Internet Voice Messaging (IVM)
RFC 4239
| Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(November 2005; No errata)
Was draft-ietf-vpim-ivm (vpim WG)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2018-12-20 | ||
| Stream | IETF | ||
| Formats | plain text pdf html bibtex | ||
| Stream | WG state | (None) | |
| Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 4239 (Proposed Standard) | |
| Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Telechat date | |||
| Responsible AD | Scott Hollenbeck | ||
| Send notices to | (None) | ||
Network Working Group S. McRae
Request for Comments: 4239 IBM
Category: Standards Track G. Parsons
Nortel Networks
November 2005
Internet Voice Messaging (IVM)
Status of This Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).
Abstract
This document describes the carriage of voicemail messages over
Internet mail as part of a unified messaging infrastructure.
The Internet Voice Messaging (IVM) concept described in this document
is not a successor format to VPIM v2 (Voice Profile for Internet Mail
Version 2), but rather an alternative specification for a different
application.
1. Introduction
For some forms of communication, people prefer to communicate using
their voices rather than typing. By permitting voicemail to be
implemented in an interoperable way on top of Internet Mail, voice
messaging and electronic mail no longer need to remain in separate,
isolated worlds, and users will be able to choose the most
appropriate form of communication. This will also enable new types
of devices, without keyboards, to be used to participate in
electronic messaging when mobile, in a hostile environment, or in
spite of disabilities.
There exist unified messaging systems that will transmit voicemail
messages over the Internet using SMTP/MIME, but these systems suffer
from a lack of interoperability because various aspects of such a
message have not hitherto been standardized. In addition, voicemail
systems can now conform to the Voice Profile for Internet Messaging
McRae & Parsons Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 4239 Internet Voice Messaging November 2005
(VPIM v2 as defined in RFC 2421 [VPIMV2] and revised in RFC 3801,
Draft Standard [VPIMV2R2]) when forwarding messages to remote
voicemail systems. VPIM v2 was designed to allow two voicemail
systems to exchange messages, not to allow a voicemail system to
interoperate with a desktop e-mail client. It is often not
reasonable to expect a VPIM v2 message to be usable by an e-mail
recipient. The result is messages that cannot be processed by the
recipient (e.g., because of the encoding used), or look ugly to the
user.
This document therefore proposes a standard mechanism for
representing a voicemail message within SMTP/MIME, and a standard
encoding for the audio content, which unified messaging systems and
mail clients MUST implement to ensure interoperability. By using a
standard SMTP/MIME representation and a widely implemented audio
encoding, this will also permit most users of e-mail clients not
specifically implementing the standard to still access the voicemail
messages. In addition, this document describes features an e-mail
client SHOULD implement to allow recipients to display voicemail
messages in a more friendly, context-sensitive way to the user, and
intelligently provide some of the additional functionality typically
found in voicemail systems (such as responding with a voice message
instead of e-mail). Finally, how a client MAY provide a level of
interoperability with VPIM v2 is explained.
It is desirable that unified messaging mail clients also be able to
fully interoperate with voicemail servers. This is possible today,
providing the client implements VPIM v2 [VPIMV2R2], in addition to
this specification, and uses it to construct messages to be sent to a
voicemail server.
The definition in this document is based on the IVM Requirements
document [GOALS]. It references separate work on critical content
[CRITICAL] and message context [HINT]. Addressing and directory
issues are discussed in related documents [ADDRESS], [VPIMENUM],
[SCHEMA].
Further information on VPIM and related activities can be found at
http://www.vpim.org or http://www.ema.org/vpim.
2. Conventions Used in This Document
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC-2119 [KEYWORDS].
McRae & Parsons Standards Track [Page 2]
RFC 4239 Internet Voice Messaging November 2005
3. Message Format
Voice messages may be created explicitly by a user (e.g., recording a
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