Session PEERing for Multimedia INTerconnect (speermint)

Last Modified: 2008-08-21

Additional information is available at tools.ietf.org/wg/speermint

Chair(s):

  • Jason Livingood <jason_livingood@cable.comcast.com>

  • Daryl Malas <d.malas@cablelabs.com>

    Real-time Applications and Infrastructure Area Director(s):

  • Jon Peterson <jon.peterson@neustar.biz>
  • Cullen Jennings <fluffy@cisco.com>

    Real-time Applications and Infrastructure Area Advisor:

  • Jon Peterson <jon.peterson@neustar.biz>

    Secretary(ies):

  • Alexander Mayrhofer <alexander.mayrhofer@enum.at>

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    Description of Working Group:

    The term "VoIP Peering" has historically been used to describe
    inter-provider network interconnect and the delivery of voice
    calls over interconnection points. While voice calls are the
    primary motivation for this today, other forms of real-time
    communications are and will continue to evolve as natural
    additions to such peering. Therefore, the focus of this working
    group is best generalized to describe calls as sessions, and to
    note that that such communications are inherently real-time in
    nature.

    SPEERMINT focuses architectures to identify, signal, and route
    delay-sensitive (real-time) communication sessions. These sessions
    use the SIP signaling protocol to enable peering between two or more
    administrative domains over IP networks. Where these domains peer,
    or meet, the establishment of trust, security, and a resistance to
    abuse and attack are all important considerations.

    Note that the term "peering" is used here to refer to
    the interconnection between application layer entities such as
    SIP servers, as opposed to interconnection at the IP network
    layer. However, in order to achieve real-time Session PEERing,
    both signaling and media flows must be taken into
    consideration. In addition, the working group recognizes that
    there will be use cases that require SPEERMINT to focus on the
    interaction between the application layer and lower network
    layers, or the dependence of specific application layer use
    cases on lower layers, so SPEERMINT will have to be prepared to
    solve these problems as they arise.

    More specifically, SPEERMINT focuses on real-time session
    routing architectures and their associated use cases.
    Deliverables here include the specification of the various
    types of application flows, such as signaling and media flows, in
    such networks, and includes both trunking and peer-to-peer
    flows. In addition, SPEERMINT considers and documents requirements
    for the feedback of operational conditions (e.g., congestion control)
    that enables the application of dynamic policy and recognizes
    that various mechanisms for achieving this should be studied as
    a potential part of any architecture. In future, as its initial
    work completes and the requirements become known, SPEERMINT may seek
    rechartering to consider various mechanism to support applying
    Quality of Service and/or traffic engineering mechanisms in an
    architecturally sound way in support of real-time Session
    PEERing. A charter discussion would consider how to work with
    with mechanisms developed by other working groups, selecting
    and integrating those, but as stated, first the initial milestones
    must be completed.

    The most focused deliverables of SPEERMINT are best current practices
    regarding exchange of real-time sessions among VoIP and other
    real-time application service providers and, in particular, how
    such calls are routed. SPEERMINT will recognize that some of these
    providers also control underlying access networks
    (facilities-based), while others do not (not facilities-based),
    and this fact may present various additional requirements or
    use cases for consideration. The working group will develop
    one or more use case documents to record the varieties of
    the practices, as well as use this recognition as a guide to
    maintaining the greatest possible separation of the application
    layer from lower layers.

    The SPEERMINT work plan is related to and distinct from the work
    plans of the ENUM and SIPPING working groups. While the
    the ENUM Working Group is primarily concerned
    with the structure and lookup of data for the translation of
    E.164 numbers into URIs (RFC3761), SPEERMINT is concerned with
    the use of the resulting URI data, as well as non-ENUM-derived
    URI data, for use in signaling and routing of real-time
    sessions. The SIPPING WG produced the original document in
    this area (RFC 3824). The future work in this area will be
    produced by SPEERMINT, but RFC 3427, the SIP change process will
    be followed as needed.

    Issues that are out of scope for SPEERMINT include:

    o Interoperability, and NITS/profiling of existing protocols
    such as SIP, RTP, and SRTP,

    o SPIT prevention. Note, however, that other working groups
    may release relevant specifications that become required or
    are referenced by various SPEERMINT uses cases and BCPs,

    o Routing of sessions which are not signaled using SIP. In
    particular, SPEERMINT is constrained to consider only those
    scenarios in which call routing is signaled using the SIP
    protocol and addressed by SIP or SIPS URIs. E.164 numbers and
    other national or private formats may only be used as defined
    within the SIP protocols, and

    o H.323

    In the goals and milestones, "submit" means to submit the document to
    the IESG for publication.

    Goals and Milestones:

    Apr 2007  Submit SPEERMINT terminology I-D (Informational)
    Aug 2007  Submit SPEERMINT IM-specific use cases I-D (Informational)
    Aug 2007  Submit SPEERMINT VoIP-specific use cases I-D (Informational)
    Jan 2008  Submit SPEERMINT architecture I-D (Informational)
    Feb 2008  Submit SPEERMINT minimum requirements for SIP-based VoIP interconnection. (BCP)
    Feb 2008  Submit SPEERMINT DNS SRV and NAPTR use I-D (BCP)
    Feb 2008  Submit SPEERMINT message flows I-D (Informational)
    Mar 2008  Propose re-chartering for any additional efforts/considerations, or propose conclusion of working group (following approval of last documents)

    Internet-Drafts:

    SPEERMINT Terminology (25870 bytes)
    SPEERMINT Requirements for SIP-based Session Peering (53307 bytes)
    SPEERMINT Peering Architecture (43890 bytes)
    SPEERMINT Routing Architecture Message Flows (57430 bytes)
    Presence & Instant Messaging Peering Use Cases (19776 bytes)
    VoIP SIP Peering Use Cases (53744 bytes)

    No Request For Comments

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