Internet Engineering Task Force                     Eric Zimmerer
Internet Draft                                      ipVerse, Inc.
draft-zimmerer-sip-isup-mime-00.txt                 Aparna Vemuri
October 1999                               Level 3 Communications
Expires: April 2000

                       The SIP ISUP/MIME type

Status of this Memo

This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance
with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.  Internet-Drafts are
working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its
areas, and its working groups.  Note that other groups may also
distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt

The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.

1. Abstract

This document  proposes the definition of an application/ISUP media
type, according to the rules defined in RFC 2048 [1].

2. Introduction

ISUP (ISDN User part) defined in the ITU-T recommendations Q.761-4 is
a signaling protocol used between telephony switches. There exists a
need to transport ISUP messages between SoftSwitches as being part of
the payload of SIP [2] messages. The following discussion is specific
to this usage and would not apply to the transportation of ISUP
messages in other applications.

3. The application/ISUP media type

The ISUP messages are composed of arbitrary binary data. The best way
to encode these would be to use binary encoding. This is in
conformance with the restrictions imposed on the use of binary data

Zimmerer, Vemuri  draft-zimmerer-sip-isup-mime-00.txt  [Page 1]


Internet Draft     The SIP ISUP/MIME type            Oct 1999

conformance with the restrictions imposed on the use of binary data
for MIME (RFC 2045 [3]). It should be noted that the rules mentioned
in the RFC 2045 apply to Internet mail messages and not to SIP
messages. Binary has been preferred over Base64 encoding because
the latter would only result in adding bulk to the encoded messages
as well as prove costly in terms of processing power.
This media type is defined by the following information:

Media type name: application
Media subtype name: ISUP
Required parameters: none
Optional parameters: version
Encoding scheme: binary
Security considerations: See section 5.

Note: It is mandatory for SoftSwitches to specify the 'version' of
the ISUP message. Proxies, redirect servers, etc., have no need to
process/specify this information.

The use of the 'version' parameter allows differentiation between
different ISUP variants. This enables the terminating SoftSwitch (also
known as media gateway) to recognize and parse the message correctly,
or (possibly) to reject the message if the  particular ISUP variant is
not supported. The idea here is to allow to specify a preference of
version, so that the following scenarios are possible: "I only like
application/isup;version=lcd" or "I accept application/isup (but don't
really know the details; I just pass them on to some other tool that
displays/munges them)".
The following is how a typical header would look:-

        Content-Type: application/ISUP; Version=ETSI1
        Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary

Table 1 is a partial list of protocol versions supported by the
'application/ISUP' media type.

        Version         Protocol
        -------         --------
        ANSI            ANSI ISUP
        ETSI1           ETSI ISUP v1
        ETSI2           ETSI ISUP v2
        GR317           Bellcore ISUP GR-317


Zimmerer, Vemuri  draft-zimmerer-sip-isup-mime-00.txt  [Page 2]


Internet Draft     The SIP ISUP/MIME type            Oct 1999

4. Illustrative example

SIP message format requires a Request line followed by Header lines
followed by a CRLF separator followed by the message body. To
illustrate the use of the 'application/ISUP' media type, below is
an INVITE message which has the originating SDP information and
an encapsulated ISUP IAM.

Note that the two payloads are demarcated by the boundary parameter
(specified in RFC 2046 [4]) which in the example has the value
"unique-boundary-1". This is part of the specification of MIME
multipart and is not related to the 'application/ISUP' media type.

        INVITE sip:13039263142@Den1.level3.com SIP/2.0
        From: sip:13034513355@den3.level3.com
        To: sip:13039263142@Den1.level3.com
        Call-ID: DEN1231999021712095500999@Den1.level3.com
        Content-Length: 377
        Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=unique-boundary-1
        MIME-Version: 1.0


        --unique-boundary-1
        Content-Type: application/SDP; charset=ISO-10646

        v=0
        o=ezimmerer 2890844526 2890842807 IN IP4 126.16.64.4
        s=SDP seminar
        c=IN IP4 MG122.level3.com
        t= 2873397496   2873404696
        m=audio 9092 RTP/AVP 0 3 4

        --unique-boundary-1
        Content-type:application/ISUP; Version=ETSI1
        Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary

        89 8b 0e 95 1e 1e 1e 06 26 05 0d f5 01 06 10 04 00
        --unique-boundary-1--

Note:
Since binary encoding is used for the ISUP payload, each byte is encoded
as a byte, and not as a  two-character hex representation.  Hex digits were



Zimmerer, Vemuri  draft-zimmerer-sip-isup-mime-00.txt  [Page 3]


Internet Draft     The SIP ISUP/MIME type            Oct 1999

used in the draft because a literal encoding of those bytes would have been
confusing and unreadable.

5. Security considerations

The security mechanisms described in RFC 2543 (SIP - Session
Initiation Protocol) should suffice. No new security considerations
are thought necessary.

6. Authors

Eric Zimmerer
ipVerse, Inc.
1901 Landings Drive
Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
Phone: 650-919-0648
Email: ericz@ipverse.com

Aparna Vemuri
Level 3 Communications
Louisville, CO, USA
Phone: 303-926-3768
EMail: aparna.vemuri@level3.com

7. References

[1] Freed, Klensin, Postel, "Multipart Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
Part Four: Registration Procedures" RFC 2048, Internet Engineering
Task Force, November 1996.

[2] Handley, Schulzrinne, Schooler and Rosenberg, "Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP)" RFC 2543, Internet Engineering Task Force, March 1999.

[3] Freed, Borenstein, "Multipart Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part
One: Format of Internet Message Bodies" RFC 2045, Internet Engineering
Task Force, November 1996.

[4] Freed, Borenstein, "Multipart Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part
Two: Media Types" RFC 2046, Internet Engineering Task Force, November
1996.







Zimmerer, Vemuri  draft-zimmerer-sip-isup-mime-00.txt  [Page 4]