3.1
      appear to have identical signaling.  They both involve audio and
      video streams, both of which are unidirectional.  Both might
      utilize the same codecs.  However, there is another important
      difference in the signaling - the target URI.  In the case of
      IPTV, the request is targeted at a media server or to a particular
      piece of content to be viewed.  In the case of multimedia
      conferencing, the target is a conference server.  The
      administrator of the domain can therefore examine the two Request-
      URI, and figure out whether it is targeted for a conference server
      or a content server, and use that to derive the service associated
      with the request.



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   Gaming vs. Voice Chat:  Though both sessions involve MSRP and voice,
      and both are targeted to the same AOR of the called user, there is
      a difference.  The MSRP messages for the gaming session carry
      content which is game specific, whereas the MSRP messages for the
      voice chat are just regular text, meant for rendering to a user.
      Thus, the MSRP session in the SDP will indicate the specific
      content type that MSRP is carrying, and this type will differ in
      both cases.  Even if the game moves look like text, since they are
      being consumed by an automata there is an underlying schema that
      dictates their content, and therefore, this schema represents the
      actual content type that should be signaled.

   Configuration vs. Pager Messaging:  Just as in the case of gaming vs.
      voice chat, the content type of the messages differentiates the
      service that occurs as a consequence of the messages.

5.3.  Do What I Say, not What I Mean

   An explicit service identifier is a field included in the signaling
   message that contains a token whose value indicates the specific
   service invoked by the calling user.  This would be "IPTV" or "voice
   chat" or "shoot-em game" or "short message service".  This explicit
   identifier would typically be inserted by the originating user agent,
   and carried in the signaling message.

   "Do What I Mean", abbreviated as DWIM, is a concept in computer
   science.  It is sometimes used to describe a function which tries to
   intelligently guess at what the user intended.  It is contrast to "Do
   What I Say", or DWIS, which describes a function that behaves
   concretely based on the inputs provided.  Systems built on the DWIM
   concept can have unexpected behaviors because they are driven by
   unstated rules.

   An explicit service identifier is an example of a DWIM approach.  An
   explicit service identifier itself has no well-defined impact on the
   state machinery or protocols in the system; it has various side-
   effects based on an assumption of what is meant by the service
   identifier.  Interpretation of the signaling directly is an
   expression of the principle of DWIS - the behavior of the system is
   based entirely on the specifics of the protocol and are well defined
   by the protocol specification.

5.4.  Explicit Service Identifiers are Redundant

   Because an explicit service identifier is, by definition, inside of
   the signaling message, and because the signaling itself completely
   defines the behavior of the service, another natural conclusion is
   that an explicit service identifier is redundant with the signaling



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   itself.  It says nothing that could not otherwise be derived from
   examination of the signaling.


6.  Perils of Explicit Identifiers

   Based on these principles, several perils of an explicit service
   identifier can be described.  They are:

   1.  Explicit identifiers can be used for fraud

   2.  Explicit identifiers can hurt interoperability

   3.  Explicit identifiers can stifle service innovation

6.1.  Fraud

   Explicit service identifiers can lead to fraud.  If a provider uses
   the service identifier for billing and accounting purposes, or for
   authorization purposes, it opens an avenue for attack.  The user can
   construct the signaling message so that its actual effect (which is
   the service the user will receive), is what the user desires, but the
   user places a service identifier into the request (which is what is
   used for billing and authorization) that identifies a cheaper
   service, or one that the user is authorized to receive.  In such a
   case, the user will be billed for something they did not receive.

   If, however, the domain administrator derived the service identifier
   from the signaling itself, the user cannot lie.  If they did lie,
   they wouldn't get the desired service.

   Consider the example of IPTV vs. multimedia conferencing.  If
   multimedia conferencing is cheaper, the user could send an INVITE for
   an IPTV session, but include a service identifier which indicates
   multimedia conferencing.  The user gets the service associated with
   IPTV, but at the cost of multimedia conferencing.

   This same principle shows up in other places.  For example, in the
   identification of an emergency services call
   [I-D.ietf-ecrit-framework].  It is desirable to give emergency
   services calls special treatment, such as being free, authorized even
   when the user cannot otherwise make calls, and to give them priority.
   If emergency calls where indicated through something other than the
   target of the call being an emergency services URN [RFC5031], it
   would open an avenue for fraud.  The user could place any desired URI
   in the request-URI, and indicate that the call is an emergency
   services call.  This could would then get special treatment, but of
   course get routed to the target URI.  The only way to prevent this



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   fraud is to consider an emergency call as any call whose target is an
   emergency services URN.  Thus, the service identification here is
   based on the target of the request.  When the target is an emergency
   services URN, the request can get special treatment.  The user cannot
   lie, since there is no way to separately indicate this is an
   emergency call, besides targeting it to an emergency URN.

6.2.  Systematic Interoperability Failures

   How can inclusion of an explicit service identifier cause loss of
   interoperability?  When such an identifier is used to drive
   functionality - such as dispatch on the phones, in the network, or
   QoS authorization, it means that the wrong thing can happen when this
   field is not set properly.  Consider a user in domain 1, calling a
   user in domain 2.  Domain 1 provides the user with a service they
   call "voice chat", which utilizes voice and IM for real time
   conversation, driven off of a buddy list application on a PC.  Domain
   2 provides their users with a service they call, "text telephony",
   which is a voice service on a wireless device that also allows the
   user to send text messages.  Consider the case where domain 1 and
   domain 2 both have their user agents insert a service identifiers
   into the request, and then use that to derive QoS authorization,
   accounting, and invocation of applications in the network and in the
   device.  The user in domain 1 calls the user in domain 2, and inserts
   the identifier "Voice Chat" into the INVITE.  When this arrives at
   the server in domain 2, the service identifier is unknown.
   Consequently, the request does not get the proper QoS treatment, even
   if the call itself will succeed.

   Explicit service identifiers, used between domains, cause
   interoperability failures unless all interconnected domains agree on
   exactly the same set of services and how to name them.  Of course,
   lack of service identifiers does not guarantee service
   interoperability.  However, SIP was built with rich tools for
   negotiation of capabilities at a finely granular level.  One user
   agent can make a call using audio and video, but if the receiving UA
   only supports audio, SIP allows both sides to negotiate down to the
   lowest common denominator.  Thus, communications is still provided.
   As another example, if one agent initiates a Push-To-Talk session
   (which is audio with a companion floor control mechanism), and the
   other side only did regular audio, SIP would be able to negotiate
   back down to a regular voice call.  As another example, if a calling
   user agent is running a high-definition video conferencing endpoint,
   and the called user agent supports just a regular video endpoint, the
   codecs themselves can negotiate downward to a lower rate, picture
   size, and so on.  Thus, interoperability is achieved.  Interestingly,
   the final "service" may no longer be well characterized by the
   service identifier that would have been placed in the original



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   INVITE.  For example, in this case, of the original INVITE from the
   caller had contained the service identifier, "hi-fi video", but the
   video gets negotiated down to a lower rate and picture size, the
   service identifier is no longer really appropriate.

   This illustrates another key aspect of the interoperability problem.
   Usage of explicit service identifiers in the request will result in
   inconsistencies between those service identifiers and the results of
   any SIP negotiation that might otherwise be applied in the session.

   When a service identifier becomes something that both proxies and the
   user agent need to understand in order to properly treat a request,
   it becomes equivalent to including a token in the Proxy-Require and
   Require header fields of every single SIP request.  The very reason
   that [RFC4485] frowns upon usage of Require and certainly Proxy-
   Require is the huge impact on interoperability it causes.  It is for
   this same reason that explicit service identifiers need to be
   avoided.

6.3.  Stifling of Service Innovation

   The probability that any two pair of service providers end up with
   the same set of services, and give them the same names, becomes
   decreasingly small as the number of providers grow.  Indeed, it would
   almost certainly require a centralized authority to identify what the
   services are, how they work, and what they are named.  This, in turn,
   leads to a requirement for complete homogeneity in order to
   facilitate interconnection.  Two providers cannot usefully
   interconnect unless they agree on the set of services they are
   offering to their customers, and each do the same thing.  This is
   because each provider has become dependent on inclusion of the proper
   service identifier in the request, in order for the overall treatment
   of the request to proceed correctly.  This is, in a very real sense,
   anathema to the entire notion of SIP, which is built on the idea that
   heterogeneous domains can interconnect and still get
   interoperability.

   Explicit service identifiers lead to a requirement for homogeneity in
   service definitions across providers that interconnect, ruining the
   very service heterogeneity that SIP was meant to bring.

   Indeed, Metcalfe's law says that the value of a network grows with
   the square of the number of participants.  As a consequence of this,
   once a bunch of large domains did get together, agree on a set of
   services, and then a set of well-known identifiers for those
   services, it would force other providers to also deploy the same
   services, in order to obtain the value that interconnection brings.
   This, in turn, will stifle innovation, and quickly force the set of



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   services in SIP to become fixed and never expand beyond the ones
   initially agreed upon.  This, too, is anathema to the very framework
   on which SIP is built, and defeats much of the purpose of why
   providers have chosen to deploy SIP in their own networks:

   Consider the following example.  Several providers get together, and
   standardize on a bunch of service identifiers.  One of these uses
   audio and video (say, "multimedia conversation").  This service is
   successful, and is widely utilized.  Endpoints look for this
   identifier to dispatch calls to the right software applications, and
   the network looks for it to invoke features, perform accouting, and
   QoS.  A new provider gets the idea for a new service, say, avatar-
   enhanced multimedia conversation.  In this service, there is audio
   and video, but there is a third stream, which renders an avatar.  A
   caller can press buttons on their phone, to cause the avatar on the
   other person's device to show emotion, make noise, and so on.  This
   is similar to the way emoticons are used today in IM.  This service
   is enabled by adding a third media stream (and consequently, third
   m-line) to the SDP.

   Normally, this service would be backwards compatible with a regular
   audio-video endpoint, which would just reject the third media stream.
   However, because a large network has been deployed that is expecting
   to see the token, "multimedia conversation" and its associated audio+
   video service, it is nearly impossible for the new provider to roll
   out this new service.  If they did, it would fail completely, or
   partially fail, when their users call users in other provider
   domains.


7.  Recommendations

   From these principles, several recommendations can be made:

   o  Systems needing to perform service identification must examine
      existing signaling constructs to identify the service based on
      fields that exist within the signaling message already.

   o  If it appears that the signaling currently defined in standards is
      not sufficient to identify the service, it may be due to lack of
      sufficient signaling to convey what is needed, and new standards
      work should be undertaken to fill this gap.

   o  The usage of an explicit service identifier does make sense as a
      way to cache a decision made by a network element, for usage by
      another network element within the same domain.  However, service
      identifiers are fundamentally useful within a particular domain,
      and any such header must be stripped at a network boundary.



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   o  Device dispatch should be done following the principles of
      [RFC3841], using implicit preferences based on the signaling.  For
      example, [I-D.rosenberg-sip-app-media-tag] defines a new UA
      capability that can be used to dispatch requests based on
      different types of application media streams.

   o  Presence can help a great deal with service indentification.  When
      a user wishes to contact another user, and knows only the AOR for
      the target (which is usually the case), the user can fetch the
      presence document for the target.  That document, in turn, can
      contain numerous service URI for contacting the target with
      different services.  The usage of different URI for contacting
      different services makes it very easy to identify the service -
      it's the actual target of the request itself.  When possible, this
      is the best solution to the problem.


8.  Security Considerations

   Oftentimes, the service associated with a request is utilized for
   purposes such as authorization, accounting, and billing.  When
   service identification is not done properly, the possibility of
   unauthorized service use and network fraud is introduced.  It is for
   this reason, discussed extensively in Section 6.1, that the usage of
   explicit service identifiers inserted by a UA is not recommended.


9.  IANA Considerations

   There are no IANA considerations associated with this specification.


10.  Acknowledgements

   This document is based on discussions with Paul Kyzivat and Andrew
   Allen, who contributed significantly to the ideas here.  Much of the
   content in this draft is a result of discussions amongst participants
   in the SIPPING mailing list, including Dean Willis, Tom Taylor, Eric
   Burger, Dale Worley, Christer Holmberg, and John Elwell, amongst many
   others.  Thanks to Spencer Dawkins, Tolga Asveren, Mahesh Anjanappa
   and Claudio Allochio for reviews of this document.


11.  Informational References

   [RFC3261]  Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston,
              A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E.
              Schooler, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261,



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              June 2002.

   [RFC4479]  Rosenberg, J., "A Data Model for Presence", RFC 4479,
              July 2006.

   [RFC4485]  Rosenberg, J. and H. Schulzrinne, "Guidelines for Authors
              of Extensions to the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)",
              RFC 4485, May 2006.

   [RFC4975]  Campbell, B., Mahy, R., and C. Jennings, "The Message
              Session Relay Protocol (MSRP)", RFC 4975, September 2007.

   [RFC5031]  Schulzrinne, H., "A Uniform Resource Name (URN) for
              Emergency and Other Well-Known Services", RFC 5031,
              January 2008.

   [I-D.ietf-ecrit-framework]
              Rosen, B., Schulzrinne, H., Polk, J., and A. Newton,
              "Framework for Emergency Calling using Internet
              Multimedia", draft-ietf-ecrit-framework-04 (work in
              progress), November 2007.

   [I-D.rosenberg-sip-app-media-tag]
              Rosenberg, J., "A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Media
              Feature Tag for MIME Application  Sub-Types",
              draft-rosenberg-sip-app-media-tag-02 (work in progress),
              November 2007.

   [RFC3428]  Campbell, B., Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Huitema, C.,
              and D. Gurle, "Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Extension
              for Instant Messaging", RFC 3428, December 2002.

   [RFC3841]  Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., and P. Kyzivat, "Caller
              Preferences for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)",
              RFC 3841, August 2004.


Author's Address

   Jonathan Rosenberg
   Cisco
   Edison, NJ
   US

   Email: jdrosen@cisco.com
   URI:   http://www.jdrosen.net





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