One document matched: draft-kaplan-martini-mixing-problems-00.txt



DISPATCH WG                                                   H. Kaplan 
Internet Draft                                              Acme Packet 
Intended status: Informative                                            
Expires: June 19, 2010                                December 19, 2009 
    
    
                     SIP IP-PBX Registration Problems 
                  draft-kaplan-martini-mixing-problems-00 
    
    
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Abstract 
    
   This document identifies several known issues with current IP-PBX 
   Registration mechanisms. 
                                                   
Table of Contents 
    
   1.    Introduction................................................2 
   2.    Definitions.................................................3 
   3.    Background on Current Mechanisms............................3 
   4.    Issues with the REGISTER Transaction........................4 
      4.1.   No Explicit Indicator..................................4 
      4.2.   Undefined Behavior on PAU Mismatch.....................4 
      4.3.   REGISTER Response Growth...............................5 
      4.4.   Illegal Wildcarding Syntax.............................5 
   5.    Issues with Routing Requests................................5 
      5.1.   Loss of Target Info....................................5 
      5.2.   Request-URI vs. Loose-Route Mismatches.................5 
      5.3.   Request-URI Mis-routing................................5 
   6.    Other Related Issues........................................6 
      6.1.   Authorization Policy Mismatches........................6 
      6.2.   P-Asserted-Identity URI Mismatches.....................6 
      6.3.   Trust Domain Mismatches for Privacy/Identity...........6 
   7.    IANA Considerations.........................................6 
   8.    Informative References......................................7 
   Author's Address..................................................7 
    
    
1. Introduction 
    
   In many deployed SIP Service Provider (SSP) architectures, it is 
   common to use REGISTER requests to provide the reachability 
   information for IP-PBXs, instead of DNS-based resolution and 
   routing.  There are many SIP IP-PBXs which support SIP Registration 
   model into the SSP, however the behavior and syntactic details of 
   the REGISTER transaction and subsequent routing of requests to/from 
   the IP-PBX differ among vendors, which has led to interoperability 
   and operational problems.   
    
   Furthermore, two separate Standards Development Organizations, 3GPP 
   and ETSI, have defined mechanisms for doing so, but few IP-PBXs 
   support their exact mechanisms in practice; and the 3GPP/ETSI 
   defined mechanisms have their own issues.  The SIP-Forum SIP-Connect 
   1.0 profile also introduced the concept of Registering IP-PBXs, but 
   without sufficient detail for interoperability. 
    
   This draft attempts to enumerate the issues found in the field, and 
   the issues with the proposed mechanisms in 3GPP and ETSI.  The goal 

 
 
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   of this draft is to make the issues known, in order to work on an 
   IETF defined solution. 
 
2. Definitions 
    
   For brevity's sake, this document uses the word "request" instead of 
   "out-of-dialog request", but in all case means out-of-dialog 
   request. 
 
   AoR: address-of-record, as defined by RFC 3261: a URI by which the 
   user is canonically known (e.g., on their business cards, in the 
   From header field of their requests, in the To header field of 
   REGISTER requests, etc.). 
    
   Implicit Registration: implicitly providing the reachability 
   information for something other than the AoR indicated in the 
   Register transaction. 
    
   Reachability Information: a set of URI's identifying the host and 
   path of Proxies to reach that host; like any URI, these URI's may 
   identify the specific connection transport, IP Address, and port 
   information, or they may only identify FQDN's. 
    
   SSP: SIP Service Provider, as defined by [RFC5486]. 
    
3. Background on Current Mechanisms 
    
   It is not the intention of this document to reproduce the work of 
   other standards bodies, and the reader is encouraged to review the 
   documents produced by those bodies.  A short summary of the general 
   concept is as follows: 
    
   In virtually all models, the IP-PBX generates a SIP Registration 
   request using a mutually agreed-upon SIP AoR - typically its main 
   attendant/reception-desk number.  The AoR is almost always in the 
   Domain of the SSP, and both the To and From URIs used for the 
   REGISTER request identify that AoR.  In all respects, it appears on 
   the wire as a "normal" first-party SIP UA REGISTER request, as if 
   from a typical UA subscriber. 
    
   For both 3GPP and ETSI mechanisms, the 200 OK response to the 
   REGISTER, sent after successful authentication challenge, contains a 
   P-Associated-URI listing the other SIP or TEL URI Identities (i.e., 
   phone numbers) of the IP-PBX, which are implicitly Registered AoRs.  
   Each of these AoRs will use the same Registered Reachability 
   Information from the REGISTER request of the explicitly Registered 
   AoR.  In order to reduce the number of P-Associated-URI entries, a 
   "wildcard" syntax model is defined, which uses a Regular Expression 
   syntax in the user field of the URI to express multiple AoRs. 
 
 
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   For routing requests for any of the explicit or implicitly 
   Registered AoRs from the SSP to the IP-PBX, the Request-URI is 
   typically replaced with the Registered Contact-URI.  In the case of 
   3GPP and ETSI, the SSP has the option of using loose-routing 
   instead, and inserting the Registered Contact-URI as a loose-route 
   Route header field value while leaving the Request-URI alone.  This 
   decision is made based upon manually provisioned information in the 
   Registrar Database (i.e., the HSS). 
    
 
4.   Issues with the REGISTER Transaction 
    
4.1. No Explicit Indicator 
    
   None of the currently available mechanisms indicate the REGISTER 
   request or response is any different from a "normal" REGISTER.  This 
   has caused issues when middleboxes between the IP-PBX and Registrar 
   employ different policies for IP-PBXs vs. subscriber UAs, if the 
   same middlebox SIP interfaces (IPs/FQDNs) are used for the different 
   services.   
    
   Furthermore, some middleboxes expect the Registrar to follow normal 
   [RFC3261] procedures of Request-URI replacement with the Registered 
   Contact-URI for routing subsequent requests to the IP-PBX, and will 
   fail to route the requests correctly, because there is no indication 
   the Registration was any different.   
    
   Lastly, lack of Implicit Registration indication makes 
   troubleshooting more difficult because the on-the-wire messages are 
   indistinguishable from "normal" Registrations.  Note that even the 
   existence of a P-Associated-URI in the response does not indicate 
   Implicit Registration for an IP-PBX has occurred, since the PAU 
   header is used for subscriber UAs with multiple Identities. 
    
4.2. Undefined Behavior on PAU Mismatch 
    
   There is no defined behavior for the IP-PBX if the P-Associated-URI 
   list of URIs does not match what the IP-PBX expects it to be.  It is 
   not clear if the IP-PBX should de-Register, re-Register, or ignore 
   the difference; nor is there a way for the IP-PBX to indicate the 
   error in signaling. 
    






 
 
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4.3. REGISTER Response Growth 
    
   If an IP-PBX represents many AoRs, the P-Associated-URI list in the 
   response can grow the SIP message size beyond the limits for UDP. 
    
4.4. Illegal Wildcarding Syntax 
    
   The current syntax for "wildcarded" P-Associated-URIs is illegal for 
   TEL URIs, based on the ABNF rules for TEL URIs. 
    
    
5.   Issues with Routing Requests 
    
5.1. Loss of Target Info 
    
   If the Proxy-Registrar follows [RFC3261] for Registration resolution 
   of requests targeted to one of the IP-PBX's AoRs, and thus replaces 
   the Request-URI with the Registered Contact-URI, it is not clear 
   which AoR the intended target of the request is.  The To-URI, for 
   example, may not contain the intended target AoR if the request was 
   forwarded/retargeted prior to reaching the Registrar.  Some 
   middleboxes between the Registrar and IP-PBX will overwrite the 
   request-URI specifically to try to fix this issue.  In some cases, a 
   P-Called-Party-ID will contain the intended target AoR, if it's 
   used; and in some cases the History-Info will contain it, if both 
   the SSP and IP-PBX support it and the IP-PBX can determine which 
   History-Info value to use. 
    
5.2. Request-URI vs. Loose-Route Mismatches 
    
   Some IP-PBXs expect that inbound SIP requests from the SSP will have 
   the Registered Contact-URI in the Request-URI, and thus not 
   interoperate with the loose-route scheme of 3GPP and ETSI.  Other 
   IP-PBXs are fine with the Request-URI being the intended target, but 
   cannot handle receiving a Route header identifying their Registered 
   Contact-URI as a loose-route entry. 
    
5.3. Request-URI Mis-routing 
    
   Although many IP-PBXs support a Registration mechanism to an SSP, 
   they do not consider themselves authoritative for the explicitly or 
   implicitly Registered AoRs if the domain portion still identifies 
   the SSP's domain.  They expect the domain portion to be their own IP 
   Address, FQDN, or Domain.  Currently middleboxes have to fix that 
   issue. 
    



 
 
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6.   Other Related Issues 
    
6.1. Authorization Policy Mismatches 
    
   Many SSPs perform a first-order level of authorization for requests 
   from the IP-PBX by checking the URI in the From, P-Asserted-
   Identity, or P-Preferred-Identity header fields for one matching 
   either an explicitly or implicitly Registered AoR for the same 
   Contact-URI and/or Layer-3 IP Address.  If no match is found, the 
   request is rejected.  However, some IP-PBXs change the Contact-URI 
   they use for Requests to be different from the one they explicitly 
   Registered.  For example they change the user portion of the 
   Contact-URI, or even the host portion. 
    
6.2. P-Asserted-Identity URI Mismatches 
    
   Some SSPs expect the P-Asserted-Identity or P-Preferred-Identity URI 
   in SIP requests received from the IP-PBX to match one of the 
   explicitly or implicitly Registered AoRs, whereas some IP-PBXs 
   generate the URIs using their local IP Address, Hostname, or Domain 
   Name.  This triggers request rejection or P-Asserted-Identity 
   overwriting. 
    
   Some SSPs expect the P-Asserted-Identity or P-Preferred-Identity URI 
   in SIP requests received from the IP-PBX to be the explicitly 
   Registered AoR only, as it is the main billing number, instead of 
   the implicitly Registered AoR of the calling party. 
    
6.3. Trust Domain Mismatches for Privacy/Identity 
    
   In many cases, the Trust Domain model for Privacy is asymmetric in 
   SSP-to-IP-PBX relationships: the SSP expects to be trusted by the 
   IP-PBX, but does not trust the IP-PBX; whereas some IP-PBXs expect 
   the SSP equipment to trust their domain as peers.   
    
   For example, some IP-PBXs expect to send a P-Asserted-Identity in 
   requests to the SSP, whereas some SSP equipment expects to receive 
   P-Preferred-Identity instead.  Another example is many SSPs allow 
   the IP-PBX to anonymize Privacy-requested SIP Requests, expecting to 
   receive the private originating AoR in the P-Asserted-Identity or P-
   Preferred-Identity header field, but do not themselves pass on the 
   PAI to the IP-PBX for SIP requests to the IP-PBX.  
    
    
7.   IANA Considerations 
    
   This document makes no request of IANA. 
    
    
 
 
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8.   Informative References 
    
   [RFC3261]  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. 
    
   [RFC3263]  Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., "Session Initiation 
              Protocol (SIP): Locating SIP Servers", RFC 3263, June 
              2002. 
    
   [RFC3327]  Willis, D., and Hoeneisen, B., "Session Initiation 
              Protocol (SIP) Extension Header Field for Registering 
              Non-Adjacent Contacts", RFC 3327, December 2002. 
    
   [RFC3455]  Garcia-Martin, M., Henrikson, E., and Mills, D., "Private 
              Header (P-Header) Extensions to the Session Initiation 
              Protocol (SIP) for the 3rd-Generation Partnership Project 
              (3GPP)", RFC 3455, January 2003. 
    
   [RFC3608]  Willis, D., and Hoeneisen, B., "Session Initiation 
              Protocol (SIP) Extension Header Field for Service Route 
              Discovery During Registration", RFC 3608, October 2003. 
    
   [RFC3966]  Schulzrinne, H., "The tel URI for Telephone Numbers", RFC 
              3966, December 2004. 
    
   [RFC5486]  Malas, D., and Meyer, D., "Session Peering for Multimedia 
              Interconnect (SPEERMINT) Terminology", RFC 5486, March 
              2009. 
    
     
Author's Address 
    
   Hadriel Kaplan
   Acme Packet
   71 Third Ave.
   Burlington, MA 01803, USA
   Email: hkaplan@acmepacket.com
    









 
 
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