SIPPING Working Group                                       G. Camarillo
Internet-Draft                                                  Ericsson
Expires: December 15, 2004                                 June 16, 2004


     The Early Session Disposition Type for the Session Initiation
                             Protocol (SIP)
                draft-ietf-sipping-early-disposition-03.txt

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   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This document defines a new disposition type (early-session) for the
   Content-Disposition header field in SIP. The treatment of
   "early-session" bodies is similar to the treatment of "session"
   bodies. That is, they follow the offer/answer model. Their only
   difference is that session descriptions whose disposition type is
   "early-session" are used to establish early media sessions within
   early dialogs, as opposed to regular sessions within regular dialogs.






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Table of Contents

   1.   Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.   Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.   Issues Related to Early Media Session Establishment  . . . .   3
   4.   The Early Session Disposition Type . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.   Preconditions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   6.   Option tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   7.   Example  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   8.   Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   9.   IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   10.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   11.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   11.1   Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   11.2   Informational References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
        Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
        Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . .  11


































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1.  Introduction

   Early media refers to media (e.g., audio and video) that is exchanged
   before a particular session is accepted by the called user. Within a
   dialog, early media occurs from the moment the initial INVITE is sent
   until the UAS generates a final response. It may be unidirectional or
   bidirectional, and can be generated by the caller, the callee, or
   both. Typical examples of early media generated by the callee are
   ringing tone and announcements (e.g., queuing status). Early media
   generated by the caller typically consists of voice commands or DTMF
   tones to drive IVRs.

   The basic SIP specification (RFC 3261 [2]) only supports very simple
   early media mechanisms. These simple mechanisms have a number of
   problems which relate to forking and security, and do not satisfy the
   requirements of most applications. RFC xxxx [8] goes beyond the
   mechanisms defined in RFC 3261 [2] and describes two models to
   implement early media using SIP: the gateway model and the
   application server model.

   Although both early media models described in RFC xxxx [8] are
   superior to the one specified in RFC 3261 [2], the gateway model
   still presents a set of issues. In particular, the gateway model does
   not work well with forking. Nevertheless, the gateway model is needed
   because some SIP entities (in particular, some gateways) cannot
   implement the application server model.

   The application server model addresses some of the issues present in
   the gateway model. This model uses the early-session disposition
   type, which is specified in this document.

2.  Terminology

   In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
   "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT
   RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as
   described in BCP 14, RFC 2119 [1] and indicate requirement levels for
   compliant implementations.

3.  Issues Related to Early Media Session Establishment

   Traditionally, early media sessions have been established in the same
   way as regular sessions. That is, using an offer/answer exchange
   where the disposition type of the session descriptions is "session".
   Application servers perform an offer/answer exchange with the UAC to
   exchange early media exclusively, while UASs use the same offer/
   answer exchange, first to exchange early media, and once the regular
   dialog is established, to exchange regular media. This way of



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   establishing early media sessions is known as the gateway model [8],
   which presents some issues which relate to forking and security.
   These issues exist when this model is used by either an application
   server or by a UAS.

   Application servers may not be able to generate an answer for an
   offer received in the INVITE. The UAC created the offer for the UAS,
   and so, it may have applied end-to-end encryption or have included
   information (e.g., related to key management) that the application
   server is not supposed to use. Therefore, application servers need a
   means to perform an offer/answer exchange with the UAC which is
   independent from the offer/answer exchange between both UAs.

   UASs using the offer/answer exchange that will carry regular media to
   send and receive early media can cause media clipping, as described
   in Section 2.1.1 of [8]. Some UACs cannot receive early media from
   different UASs at the same time. So, when an INVITE forks and several
   UASs start sending early media, the UAC mutes all the UASs but one
   (which is usually randomly chosen). If the UAS that accepts the
   INVITE (i.e., sends a 200 OK) was muted, a new offer/answer exchange
   is needed to unmute it. This usually causes media clipping.
   Therefore, UASs need a means to perform an offer/answer exchange with
   the UAC to exchange early media which is independent from the offer/
   answer exchanged used to exchange regular media.

   A potential solution to this need would be to establish a different
   dialog using a globally routable URI to perform an independent offer/
   answer exchange. This dialog would be labelled as a dialog for early
   media and would be related to the original dialog somehow at the UAC.
   However, performing all the offer/answer exchanges within the
   original dialog has many advantages:

   o  It is simpler.
   o  It does not have synchronization problems, because all the early
      dialogs are terminated when the session is accepted.
   o  It does not require globally routable URIs.
   o  It does not introduce service interaction issues related to
      services that may be wrongly applied to the new dialog.
   o  It makes firewall management easier.

   This way of performing offer/answer exchanges for early media is
   referred to as the application server model [8]. This model uses the
   early-session disposition type, which we define in the following
   section.

4.  The Early Session Disposition Type

   We define a new disposition type for the Content-Disposition header



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   field: early-session. User agents MUST use early-session bodies to
   establish early media sessions in the same way as they use session
   bodies to establish regular sessions, as described in RFC 3261 [2]
   and in RFC 3264 [3]. Particularly, early-session bodies MUST follow
   the offer/answer model and MAY appear in the same messages as session
   bodies do with the exceptions of 2xx responses for an INVITE and
   ACKs. Nevertheless, it is NOT RECOMMENDED to include early offers in
   INVITEs because they can fork, and the UAC could receive multiple
   early answers establishing early media streams at roughly the same
   time. It is also NOT RECOMMENDED to use the same transport address
   (IP address plus port) in a session body and in an early-session
   body. Using different transport addresses (e.g., different ports) to
   receive early and regular media makes it easy to detect the start of
   the regular media.

   If a UA needs to refuse an early-session offer, it MUST to so by
   refusing all the media streams in it. When SDP [7] is used, this is
   done by setting the port number of all the media streams to zero.

      This is the same mechanism that UACs use to refuse regular offers
      that arrive in a response to an empty INVITE.

   An early media session established using early-session bodies MUST be
   terminated when its corresponding early dialog is terminated or it
   transitions to a regular dialog.

   It is RECOMMENDED that UAs generating regular and early session
   descriptions use, as long as it is possible, the same codecs in both.
   This way, the remote UA does not need to change codecs when the early
   session transitions to a regular session.

5.  Preconditions

   RFC 3312 [4] defines a framework for preconditions for SDP.
   Early-sessions MAY contain preconditions, which are treated in the
   same way as preconditions in regular sessions. That is, the UAs do
   not exchange media and the called user is not alerted until the
   preconditions are met.

6.  Option tag

   We define an option tag to be used in Require and Supported header
   fields. Its name is early-session. A UA adding the early-session
   option tag to a message indicates that it understands the
   early-session disposition type.






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7.  Example

   Figure 1 shows the message flow between two UAs. INVITE (1) has an
   early-session option tag in its Supported header field and the body
   shown in Figure 2. The UAS sends back a response with two body parts,
   as shown in Figure 3; one of disposition type session and the other
   early-session. The session body part is the answer to the offer in
   the INVITE. The early-session body part is an offer to establish an
   early media session. When the UAC receives the 183 (Session Progress)
   response, it sends the answer to the early-session offer in a PRACK,
   as shown in Figure 4. This early media session is terminated when the
   early dialog transitions to a regular dialog. That is, when the UAS
   sends the (5) 200 (OK) response for the INVITE.


        A                           B
        |                           |
        |--------(1) INVITE-------->|
        |            offer          |
        |                           |
        |<--(2) Session Progress----|
        |       early-offer         |
        |       answer              |
        |                           |
        |---------(3) PRACK-------->|
        |             early-answer  |
        |                           |
        |<--------(4) 200 OK--------|
        |                           |
        |  *                     *  |
        | ************************* |
        |*       Early Media       *|
        | ************************* |
        |  *                     *  |
        |                           |
        |<--------(5) 200 OK--------|
        |                           |
        |----------(6) ACK--------->|
        |                           |

                         Figure 1: Message flow










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   Content-Type: application/sdp
   Content-Disposition: session

   v=0
   o=alice 2890844730 2890844731 IN IP4 host.example.com
   s=
   c=IN IP4 192.0.2.1
   t=0 0
   m=audio 20000 RTP/AVP 0

                            Figure 2: Offer


   Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="boundary1"
   Content-Length: 401

   --boundary1
   Content-Type: application/sdp
   Content-Disposition: session

   v=0
   o=Bob 2890844725 2890844725 IN IP4 host.example.org
   s=
   c=IN IP4 192.0.2.2
   t=0 0
   m=audio 30000 RTP/AVP 0

   --boundary1
   Content-Type: application/sdp
   Content-Disposition: early-session

   v=0
   o=Bob 2890844714 2890844714 IN IP4 host.example.org
   s=
   c=IN IP4 192.0.2.2
   t=0 0
   m=audio 30002 RTP/AVP 0

   --boundary1--

                    Figure 3: Early offer and answer










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   Content-Type: application/sdp
   Content-Disposition: early-session

   v=0
   o=alice 2890844717 2890844717 IN IP4 host.example.com
   s=
   c=IN IP4 192.0.2.1
   t=0 0
   m=audio 20002 RTP/AVP 0

                         Figure 4: Early answer


8.  Security Considerations

   The security implications of using early-session bodies in SIP are
   the same as the ones of using session bodies; they are part of the
   offer/answer model.

   SIP uses the offer/answer model [3] to establish early sessions in
   both the gateway and the application server models. User Agents (UAs)
   generate a session description, which contains the transport address
   (i.e., IP address plus port) where they want to receive media, and
   send it to their peer in a SIP message. When media packets arrive at
   this transport address, the UA assumes that they come from the
   receiver of the SIP message carrying the session description.
   Nevertheless, attackers may attempt to gain access to the contents of
   the SIP message and send packets to the transport address contained
   in the session description. To prevent this situation, UAs SHOULD
   encrypt their session descriptions (e.g., using S/MIME).

   Still, even if a UA encrypts its session descriptions, an attacker
   may try to guess the transport address used by the UA and send media
   packets to that address. Guessing such a transport address is
   sometimes easier than it may seem because many UAs always pick up the
   same initial media port. To prevent this situation, UAs SHOULD use
   media-level authentication mechanisms (e.g., SRTP [6]). In addition,
   UAs that wish to keep their communications confidential SHOULD use
   media-level encryption mechanisms (e.g, SRTP [6]).

   Attackers may attempt to make a UA send media to a victim as part of
   a DoS attack. This can be done by sending a session description with
   the victim's transport address to the UA.  To prevent this attack,
   the UA SHOULD engage in a handshake with the owner of the transport
   address received in a session descriptions (just verifying
   willingness to receive media) before sending a large amount of data
   to the transport address.  This check can be performed by using a
   connection oriented transport protocol, by using STUN [5] in an



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   end-to-end fashion, or by the key exchange in SRTP [6].

   In any event, note that the previous security considerations are not
   early media specific, but apply to the usage of the offer/answer
   model in SIP to establish sessions in general.

   Additionally, an early media-specific risk (roughly speaking, an
   equivalent to forms of "toll fraud" in the PSTN) attempts to exploit
   the different charging policies some operators apply to early and to
   regular media. When UAs are allowed to exchange early media for free,
   but are required to pay for regular media sessions, rogue UAs may try
   to establish a bidirectional early media session and never send a 2xx
   response for the INVITE.

   On the other hand, some application servers (e.g., Interactive Voice
   Response systems) use bidirectional early media to obtain information
   from the callers (e.g., the PIN code of a calling card). So, we do
   not recommend that operators disallow bidirectional early media.
   Instead, operators should consider a remedy of charging early media
   exchanges that last too long, or stopping them at the media level
   (according to the operator's policy).

9.  IANA Considerations

   This document defines a new Content-Disposition header field
   disposition type (early-session) in Section 4. This value should be
   registered in the IANA registry for Content-Dispositions with the
   following description:


         early-session   the body describes an early communications
                         session, for example, an RFC 2327 SDP body

   This document defines a SIP option tag (early-session) in Section 6.
   It should be registered in the SIP parameters registry (http://
   www.iana.org/assignments/sip-parameters) under "Option Tags", with
   the following description.

      A UA adding the early-session option tag to a message indicates
      that it understands the early-session content disposition.

10.  Acknowledgements

   Francois Audet, Christer Holmberg, and Allison Mankin provided useful
   comments on this document.






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11.  References

11.1  Normative References

   [1]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
        Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [2]  Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston, A.,
        Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M. and E. Schooler, "SIP:
        Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261, June 2002.

   [3]  Rosenberg, J. and H. Schulzrinne, "An Offer/Answer Model with
        Session Description Protocol (SDP)", RFC 3264, June 2002.

   [4]  Camarillo, G., Marshall, W. and J. Rosenberg, "Integration of
        Resource Management and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC
        3312, October 2002.

   [5]  Rosenberg, J., Weinberger, J., Huitema, C. and R. Mahy, "STUN -
        Simple Traversal of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) Through Network
        Address Translators (NATs)", RFC 3489, March 2003.

   [6]  Baugher, M., McGrew, D., Naslund, M., Carrara, E. and K.
        Norrman, "The Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP)", RFC
        3711, March 2004.

11.2  Informational References

   [7]  Handley, M. and V. Jacobson, "SDP: Session Description
        Protocol", RFC 2327, April 1998.

   [8]  Camarillo, G. and H. Schulzrinne, "Early Media and Ringback Tone
        Generation in the Session Initiation  Protocol",
        draft-camarillo-sipping-early-media-02 (work in progress), July
        2003.


Author's Address

   Gonzalo Camarillo
   Ericsson
   Hirsalantie 11
   Jorvas  02420
   Finland

   EMail: Gonzalo.Camarillo@ericsson.com





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