Network Working Group                                 Greg Vaudreuil
       Internet Draft                                   Lucent Technologies
       Expires in six months                              February 21, 2002
     
     
     
     
                Messaging profile for telephone-based Messaging clients
     
                          <draft-vaudreuil-um-issues-00.txt>
     
     Status of this Memo
     
       This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all
       provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
     
       This document is an Internet Draft.  Internet Drafts are working
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     Abstract
     
       This document discussed issues and requirements for a profile of the
       IMAP 4, message submission, and notification protocols for use by
       telephone user interfaces delivering the traditional voice mail user
       experience.  Experience with IMAP 4 and voice mail systems has shown
       quite a few limitations that may be addressed by protocol extensions and
       standardized conventions between clients and servers.
     
     Copyright Notice
     
       Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002).  All Rights Reserved.
       Internet Draft        IMAP Profile for Voice       February 20, 2002
     
     
      Table of Contents
     
     1.   OVERVIEW..........................................................3
     2.   IMAP ISSUES.......................................................4
      2.1  Performance Issues ..............................................4
      2.2  Functional Limitations ..........................................5
     3.   MESSAGE SUBMISSION AND MESSAGE DELIVERY ISSUES....................8
      3.1  Server-assisted user message forwarding .........................8
      3.2  Quota-by-context ................................................9
      3.3  Future Delivery .................................................9
     4.   NOTIFICATION......................................................9
      4.1  Notification Support ............................................9
     5.   ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..................................................12
     6.   AUTHORS' ADDRESSES...............................................12
     7.   FULL COPYRIGHT NOTICE............................................12
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
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     1. Overview
     
       In the open standards arena, IMAP 4 is the protocol most commonly
       identified for use by a TUI for access to messages in a voice mailbox.
       IMAP4 was developed primarily as an access mechanism to text-based email
       and has evolved in many ways to support multi-media content.  The
       protocol is extensible and a large number of extensions have been made
       or are needed to full support the TUI experience of voice messaging.
     
       SMTP used for the transmission of voice messages from a telephone
       answering application needs to be optimized through use of various
       extensions and new conventions to perform at a level required for a
       large distributed system.  Greeting and spoken name play needs to be
       provided, either through LDAP, LDAP extensions, or pointers to alternate
       streaming play mechanisms.
     
       IMAP4 limitations fall into two broad categories, performance and
       functionality.  Most of these can be addressed by specific
       implementation choices, standards extensions, and standardized
       conventions shared between the message store and the client.
     
       Many limitations of commercial message store solutions are not IMAP
       protocol issues, but rather underlying logic necessary to support the
       voice mail user experience.  Lucent's proprietary message server
       supports these functions today and will continue to support these
       mechanisms when delivered over standard protocols.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
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     2. IMAP Issues
     
     2.1 Performance Issues
     
     2.1.1 Real-time playback
     
       The IMAP protocol itself does not provide streaming in the strict
       definition of the term.  It does provide for the incremental download of
       content in blocks.  Most IMAP clients do not support this behavior and
       instead download the entire contents into a temporary file to be passed
       to the application.
     
       There are several approaches to achieve real-time playback.  The first
       approach is to implement an IMAP client that can pass data incrementally
       to the application as it is received from the network. The application
       can then read bytes from the network as needed to maintain a play buffer
       and not require the full download of contents.  This approach may
       require server-side development to efficiently support partial download.
       (Avoid re-opening file and seeking to requested pointer)
     
       Alternately, the proposed IMAP channel extension can be used by the
       client to request that the servers make the selected content available
       via an alternate transport mechanism.  In this way a client can ask the
       server to make the voice data available to the client via a streaming
       media protocol such as RTSP.  This requires support on the client and
       server of a common streaming protocol.
     
       Third, given sufficient bandwidth between client and back-end data
       store, an implementation may download the entire contents before playing
       without noticeable latency.  Combined with client-side caching to avoid
       re-fetches, this strategy may work with existing message servers.
     
       It is clear that a choice be made common to the server and the client to
       provide this functionality.
     
     2.1.2 Data Size Inflation due to Text Based Transport
     
       Standard IMAP4 uses a text-based data representation scheme where all
       data is represented in a form that looks like text, that is, voice data
       must be encoded using "base 64" into a transport encoding that adds 30%
       to the size of a message.  When downloading or appending messages to the
       server, substantial additional bandwidth is utilized.
     
       Proposed Solutions
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
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       Where IMAP channel is appropriate, the external channel may be binary
       capable; that is; the external access may not require re-encoding.  Such
       mechanisms as HTTP, FTP, or RTSP are available for this download.
     
       The IMAP binary extension standards proposal extends the IMAP fetch
       command to retrieve data in the binary form.  This is especially useful
       for large attachments and other binary components.  Binary in
       conjunction with a streaming client implementation may be an attractive
       alternative to the Channel extension.
     
     2.2 Functional Limitations
     
       In addition to performance challenges, there are a number of functional
       deficiencies in the IMAP protocol.
     
     2.2.1 Mailbox Summary (Per-context counters in mailbox status command)
     
       The common TUI prompt "you have two new voice messages, six unheard
       messages, and one new fax message" requires more information than is
       made available by IMAP.  The IMAP status command provides a count of new
       and total messages with standardized attributes extracted from the
       message headers.  This pre-determined information does not include
       information about the message type.  Without defined conventions to the
       status command, a client would have to download the header for each
       message to determine its type.    (Are flags made available through the
       list command? Or do they need to be queried independently?)
     
       In standards-land, there is an effort do define an extensible mechanism
       for sending arbitrary message summary data in the LIST command.  With
       proper MTA support for the necessary message-context attribute and
       support for reading the flags, a single command can extract enough data
       to count the messages in various categories.   For adequate performance,
       the MTA must pre-parse the messages to extract the necessary information
       into an index for this request as messages are deposited.
     
       Without the standards, it is possible to use multiple virtual folders to
       achieve similar functionality.  The "inbox" can be sub-divided into
       virtual unheard, new, unheard fax, and new fax message sub-folders.  A
       folder status command issued against each sub-folder would yield the
       appropriate count.  An MTA may implement these as truly separate folders
       or may present these as virtual folders to the client while storing the
       messages in a single inbox.
     
     2.2.2 Sort by message context
     
       Voice mailboxes commonly present new voice messages first and then new
       fax messages within a single logical queue.  This requires the ability
       to sort the messages by message context.
     
     
     
     
     
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       In standards-land, there is an effort do define an extensible sort
       mechanism for sorting on arbitrary header contents.
     
       An alternative is for the client to download the headers of all messages
       and perform a local sort.  This works where mailboxes have fewer than a
       couple-dozen messages.
     
       A further alternative uses separate virtual folders to hold messages of
       different types and status, using the client to construct the expected
       user experience.
     
     2.2.3 QUOTA by message context
     
       Voice mail systems' mailboxes commonly contain voice and fax messages.
       Sometimes, such systems also support E-mail messages (text, text with
       attachments) in addition to voice messages. Similarly to the requirement
       for sort by message context -                                   - quota management is also required per
       message context.
     
       One possible use case is to prevent multiple (large) messages of one
       type (e.g. E-mail messages) to consume all available quota so that
       messages of other type (e.g. voice or fax messages) cannot be further
       deposited to the mailbox.
     
       In standards-land, there is an effort to define an extension to the
       QUOTA IMAP command to support multiple message contexts. (In addition,
       there is a parallel effort to enhance the SMTP SIZE extension for the
       same purpose).
     
     
     
     2.2.4 Status of multiple mailboxes
     
       Extension mailbox support requires the ability to efficiently status a
       mailbox other than the one currently logged into.  This facility is
       required to support submailboxes, where a common feature is to check
       whether other submailboxes in the same family group have new messages.
     
       Current mechanisms are limited to logging into each of set of mailboxes,
       checking status, logging out, and repeating until all submailboxes are
       statused.
     
     2.2.5 Outbox, Sent Items, Delete Items, Expired items, Drafts
     
       IMAP provides only a single standardized folder inbox.  Applications
       that provide features such as check receipt, deleted message recovery,
       resave, and others require the ability to access messages in pre-
       determined mailboxes with specific behaviors.  This functionality does
       not require new protocol per-se, but standardized usage and naming
       conventions necessary for interoperability.  It required that the server
     
     
     
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       provide the underlying logic to support these special folders including
       automatic insertion, scheduled copying, and periodic deletion.
     
     2.2.6 CLID Restriction / Disclosure authorization
     
       Many calling features are dependent upon collected caller-ID
       information.  Trusted clients such as the TUI, WUI, and WAP may have
       access to restricted caller-ID information for such purposes as
       callback.  Untrusted clients must not receive this information.  A
       mechanism for communicating "trust" between the client and the server is
       required to deliver this information to the end-user when appropriate.
     
       Some IMAP 4 servers can be configured to recognize certain clients by IP
       address and apply necessary CLID restriction treatment such as hiding
       addresses where CLI restriction has been indicated in the message.
     
       For systems operating in a closed network, the system may rely upon
       serving only trusted clients that protect the identity of the sender
       based on per-message markings.  This usage requires custom proxies to
       use for Internet-facing services such as downloads by PC thick-clients.
     
     2.2.7 Greeting Access and Play
     
       Voice messaging systems store multiple audio greetings files per user to
       play upon answering the phone.  This information is logically directory
       information, but the size, access patterns, and streaming requirements
       exceed the capabilities of more directory access protocols and
       underlying servers.
     
       Rather than create a new specialized store, it is common to store
       greetings as messages in a hidden or special folder. As such, it is
       natural to use the IMAP protocol for access and update of these
       greetings.  This provides the ability to update the greeting easily
       using the IMAP command.
     
       Access to the greetings requires a form of super-user access to log into
       the called party mailbox and extract the greeting.   Through
       conventions, a given server or set of servers identified by IP address
       or login password may be granted privileged access to the mailbox
       contents.
     
     2.2.8 Atomic Commit of Telephone Answering Messages into Inbox
     
       Voice messaging service has provided a high degree of reliability and
       performance for telephone answering messages.  The expectation is that
       once the caller has hung-up, the messages is in the mailbox and
       available for review.  Traditional Internet mail architecture suggests
       these messages should be sent to the mailbox via SMTP.  This approach
       has two limitations.  The first and most manageable is that the message
       forwarding may take more time than is tolerable by the subscriber.  The
       second is that the message may fail to be delivered to the mailbox, and
     
     
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       because there is no way to return notice to the caller, the message is
       "lost".
     
       The standards community is working on an alliterative to SMTP called
       Local Message Transport Protocol.  This protocol addresses a number of
       limitations in SMTP when used to provide atomic delivery to a mailbox.
       The failure modes in this proposal are carefully controlled, as are
       issues of per-message quota enforcement and message storage quota-
       override for designated administrative messages.
     
       An alternative approach is to mis-use the IMAP protocol slightly and use
       an IMAP append command to deposit a message directly into the
       subscriber's inbox.  This append must be done by a special super-user
       with write permissions into the subscribers mailbox.  Further, the
       message store must be able to trigger notification events upon insertion
       of a message into the mailbox via the Append command.  The historic
       limitation on using IMAP4 for message sending involves the inability of
       IMAP to communicate a full SMTP envelope.  For telephone answering,
       these limitations are not significant.
     
     
     
     2.2.9 Multiple Access to Mailbox
     
       If the telephone answering application client uses IMAP4 for greeting
       access and message deposit, it is essential that the server provide
       support for simultaneous login.  It is common in VoiceMail for an
       incoming call to be serviced by the telephone answering application
       client at the same time the subscribers is logged into their mailbox.
       Further, new applications such as WEB and WAP access to voicemail may
       entail simultaneous login sessions, one from the TUI client and one from
       the visual client.
     
       The standard does not preclude multiple accesses to a mailbox, but it
       does not explicitly support this practice.  The lack of explicit support
       requires the server and client to adhere to a common set of practices
       and behaviors to avoid undesirable and unpredictable behaviors.  RFC
       2180 describes a candidate set of conventions necessary to support this
       multiple-access technique.  It is not a standard.
     
     3. Message Submission and Message Delivery Issues
     
     3.1 Server-assisted user message forwarding
     
       It is common to forward messages, or to reply to messages with a copy of
       the attached content.  Today such forwarding requires the sender to
       download a complete copy of the original message, attach it to the reply
       or forward message, and resubmit the result.  For large messages, this
       represents a substantial amount of bandwidth and processing.  For
       clients connected via long-thin pipes, alternatives are required.
     
     
     
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       One approach is to define an extension to message submission to request
       the submission server to resolve embedded URL's within a message before
       relaying the message to the final destination.
     
     
     
     3.2 Quota-by-context
     
       It is common in a unified messaging system to offer separate quota's for
       each of several message contexts to avoid the condition where a flood of
       email fills the mailbox and prevents the subscriber from receiving voice
       messages via the telephone.  It is necessary to extend the protocols to
       support the reporting of the "mailbox full" status based on the context
       of the submitted message.
     
       Clear security issues are involved to prevent the mis-identification of
       a message context for the purpose of intentionally filling a subscribers
       mailbox.  It is envisioned that the message submission protocol will
       support authentication of trusted submission agents authorized to submit
       distinguished messages.
     
     
     
     3.3 Future Delivery
     
       Traditionally messages sent with "future delivery" are held in the
       recipients client "outbox" or equivalent until the appointed submission
       time.  Think clients used for WEB or TUI do not have such persistent
       storage and must rely upon server-based outbox queues.
     
       Such support requires extensions to message submission protocols to
       identify a message as requiring queuing for future delivery.  Extensions
       to IMAP4 or conventions are required to view and manipulate the outbound
       queue, for such purposes as cancelling a future message.  Server support
       for managing such a queue is required such that message are sent when
       they are intended.
     
     4. Notification
     
     4.1 Notification Support
     
       Voicemail systems traditionally notify subscribers on certain events
       happening in their mailbox. For example, it is common to send an SMS, or
       a pager notification for new message arrival, when messages have been
       read (and are not considered "new" anymore), mailbox full etc.
     
       When implemented over IMAP-based message stores, voice mail system need
       to be notified about these events. Furthermore, when other applications
       are accessing/manipulating the mailbox, it is desirable that a
       notification component (which is sometimes part of the voicemail
     
     
     
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       application) gets notifications from the message store about these
       events, so that it can produce the desired user notification.
     
       The standards community is working on a standard for "Simple
       Notification and Alarm Protocol (SNAP)" that defines the expected
       behavior of the message store for various events, much of them triggered
       by IMAP commands.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
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     4.1.1 References
     
     [VPIM2] Vaudreuil, Greg, Parsons, Glenn, "Voice Profile for Internet Mail,
        Version 2", RFC 2421, September 1998.
     
         "IMAP4 Binary Content Extension", 01/18/2002, <draft-nerenberg-imap-
       binary-06.txt>
     
         "IMAP4 Channel Transport Mechanism", 11/27/2001, <draft-nerenberg-
       imap-channel-01.txt>
     
         "LMTP Service Extension for Ignoring Recipient Quotas", 08/30/2001,
       <draft-murchison-lmtp-ignorequota-01.txt>
     
         "Message Context for Internet Mail", 06/05/2001,  <draft-ietf-vpim-
       hint-07.txt>
     
          "Simple Notification and Alarm Protocol (SNAP)", 12/20/2001<draft-
       shapira-snap-02.txt>
     
       RFC 2476,   Message Submission. R. Gellens, J. Klensin. December 1998.
       (Status: PROPOSED STANDARD)
     
       RFC 2033,  Local Mail Transfer Protocol. J. Myers. October 1996.
       (Status: INFORMATIONAL)
     
       RFC 2086,  IMAP4 ACL extension. J. Myers. January 1997. (Status:
       PROPOSED STANDARD)
     
       RFC 2087 IMAP4 QUOTA extension. J. Myers. January 1997. (Status:
       PROPOSED STANDARD)
     
       RFC 2180,  IMAP4 Multi-Accessed Mailbox Practice. M. Gahrns. July 1997.
       (Status: INFORMATIONAL)
     
       RFC 2221,  IMAP4 Login Referrals. M. Gahrns. October 1997. (Status:
       PROPOSED STANDARD)
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
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     5. Acknowledgments
     
       Ari Erev and Naom Shapira have contributed substantial requirements to
       this document.
     
     6. Authors' Addresses
     
     
     
       Gregory M. Vaudreuil
       Lucent Technologies
       7291 Williamson Rd
       Dallas, TX  75214
       United States
     
       Phone/Fax: +1-972-733-2722
       Email: GregV@ieee.org
     
     
     
     7. Full Copyright Notice
     
       "Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.
     
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