Guide to Internet Calendaring
RFC 3283
Network Working Group B. Mahoney
Request for Comments: 3283 MIT
Category: Informational G. Babics
Steltor
A. Taler
June 2002
Guide to Internet Calendaring
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes the various Internet calendaring and
scheduling standards and works in progress, and the relationships
between them. Its intent is to provide a context for these
documents, assist in their understanding, and potentially aid in the
design of standards-based calendaring and scheduling systems. The
standards addressed are RFC 2445 (iCalendar), RFC 2446 (iTIP), and
RFC 2447 (iMIP). The work in progress addressed is "Calendar Access
Protocol" (CAP). This document also describes issues and problems
that are not solved by these protocols, and that could be targets for
future work.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Concepts and Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1 Fundamental Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2 Protocol Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.1 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2 Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.1 Standalone Single-user System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.2 Single-user Systems Communicating . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.3 Single-user with Multiple CUAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.2.4 Single-user with Multiple Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Mahoney, et. al. Informational [Page 1]
RFC 3283 Guide to Internet Calendaring June 2002
3.2.5 Users Communicating on a Multi-user System . . . . . . . . . 10
3.2.6 Users Communicating through Different Multi-user Systems . . 10
4. Important Aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.1 Timezones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.2 Choice of Transport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.3 Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.4 Amount of data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.5 Recurring Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. Open Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.1 Scheduling People, not Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.2 Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.3 Notification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.1 Access Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.2 Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.3 Using E-mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.4 Other Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1. Introduction
Calendaring and scheduling protocols are intended to aid individuals
in obtaining calendaring information and scheduling meetings across
the Internet, to aid organizations in providing calendaring
information on the Internet, and to provide for organizations looking
for a calendaring and scheduling solution to deploy internally.
It is the intent of this document to provide a context for these
documents, assist in their understanding, and potentially help in the
design of standards-based calendaring and scheduling systems.
Problems not solved by these protocols, as well as security issues to
be kept in mind, are discussed at the end of the document.
1.1 Terminology
This memo uses much of the same terminology as iCalendar [RFC-2445],
iTIP [RFC-2446], iMIP [RFC-2447], and [CAP]. The following
definitions are provided as an introduction; the definitions in the
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