Technical Summary
A series of related instant messages between two or more parties can be
viewed as part of a "message session", that is, a conversational exchange
of messages with a definite beginning and end. This is in contrast to
individual messages each sent independently. Messaging schemes that track
only individual messages can be described as "page-mode" messaging,
whereas messaging that is part of a "session" with a definite start and
end is called "session-mode" messaging.
This document describes the Message Session Relay Protocol, a protocol
for transmitting a series of related instant messages in the context of a
session.
Working Group Summary
This document reflects WG consensus. It defines the Message Session Relay
Protocol (MSRP). The working group has been working on this draft for
years and have arrived at this after several re-starts.
Protocol Quality
This document was reviewed for the IESG by Jon Peterson. Hisham Khartabil
was the PROTO shepherd for this document.
RFC Editor Note
On draft-ietf-simple-message-sessions-19.txt:
Section 7.2 paragraph 3
OLD
The endpoint then inserts an appropriate To-Path header field. If the
request triggering the response was a SEND request, the To-Path
header field is formed by copying the last (right-most) URI in the
From-Path header field of the request. (Responses to SEND requests
are returned only to the previous hop.) For responses to all other
request methods, the To-Path header field contains the full path back
to the original sender. This full path is generated by taking the
list of URIs from the From-Path of the original request, reversing
the list, and writing the reversed list into the To-Path of the
response. (Legal REPORT requests do not request responses, so this
specification doesn't exercise the behavior described above, however
we expect that extensions for gateways and relays will need such
behavior.)
NEW
The endpoint then inserts an appropriate To-Path header field. If the
request triggering the response was a SEND request, the To-Path
header field is formed by copying the first (left-most) URI in the
From-Path header field of the request. (Responses to SEND requests
are returned only to the previous hop.) For responses to all other
request methods, the To-Path header field contains the full path back
to the original sender. This full path is generated by copying the
list of URIs from the From-Path of the original request into the To-
Path of the response. (Legal REPORT requests do not request
responses, so this specification doesn't exercise the behavior
described above, however we expect that extensions for gateways and
relays will need such behavior.)
Section 7.1.1 paragraph 7
OLD
If the value of "Failure-Report" is set to "yes", then the sender of
the request runs a timer. If a 200 response to the transaction is not
received within 30 seconds from the time the last byte of the
transaction is sent, or submitted to the operating system for
sending, the element MUST inform the user that the request probably
failed. If the value is set to "partial", then the element sending
the transaction does not have to run a timer, but MUST inform the
user if it receives a non-recoverable error response to the transaction.
NEW
If the value of "Failure-Report" is set to "yes", then the sender of
the request runs a timer. If a 200 response to the transaction is not
received within 30 seconds from the time the last byte of the
transaction is sent, or submitted to the operating system for
sending, the element MUST inform the user that the request probably
failed. If the value is set to "partial", then the element sending
the transaction does not have to run a timer, but MUST inform the
user if it receives a non-recoverable error response to the
transaction. There is no requirement to wait for a response prior to
sending the next request.
Section 7.2 Last Paragraph
OLD
Finally, the endpoint inserts a From-Path header field containing the
URI that identifies it in the context of the session, followed by the
end-line after the last header field. The response MUST be
transmitted back on the same connection on which the original request
arrived.
NEW
Finally, the endpoint inserts a From-Path header field containing the
URI that identifies it in the context of the session, followed by the
end-line after the last header field. Since a response is never
chunked, the continuation flag in the end-line will always contain a
dollar sign ("$"). The response MUST be transmitted back on the same
connection on which the original request arrived.