This specification provides a framework for the publication of event
state from a user agent to an entity that is responsible for
compositing this event state and distributing it to interested
parties through the SIP Events [1] framework.
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In addition to defining an event publication framework, this
specification defines a concrete usage of that framework for the
publication of presence state [2] by a presence user agent [3] to a
presence compositor, which has a tightly coupled relationship with
the presence agent [1].
The requirements and model for presence publication are documented in
[10]. This specification will address each of those requirements.
The mechanism described in this document can be extended to support
publication of any event state for which there exists an appropriate
event package as defined in [1]. For instance, an application of SIP
events for message waiting indications [11] might choose to collect
the statuses of voice-mail boxes across a set of user agents using
the PUBLISH mechanism. The compositor in such an application would
then be responsible for collecting and distributing this state to the
subscribers of the event package.
Each application that makes use of the PUBLISH mechanism in the
publication of event state will need to adhere to the guidelines set
in Section 10. The mechanism described in this document is not
intended to be a general-purpose mechanism for transport of arbitrary
data, as there are better-suited mechanisms for this purpose.
In addition to the definitions of RFC 2778 [3], RFC 3265 [1], and RFC
3261 [4], this document introduces some new concepts:
Event State: State information for a resource, associated with an
event package and an address-of-record.
Event Publication Agent (EPA): The User Agent Client (UAC) that
issues PUBLISH requests to publish event state.
Event State Compositor (ESC): The User Agent Server (UAS) that
processes PUBLISH requests, and is responsible for compositing
event state into a complete, composite event state of a resource.
Presence Compositor: A type of Event State Compositor that is
responsible for compositing presence state for a presentity.
Publication: The act of an EPA sending a PUBLISH request to an ESC to
publish event state.
Event Hard State: The steady-state or default event state of a
resource, which the ESC may use in the absence of, or in addition
to, soft state publications.
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RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
Event Soft State: Event state published by an EPA using the PUBLISH
mechanism. A protocol element (i.e., an entity-tag) is used to
identify a specific soft state entity at the ESC. Soft state has
a defined lifetime and will expire after a negotiated amount of
time.
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 BCP 14, RFC 2119 [5]
and indicate requirement levels for compliant implementations.
Indented passages such as this one are used in this document to
provide additional information and clarifying text. They do not
contain descriptions of normative protocol behavior.
This document defines a new SIP method, PUBLISH, for publishing event
state. PUBLISH is similar to REGISTER in that it allows a user to
create, modify, and remove state in another entity which manages this
state on behalf of the user. Addressing a PUBLISH request is
identical to addressing a SUBSCRIBE request. The Request-URI of a
PUBLISH request is populated with the address of the resource for
which the user wishes to publish event state. The user may in turn
have multiple User Agents or endpoints that publish event state.
Each endpoint may publish its own unique state, out of which the
event state compositor generates the composite event state of the
resource. In addition to a particular resource, all published event
state is associated with a specific event package. Through a
subscription to that event package, the user is able to discover the
composite event state of all of the active publications.
A User Agent Client (UAC) that publishes event state is labeled an
Event Publication Agent (EPA). For presence, this is the familiar
Presence User Agent (PUA) role as defined in [2]. The entity that
processes the PUBLISH request is known as an Event State Compositor
(ESC). For presence, this is the familiar Presence Agent (PA) role
as defined in [2].
PUBLISH requests create soft state in the ESC. This event soft state
has a defined lifetime and will expire after a negotiated amount of
time, requiring the publication to be refreshed by subsequent PUBLISH
requests. There may also be event hard state provisioned for each
resource for a particular event package. This event state represents
the resource state that is present at all times, and does not expire.
The ESC may use event hard state in the absence of, or in addition
to, event soft state provided through the PUBLISH mechanism. Setting
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RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
this event hard state or configuring the ESC policy regarding the
aggregation of different event state is out of the scope of this
specification.
The body of a PUBLISH request carries the published event state. In
response to every successful PUBLISH request, the ESC assigns an
identifier to the publication in the form of an entity-tag. This
identifier is then used by the EPA in any subsequent PUBLISH request
that modifies, refreshes or removes the event state of that
publication. When event state expires or is explicitly removed, the
entity-tag associated with it becomes invalid. A publication for an
invalid entity-tag will naturally fail, and the EPA needs to start
anew and resend its event state without referencing a previous
entity-tag.
PUBLISH requests create, modify, and remove event state associated
with an address-of-record. A suitably authorized third party may
also perform publication on behalf of a particular address-of-record.
Except as noted, the construction of the PUBLISH request and the
behavior of clients sending a PUBLISH request are identical to the
general UAC behavior described in Section 8.1 and Section 17.1 of RFC
3261 [4].
If necessary, clients may probe for the support of PUBLISH using the
OPTIONS request defined in SIP [4]. The presence of "PUBLISH" in the
"Allow" header field in a response to an OPTIONS request indicates
support for the PUBLISH method. In addition, the "Allow-Events"
header field indicates the supported event packages.
Note that it is possible for the OPTIONS request to fork, and
consequently return a response from a User Agent other than the
ESC. In that case, support for the PUBLISH method may not be
appropriately represented for that particular Request-URI.
A PUBLISH request does not establish a dialog. A UAC MAY include a
Route header field in a PUBLISH request based on a pre-existing route
set as described in Section 8.1 of RFC 3261 [4]. The Record-Route
header field has no meaning in PUBLISH requests or responses, and
MUST be ignored if present. In particular, the UAC MUST NOT create a
new route set based on the presence or absence of a Record-Route
header field in any response to a PUBLISH request.
The PUBLISH request MAY contain a Contact header field, but including
one in a PUBLISH request has no meaning in the event publication
context and will be ignored by the ESC. An EPA MAY send a PUBLISH
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RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
request within an existing dialog. In that case, the request is
received in the context of any media session or sessions associated
with that dialog.
Note that while sending a PUBLISH request within an existing
dialog is not prohibited, it will typically not result in the
expected behavior. Unless the other end of the dialog is also an
ESC, it will probably reject the request.
EPAs MUST NOT send a new PUBLISH request (not a re-transmission) for
the same Request-URI, until they have received a final response from
the ESC for the previous one or the previous PUBLISH request has
timed out.
Identification of published event state is provided by three pieces
of information: Request-URI, event type, and (optionally) an entity-
tag.
The Request-URI of a PUBLISH request contains enough information to
route the request to the appropriate entity per the request routing
procedures outlined in RFC 3261 [4]. It also contains enough
information to identify the resource whose event state is to be
published, but not enough information to determine the type of the
published event state.
For determining the type of the published event state, the EPA MUST
include a single Event header field in PUBLISH requests. The value
of this header field indicates the event package for which this
request is publishing event state.
For each successful PUBLISH request, the ESC will generate and assign
an entity-tag and return it in the SIP-ETag header field of the 2xx
response.
When updating previously published event state, PUBLISH requests MUST
contain a single SIP-If-Match header field identifying the specific
event state that the request is refreshing, modifying or removing.
This header field MUST contain a single entity-tag that was returned
by the ESC in the SIP-ETag header field of the response to a previous
publication.
The PUBLISH request MAY contain a body, which contains event state
that the client wishes to publish. The content format and semantics
are dependent on the event package identified in the Event header
field.
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The presence of a body and the SIP-If-Match header field determine
the specific operation that the request is performing, as described
in Table 1.
+-----------+-------+---------------+---------------+
| Operation | Body? | SIP-If-Match? | Expires Value |
+-----------+-------+---------------+---------------+
| Initial | yes | no | > 0 |
| Refresh | no | yes | > 0 |
| Modify | yes | yes | > 0 |
| Remove | no | yes | 0 |
+-----------+-------+---------------+---------------+
Table 1: Publication Operations
An 'Initial' publication sets the initial event state for a
particular EPA. There may, of course, already be event state
published by other EPAs (for the same address-of-record). That state
is unaffected by an initial publication. A 'Refresh' publication
refreshes the lifetime of a previous publication, whereas a 'Modify'
publication modifies the event state of a previous publication. A
'Remove' publication requests immediate removal of event state.
These operations are described in more detail in the following
sections.
An initial publication is a PUBLISH request created by the EPA and
sent to the ESC that establishes soft state for the event package
indicated in the Event header field of the request, and bound to the
address in the Request-URI of the request.
An initial PUBLISH request MUST NOT contain a SIP-If-Match header
field. However, if the EPA expects an appropriate, locally stored
entity-tag to still be valid, it SHOULD first try to modify that
event state as described in Section 4.4, instead of submitting an
initial publication.
An initial PUBLISH request MUST contain a body that contains the
published event state.
An initial PUBLISH request MAY contain a single Expires header field.
This value indicates the suggested lifetime of the event state
publication.
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The ESC may lower the suggested lifetime of the publication, but it
will never extend it. If an Expires header field is not present, the
EPA is indicating its desire for the ESC to choose. The Expires
header field in a 2xx response to the initial PUBLISH indicates the
actual duration for which the publication will remain active. Unless
refreshed before this lifetime is exceeded, the publication will
expire.
An EPA is responsible for refreshing its previously established
publications before their expiration interval has elapsed. To
refresh a publication, the EPA MUST create a PUBLISH request that
includes in a SIP-If-Match header field the entity-tag of the
publication to be refreshed.
The SIP-If-Match header field containing an entity-tag conditions the
PUBLISH request to refresh a specific event state established by a
prior publication. If the entity-tag matches previously published
event state at the ESC, the refresh succeeds, and the EPA receives a
2xx response.
Like the 2xx response to an initial PUBLISH request, the 2xx response
to a refresh PUBLISH request will contain a SIP-ETag header field
with an entity-tag. The EPA MUST store this entity-tag, replacing
any existing entity-tag for the refreshed event state. See Section
8.2 for more information on the EPA handling of entity-tags.
If there is no matching event state, e.g., the event state to be
refreshed has already expired, the EPA receives a 412 (Conditional
Request Failed) response to the PUBLISH request.
A publication refresh MAY contain a single Expires header field.
This value indicates the suggested lifetime of the event state.
The ESC may lower the suggested lifetime of the publication refresh,
but it will never extend it. If an Expires header field is not
present, the EPA is indicating its desire for the ESC to choose. The
Expires header field in a 2xx response to the publication refresh
indicates the actual duration for which the publication will remain
active.
A publication refresh only extends the expiration time of already
existing event state. It does not affect that event state in any
other way. Therefore, a PUBLISH request that refreshes event state
MUST NOT have a body.
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Modifying event state closely resembles the creation of initial event
state. However, instead of establishing completely new event state
at the ESC, already existing event state is updated with modified
event state. The nature of this update depends on the content of the
body, and the semantics associated with the format of that body.
To modify event state, the EPA MUST construct a PUBLISH request that
includes in a SIP-If-Match header field the entity-tag of the event
state publication to be modified. A PUBLISH request that modifies
event state MUST contain a body that includes the modified event
state.
The SIP-If-Match header field conditions the PUBLISH request to
modify a specific event state established by a prior publication, and
identified by the entity-tag. If the entity-tag matches previously
published event state at the ESC, that event state is replaced by the
event state carried in the PUBLISH request, and the EPA receives a
2xx response.
Like the 2xx response to an initial PUBLISH request, the 2xx response
to a modifying PUBLISH request will contain a SIP-ETag header field
with an entity-tag. The EPA MUST store this entity-tag, replacing
any existing entity-tag for the modified event state. See Section
8.2 for more information on the EPA handling of entity-tags.
If there is no matching event state at the ESC, e.g., the event state
to be modified has already expired, the EPA receives a 412
(Conditional Request Failed) response to the PUBLISH request.
A modifying PUBLISH request MAY contain a single Expires header
field. This value indicates the suggested lifetime of the event
state publication.
The ESC may lower the suggested lifetime of the publication, but it
will never extend it. If an Expires header field is not present, the
EPA is indicating its desire for the ESC to choose. The Expires
header field in a 2xx response to the modifying PUBLISH request
indicates the actual duration for which the publication will remain
active. Unless refreshed before this lifetime is exceeded, the
publication will expire.
Event state established by a prior publication may also be explicitly
removed.
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To request the immediate removal of event state, an EPA MUST create a
PUBLISH request with an Expires value of "0", and set the SIP-If-
Match header field to contain the entity-tag of the event state
publication to be removed.
Note that removing event state is effectively a publication
refresh suggesting an infinitesimal expiration interval.
Consequently, the refreshed event state expires immediately after
being refreshed.
Similar to an event state refresh, the removal of event state only
affects the expiry of the event state. Therefore, a PUBLISH request
that removes event state MUST NOT contain a body.
When processing responses to PUBLISH requests, the steps in Section
8.1.2 of RFC 3261 [4] apply.
If an EPA receives a 412 (Conditional Request Failed) response, it
MUST NOT reattempt the PUBLISH request. Instead, to publish event
state, the EPA SHOULD perform an initial publication, i.e., a PUBLISH
request without a SIP-If-Match header field, as described in Section
4.2. The EPA MUST also discard the entity-tag that produced this
error response.
If an EPA receives a 423 (Interval Too Brief) response to a PUBLISH
request, it MAY retry the publication after changing the expiration
interval in the Expires header field to be equal to or greater than
the expiration interval within the Min-Expires header field of the
423 (Interval Too Brief) response.
The Event State Compositor (ESC) is a User Agent Server (UAS) that
processes and responds to PUBLISH requests, and maintains a list of
publications for a given address-of-record. The ESC has to know
(e.g., through configuration) the set of addresses for which it
maintains event state.
The ESC MUST ignore the Record-Route header field if it is included
in a PUBLISH request. The ESC MUST NOT include a Record-Route header
field in any response to a PUBLISH request. The ESC MUST ignore the
Contact header field if one is present in a PUBLISH request.
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PUBLISH requests with the same Request-URI MUST be processed in the
order that they are received. PUBLISH requests MUST also be
processed atomically, meaning that a particular PUBLISH request is
either processed completely or not at all.
When receiving a PUBLISH request, the ESC follows the steps defining
general UAS behavior in Section 8.2 of RFC 3261 [4]. In addition,
for PUBLISH specific behavior the ESC follows these steps:
1. The ESC inspects the Request-URI to determine whether this request
is targeted to a resource for which the ESC is responsible for
maintaining event state. If not, the ESC MUST return a 404 (Not
Found) response and skip the remaining steps.
It may also be that the Request-URI points to a domain that the
ESC is not responsible for. In that case, the UAS receiving the
request can assume the role of a proxy server and forward the
request to a more appropriate target.
2. The ESC examines the Event header field of the PUBLISH request.
If the Event header field is missing or contains an event package
which the ESC does not support, the ESC MUST respond to the
PUBLISH request with a 489 (Bad Event) response, and skip the
remaining steps.
3. The ESC examines the SIP-If-Match header field of the PUBLISH
request for the presence of a request precondition.
* If the request does not contain a SIP-If-Match header field,
the ESC MUST generate and store a locally unique entity-tag for
identifying the publication. This entity-tag is associated
with the event-state carried in the body of the PUBLISH
request.
* Else, if the request has a SIP-If-Match header field, the ESC
checks whether the header field contains a single entity-tag.
If not, the request is invalid, and the ESC MUST return with a
400 (Invalid Request) response and skip the remaining steps.
* Else, the ESC extracts the entity-tag contained in the SIP-If-
Match header field and matches that entity-tag against all
locally stored entity-tags for this resource and event package.
If no match is found, the ESC MUST reject the publication with
a response of 412 (Conditional Request Failed), and skip the
remaining steps.
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4. The ESC processes the Expires header field value from the PUBLISH
request.
* If the request has an Expires header field, that value MUST be
taken as the requested expiration.
* Else, a locally-configured default value MUST be taken as the
requested expiration.
* The ESC MAY choose an expiration less than the requested
expiration interval. Only if the requested expiration interval
is greater than zero and less than a locally-configured
minimum, the ESC MAY reject the publication with a response of
423 (Interval Too Brief), and skip the remaining steps. This
response MUST contain a Min-Expires header field that states
the minimum expiration interval the ESC is willing to honor.
5. The ESC processes the published event state contained in the body
of the PUBLISH request. If the content type of the request does
not match the event package, or is not understood by the ESC, the
ESC MUST reject the request with an appropriate response, such as
415 (Unsupported Media Type), and skip the remainder of the steps.
* The ESC stores the event state delivered in the body of the
PUBLISH request and identified by the associated entity-tag,
updating any existing event state for that entity-tag. The
expiration value is set to the chosen expiration interval.
* If the request has no message body and contained no entity-tag,
the ESC SHOULD reject the request with an appropriate response,
such as 400 (Invalid Request), and skip the remainder of the
steps. Alternatively, in case either ESC local policy or the
event package has defined semantics for an initial publication
containing no message body, the ESC MAY accept it.
* Else, the event state identified by the entity-tag is
refreshed, setting the expiration value to the chosen
expiration interval.
* If the chosen expiration interval has a special value of "0",
the event state identified by the entity-tag MUST be
immediately removed. The ESC MUST NOT store any event state as
a result of such a request.
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The processing of the PUBLISH request MUST be atomic. If internal
errors (such as the inability to access a back-end database) occur
before processing is complete, the publication MUST NOT succeed,
and the ESC MUST fail with an appropriate error response, such as
504 (Server Time-out), and skip the last step.
6. The ESC returns a 200 (OK) response. The response MUST contain an
Expires header field indicating the expiration interval chosen by
the ESC. The response MUST also contain a SIP-ETag header field
that contains a single entity-tag identifying the publication.
The ESC MUST generate a new entity-tag for each successful
publication, replacing any previous entity-tag associated with
that event state. The generated entity-tag MUST be unique from any
other entity-tags currently assigned to event state associated
with that Request-URI, and MUST be different from any entity-tag
assigned previously to event state for that Request-URI. See
Section 8.3 for more information on the ESC handling of entity-
tags.
A client may probe the ESC for the support of PUBLISH using the
OPTIONS request defined in SIP [4]. The ESC processes OPTIONS
requests as defined in Section 11.2 of RFC 3261 [4]. In the response
to an OPTIONS request, the ESC SHOULD include "PUBLISH" to the list
of allowed methods in the Allow header field. Also, it SHOULD list
the supported event packages in an Allow-Events header field.
The Allow header field may also be used to specifically announce
support for PUBLISH messages when registering. (See SIP Capabilities
[12] for details).
This section makes a general overview of the entity-tags usage in
PUBLISH. It is informative in nature and thus contains no normative
protocol description.
The PUBLISH mechanism makes use of entity-tags, as defined in HTTP/
1.1 [13]. While the main functionality is preserved, the syntax and
semantics for entity-tags and the corresponding header fields is
adapted specifically for use with the PUBLISH method. The main
differences are:
o The syntax for entity-tags is a token instead of quoted-string.
There is also no prefix defined for indicating a weak entity-tag.
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RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
o A PUBLISH precondition can only apply to a single entity-tag, so
request preconditions with multiple entity-tags are not allowed.
o A request precondition can't apply to "any" entity, namely there
is no special "*" entity-tag value defined for PUBLISH.
o Whereas in HTTP/1.1 returning an entity-tag is optional for origin
servers, in PUBLISH ESCs are required to always return an entity-
tag for a successful publication.
The main motivation for the above adaptation is that PUBLISH is
conceptually an HTTP PUT, for which only a subset of the features in
cache validation using entity-tags is allowed in HTTP/1.1. It makes
little sense to enable features other than this subset for event
state publication.
To make it apparent that the entity-tags usage in PUBLISH is similar
but not identical to HTTP/1.1, we have not adopted the header field
names directly from HTTP/1.1, but rather have created similar but
distinct names, as can be seen in Section 11.
Each successful publication will get assigned an entity-tag which is
then delivered to the EPA in the response to the PUBLISH request.
The EPA needs to store that entity-tag, replacing any previous
entity-tag for that event state. If a request fails with a 412
(Conditional Request Failed) response, the EPA discards the entity-
tag that caused the failure.
Entity-tags are opaque tokens to the EPA. The EPA cannot infer any
further semantics from an entity-tag beyond a simple identifier, or
assume a specific formatting. An entity-tag may be a monotonically
increasing counter, but it may also be a totally random token. It is
up to the ESC implementation as to what the formatting of an entity-
tag is.
Entity-tags are generated and maintained by the ESC. They are part
of the state maintained by the ESC that also includes the actual
event state and its remaining expiration interval. An entity-tag is
generated and stored for each successful event state publication, and
returned to the EPA in a 200 (OK) response. Each event state
publication from the EPA that updates a previous publication will
include an entity-tag that the ESC can use as a search key in the set
of active publications.
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RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
The way in which an entity-tag is generated is an implementation
decision. One possible way to generate an entity-tag is to implement
it as an integer counter that is incremented by one for each
successfully processed publication. Other, equally valid ways for
generating entity-tags exist, and this document makes no
recommendations or preference for a single way.
As an entity responsible for aggregating state information from
potentially many sources, the ESC can be subject to considerable
amounts of publication traffic. There are ways to reduce the amount
of PUBLISH requests that the ESC receives:
o Choice of the expiration interval for a publication can be
affected by the ESC. It can insist that an EPA chooses a longer
expiration value to what it suggests, in case the ESC's local
default minimum expiration value is not reached. Maintaining a
longer default minimum expiration value at the ESC reduces the
rate at which publications are refreshed.
o Another way of reducing publication traffic is to use a SIP-level
push-back to quench a specific source of publication traffic. To
push back on publications from a particular source, the ESC MAY
respond to a PUBLISH request with a 503 (Service Unavailable), as
defined in RFC 3261 [4]. This response SHOULD contain a Retry-
After header field indicating the time interval that the
publication source is required to wait until sending another
PUBLISH request.
At the time of writing this specification, work on managing load in
SIP is starting, which may be able to provide further tools for
managing load in event state publication systems.
This section discusses several issues which should be taken into
consideration when applying the PUBLISH mechanism to event packages.
It also demonstrates how these issues are handled when using PUBLISH
for presence publication.
Any future event package specification SHOULD include a discussion of
its considerations for using PUBLISH. At a minimum those
considerations SHOULD address the issues presented in this chapter,
and MAY include additional considerations.
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The body of the PUBLISH request typically carries the published event
state. Any application of the PUBLISH mechanism for a given event
package MUST define what content type or types are expected in
PUBLISH requests. Each event package MUST also describe the
semantics associated with that content type, and MUST prescribe a
default, mandatory to implement MIME type.
This document defines the semantics of the presence publication
requests (event package "presence") when the Common Profile for
Presence (CPP) Presence Information Data Format (PIDF) [6] is used.
A PUA that uses PUBLISH to publish presence state to the PA MUST
support the PIDF presence format. It MAY support other formats.
The response to a PUBLISH request indicates whether the request was
successful or not. In general, the body of such a response will be
empty unless the event package defines explicit meaning for such a
body.
There is no such meaning for the body of a response to a presence
publication.
For some event packages, the underlying model is that of a single
entity responsible for aggregating event state (ESC), and multiple
sources, out of which only some may be using the PUBLISH mechanism.
Note that sources for event state other than those using the
PUBLISH mechanism are explicitly allowed. However, it is beyond
the scope of this document to define such interfaces.
Event packages that make use of the PUBLISH mechanism SHOULD describe
whether this model for event state publication is applicable, and MAY
describe specific mechanisms used for aggregating publications from
multiple sources.
For presence, a PUA can publish presence state for just a subset of
the tuples that may be composited into the presence document that
watchers receive in a NOTIFY. The mechanism by which the ESC
aggregates this information is a matter of local policy and out of
the scope of this specification.
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For some event packages, there exists a natural decomposition of
event state into segments. Each segment is defined as one of
potentially many identifiable sections in the published event state.
Any event package whose content type supports such segmentation of
event state, SHOULD describe the way in which these event state
segments are identified by the ESC.
In presence publication, the EPA MUST keep the "id" attributes of
tuples consistent in the context of an entity-tag. If a publication
modifies the contents of a tuple, that tuple MUST maintain its
original "id". The ESC will interpret each tuple in the context of
the entity-tag with which the request arrived. A tuple whose "id" is
missing compared to the original publication will be considered as
being removed. Similarly, a tuple is interpreted as being added if
its "id" attribute is one that the original publication did not
contain.
Controlling the rate of publication is discussed in Section 9.
Individual event packages MAY in turn define recommendations (SHOULD
or MUST strength) on absolute maximum rates at which publications are
allowed to be generated by a single EPA.
There are no rate limiting recommendations for presence publication.
"PUBLISH" is added to the definition of the element "Method" in the
SIP message grammar. As with all other SIP methods, the method name
is case sensitive. PUBLISH is used to publish event state to an
entity responsible for compositing this event state.
Table 2 and Table 3 extend Tables 2 and 3 of RFC 3261 [4] by adding
an additional column, defining the header fields that can be used in
PUBLISH requests and responses. The keys in these tables are
specified in Section 20 of RFC 3261 [4].
Niemi Standards Track [Page 17]
RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
+---------------------+---------+---------+
| Header Field | where | PUBLISH |
+---------------------+---------+---------+
| Accept | R | o |
| Accept | 2xx | - |
| Accept | 415 | m* |
| Accept-Encoding | R | o |
| Accept-Encoding | 2xx | - |
| Accept-Encoding | 415 | m* |
| Accept-Language | R | o |
| Accept-Language | 2xx | - |
| Accept-Language | 415 | m* |
| Alert-Info | | - |
| Allow | R | o |
| Allow | r | o |
| Allow | 405 | m |
| Allow-Events | R | o |
| Allow-Events | 489 | m |
| Authentication-Info | 2xx | o |
| Authorization | R | o |
| Call-ID | c | m |
| Call-Info | | o |
| Contact | R | - |
| Contact | 1xx | - |
| Contact | 2xx | - |
| Contact | 3xx | o |
| Contact | 485 | o |
| Content-Disposition | | o |
| Content-Encoding | | o |
| Content-Language | | o |
| Content-Length | | t |
| Content-Type | | * |
| CSeq | c | m |
| Date | | o |
| Event | R | m |
| Error-Info | 300-699 | o |
| Expires | | o |
| Expires | 2xx | m |
| From | c | m |
| In-Reply-To | R | - |
| Max-Forwards | R | m |
| Min-Expires | 423 | m |
| MIME-Version | | o |
| Organization | | o |
+---------------------+---------+---------+
Table 2: Summary of header fields, A--O
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RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
+---------------------+-----------------+---------+
| Header Field | where | PUBLISH |
+---------------------+-----------------+---------+
| Priority | R | o |
| Proxy-Authenticate | 407 | m |
| Proxy-Authenticate | 401 | o |
| Proxy-Authorization | R | o |
| Proxy-Require | R | o |
| Record-Route | | - |
| Reply-To | | - |
| Require | | o |
| Retry-After | 404,413,480,486 | o |
| Retry-After | 500,503 | o |
| Retry-After | 600,603 | o |
| Route | R | c |
| Server | r | o |
| Subject | R | o |
| Supported | R | o |
| Supported | 2xx | o |
| Timestamp | | o |
| To | c(1) | m |
| Unsupported | 420 | o |
| User-Agent | | o |
| Via | R | m |
| Via | rc | m |
| Warning | r | o |
| WWW-Authenticate | 401 | m |
| WWW-Authenticate | 407 | o |
+---------------------+-----------------+---------+
Table 3: Summary of header fields, P--Z
The 412 (Conditional Request Failed) response is added to the
"Client-Error" header field definition. 412 (Conditional Request
Failed) is used to indicate that the precondition given for the
request has failed.
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RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
SIP-ETag is added to the definition of the element "general-header"
in the SIP message grammar. Usage of this header is described in
Section 4 and Section 6.
SIP-If-Match is added to the definition of the element "general-
header" in the SIP message grammar. Usage of this header is
described in Section 4 and Section 6.
Niemi Standards Track [Page 20]
RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
This section describes the syntax extensions required for event
publication in SIP. The formal syntax definitions described in this
section are expressed in the Augmented BNF [7] format used in SIP
[4], and contain references to elements defined therein.
PUBLISHm = %x50.55.42.4C.49.53.48 ; PUBLISH in caps.
extension-method = PUBLISHm / token
SIP-ETag = "SIP-ETag" HCOLON entity-tag
SIP-If-Match = "SIP-If-Match" HCOLON entity-tag
entity-tag = token
This document registers a new SIP method, defined by the following
information, which has been added to the method and response-code
sub-registry under http://www.iana.org/assignments/sip-parameters.
Method Name: PUBLISH
Reference: [RFC3903]
This document registers a new response code. This response code is
defined by the following information, which has been added to the
method and response-code sub-registry under
http://www.iana.org/assignments/sip-parameters.
Response Code Number: 412
Default Reason Phrase: Conditional Request Failed
This document registers two new SIP header field names. These
headers are defined by the following information, which has been
added to the header sub-registry under
http://www.iana.org/assignments/sip-parameters.
Header Name: SIP-ETag
Compact Form: (none)
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RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
Header Name: SIP-If-Match
Compact Form: (none)
Since event state may be considered sensitive information, the ESC
should have the ability to selectively accept publications from
authorized sources only, based on the identity of the EPA.
The state agent SHOULD authenticate the EPA, and SHOULD apply its
authorization policies (e.g., based on access control lists) to all
requests. The composition model makes no assumptions that all input
sources for an ESC are on the same network, or in the same
administrative domain.
ESCs and EPAs MUST implement Digest for authenticating PUBLISH
requests, as defined in RFC 3261 [4]. The exact methods for creating
and manipulating access control policies in the ESC are outside the
scope of this document.
The creation of state at the ESC upon receipt of a PUBLISH request
can be used by attackers to consume resources on a victim's machine,
possibly rendering it unusable.
To reduce the chances of such an attack, implementations of ESCs
SHOULD require authentication of PUBLISH requests. Implementations
MUST support Digest authentication, as defined in RFC 3261 [4].
Also, the ESC SHOULD throttle incoming publications and the
corresponding notifications resulting from the changes in event
state. As a first step, careful selection of default minimum Expires
header field values for the supported event packages at an ESC can
help limit refreshes of event state.
Additional throttling and debounce logic at the ESC is advisable to
further reduce the notification traffic produced as a result of a
PUBLISH request.
Replaying a PUBLISH request can have detrimental effects. An
attacker may be able to perform any event state publication it
witnessed being performed at some point in the past, by replaying
that PUBLISH request. Among other things, such a replay message may
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RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
be used to spoof old event state information, although a versioning
mechanism, e.g., a timestamp, in the state information may help
mitigate such an attack.
To prevent replay attacks, implementations MUST support Digest
authentication with replay protection, as defined in RFC 3261 [4].
Further mechanisms for countering replay attacks are discussed in SIP
[4].
Even with authentication, man-in-the-middle attacks using PUBLISH may
be used to install arbitrary event state information, modify or
remove existing event state information in publications, or even
remove event state altogether at an ESC.
To prevent such attacks, implementations SHOULD, at a minimum,
provide integrity protection across the To, From, Event, SIP-If-
Match, Route, and Expires header fields and the bodies of PUBLISH
requests.
If the ESC receives event state in a PUBLISH request which is
integrity protected using a security association that is not with the
ESC (e.g., integrity protection is applied end-to-end, from publisher
to subscriber), the state agent coupled with the ESC MUST NOT modify
the event state before exposing it to the subscribers of this event
state in NOTIFY requests. This is to preserve the end-to-end
integrity of the event state.
For integrity protection, ESCs MUST implement TLS [8], and MUST
support both mutual and one-way authentication, and MUST also support
the SIPS URI scheme defined in SIP [4]. EPAs SHOULD be capable of
initiating TLS and SHOULD support the SIPS URI scheme. ESCs and EPAs
MAY support S/MIME [9] for integrity protection, as defined in SIP
[4].
The state information contained in a PUBLISH message may potentially
contain sensitive information. Implementations MAY encrypt such
information to ensure confidentiality.
For providing confidentiality, ESCs MUST implement TLS [8], MUST
support both mutual and one-way authentication, and MUST also support
the SIPS URI scheme defined in SIP [4]. EPAs SHOULD be capable of
initiating TLS and SHOULD support the SIPS URI scheme. ESCs and EPAs
MAY support S/MIME [9] for encryption of event state information, as
defined in SIP [4].
Niemi Standards Track [Page 23]
RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
This section shows an example of using the PUBLISH method for
publishing a presence document from a presence user agent to a
presence agent. The watcher in this example is subscribing to the
presentity's presence information from the PA. The PUA may also
SUBSCRIBE to its own presence to see the composite presence state
exposed by the PA. This is an optional but likely step for the PUA,
and is not shown in this example.
When the value of the Content-Length header field is "..." this means
that the value should be whatever the computed length of the body is.
PUA PA WATCHER
(EPA) (ESC)
| | |
| | <---- M1: SUBSCRIBE --- |
| | |
| | ----- M2: 200 OK -----> |
| | |
| | ----- M3: NOTIFY -----> |
| | |
| | <---- M4: 200 OK ------ |
| | |
| | |
| ---- M5: PUBLISH ---> | |
| | |
| <--- M6: 200 OK ---- | |
| | |
| | ----- M7: NOTIFY -----> |
| | |
| | <---- M8: 200 OK ------ |
| | |
| ---- M9: PUBLISH ---> | |
| | |
| <--- M10: 200 OK --- | |
| | |
| | |
| --- M11: PUBLISH ---> | |
| | |
| <-- M12: 200 OK ---- | |
| | |
| | ----- M13: NOTIFY ----> |
| | |
| | <---- M14: 200 OK ----- |
| | |
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RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
Message flow:
M1: The watcher initiates a new subscription to the
presentity@example.com's presence agent.
SUBSCRIBE sip:presentity@example.com SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP host.example.com;branch=z9hG4bKnashds7
To: <sip:presentity@example.com>
From: <sip:watcher@example.com>;tag=12341234
Call-ID: 12345678@host.example.com
CSeq: 1 SUBSCRIBE
Max-Forwards: 70
Expires: 3600
Event: presence
Contact: sip:user@host.example.com
Content-Length: 0
M2: The presence agent for presentity@example.com processes the
subscription request and creates a new subscription. A 200 (OK)
response is sent to confirm the subscription.
SIP/2.0 200 OK
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP host.example.com;branch=z9hG4bKnashds7
;received=192.0.2.1
To: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=abcd1234
From: <sip:watcher@example.com>;tag=12341234
Call-ID: 12345678@host.example.com
CSeq: 1 SUBSCRIBE
Contact: sip:pa.example.com
Expires: 3600
Content-Length: 0
M3: In order to complete the process, the presence agent sends the
watcher a NOTIFY with the current presence state of the
presentity.
NOTIFY sip:user@host.example.com SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP pa.example.com;branch=z9hG4bK8sdf2
To: <sip:watcher@example.com>;tag=12341234
From: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=abcd1234
Call-ID: 12345678@host.example.com
CSeq: 1 NOTIFY
Max-Forwards: 70
Event: presence
Subscription-State: active; expires=3599
Contact: sip:pa.example.com
Content-Type: application/pidf+xml
Content-Length: ...
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RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
[PIDF document]
M4: The watcher confirms receipt of the NOTIFY request.
SIP/2.0 200 OK
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP pa.example.com;branch=z9hG4bK8sdf2
;received=192.0.2.2
To: <sip:watcher@example.com>;tag=12341234
From: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=abcd1234
Call-ID: 12345678@host.example.com
CSeq: 1 NOTIFY
M5: A presence user agent (acting for the presentity) initiates a
PUBLISH request to the presence agent in order to update it with
new presence information. The Expires header field indicates the
suggested duration for this event soft state.
PUBLISH sip:presentity@example.com SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP pua.example.com;branch=z9hG4bK652hsge
To: <sip:presentity@example.com>
From: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=1234wxyz
Call-ID: 81818181@pua.example.com
CSeq: 1 PUBLISH
Max-Forwards: 70
Expires: 3600
Event: presence
Content-Type: application/pidf+xml
Content-Length: ...
[Published PIDF document]
M6: The presence agent receives, and accepts the presence
publication. The published data is incorporated into the
presentity's presence information.
SIP/2.0 200 OK
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP pua.example.com;branch=z9hG4bK652hsge
;received=192.0.2.3
To: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=1a2b3c4d
From: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=1234wxyz
Call-ID: 81818181@pua.example.com
CSeq: 1 PUBLISH
SIP-ETag: dx200xyz
Expires: 1800
M7: The presence agent determines that a reportable change has been
made to the presentity's presence information, and sends a
new presence notification to the watcher.
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RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
NOTIFY sip:user@host.example.com SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP pa.example.com;branch=z9hG4bK4cd42a
To: <sip:watcher@example.com>;tag=12341234
From: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=abcd1234
Call-ID: 12345678@host.example.com
CSeq: 2 NOTIFY
Max-Forwards: 70
Event: presence
Subscription-State: active; expires=3400
Contact: sip:pa.example.com
Content-Type: application/pidf+xml
Content-Length: ...
[New PIDF document]
M8: The watcher confirms receipt of the NOTIFY request.
SIP/2.0 200 OK
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP pa.example.com;branch=z9hG4bK4cd42a
;received=192.0.2.2
To: <sip:watcher@example.com>;tag=12341234
From: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=abcd1234
Call-ID: 12345678@host.example.com
CSeq: 2 NOTIFY
Content-Length: 0
M9: The PUA determines that the event state it previously published
is about to expire, and refreshes that event state.
PUBLISH sip:presentity@example.com SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP pua.example.com;branch=z9hG4bK771ash02
To: <sip:presentity@example.com>
From: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=1234kljk
Call-ID: 98798798@pua.example.com
CSeq: 1 PUBLISH
Max-Forwards: 70
SIP-If-Match: dx200xyz
Expires: 3600
Event: presence
Content-Length: 0
M10: The presence agent receives, and accepts the publication
refresh. The timers regarding the expiration of the specific
event state identified by the entity-tag are updated. As always,
the ESC returns an entity-tag in the response to a successful
PUBLISH. Note that no actual state change has occurred, so the
watchers will receive no NOTIFYs.
Niemi Standards Track [Page 27]
RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
SIP/2.0 200 OK
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP pua.example.com;branch=z9hG4bK771ash02
;received=192.0.2.3
To: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=2affde434
From: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=1234kljk
Call-ID: 98798798@pua.example.com
CSeq: 1 PUBLISH
SIP-ETag: kwj449x
Expires: 1800
M11: The PUA of the presentity detects a change in the user's
presence state. It initiates a PUBLISH request to the presence
agent to modify the published presence information with the recent
change.
PUBLISH sip:presentity@example.com SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP pua.example.com;branch=z9hG4bKcdad2
To: <sip:presentity@example.com>
From: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=54321mm
Call-ID: 5566778@pua.example.com
CSeq: 1 PUBLISH
Max-Forwards: 70
SIP-If-Match: kwj449x
Expires: 3600
Event: presence
Content-Type: application/pidf+xml
Content-Length: ...
[Published PIDF Document]
M12: The presence agent receives, and accepts the modifying
publication. The published data is incorporated into the
presentity's presence information, updating the previous
publication from the same PUA.
SIP/2.0 200 OK
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP pua.example.com;branch=z9hG4bKcdad2
;received=192.0.2.3
To: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=effe22aa
From: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=54321mm
Call-ID: 5566778@pua.example.com
CSeq: 1 PUBLISH
SIP-ETag: qwi982ks
Expires: 3600
M13: The presence agent determines that a reportable change has been
made to the presentity's presence document, and sends a
new presence notification to all active subscriptions.
Niemi Standards Track [Page 28]
RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
NOTIFY sip:user@host.example.com SIP/2.0
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP pa.example.com;branch=z9hG4bK32defd3
To: <sip:watcher@example.com>;tag=12341234
From: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=abcd1234
Call-ID: 12345678@host.example.com
CSeq: 2 NOTIFY
Max-Forwards: 70
Event: presence
Subscription-State: active; expires=3400
Contact: sip:pa.example.com
Content-Type: application/pidf+xml
Content-Length: ...
[New PIDF document]
M14: The watcher confirms receipt of the NOTIFY request.
SIP/2.0 200 OK
Via: SIP/2.0/UDP pa.example.com;branch=z9hG4bK32defd3
;received=192.0.2.3
To: <sip:watcher@example.com>;tag=12341234
From: <sip:presentity@example.com>;tag=abcd1234
Call-ID: 12345678@host.example.com
CSeq: 2 NOTIFY
Content-Length: 0
The original contributors to this specification are:
Ben Campbell
Estacado Systems
Sean Olson
Microsoft
Jon Peterson
Neustar, Inc.
Jonathan Rosenberg
dynamicsoft
Brian Stucker
Nortel Networks, Inc.
Niemi Standards Track [Page 29]
RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
The authors would like to thank the SIMPLE Working Group for their
collective effort, and specifically the following people for their
review and support of this work: Henning Schulzrinne, Paul Kyzivat,
Hisham Khartabil, George Foti, Keith Drage, Samir Srivastava, Arun
Kumar, Adam Roach, Pekka Pessi, Kai Wang, Cullen Jennings, Mikko
Lonnfors, Eva-Maria Leppanen, Ernst Horvath, Thanos Diacakis, Oded
Cnaan, Rohan Mahy, and Dean Willis.
[1] Roach, A., "Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-Specific Event
Notification", RFC 3265, June 2002.
[2] Rosenberg, J., "A Presence Event Package for the Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC 3856, August 2004.
[3] Day, M., Rosenberg, J., and H. Sugano, "A Model for Presence and
Instant Messaging", RFC 2778, February 2000.
[4] 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.
[5] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[6] Sugano, H., Fujimoto, S., Klyne, G., Bateman, A., Carr, W., and
J. Peterson, "Presence Information Data Format (PIDF)", RFC
3863, August 2004.
[7] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997.
[8] Dierks, T. and C. Allen, "The TLS Protocol Version 1.0", RFC
2246, January 1999.
[9] Ramsdell, B., Ed., "Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
(S/MIME) Version 3.1 Message Specification", RFC 3851, July
2004.
Niemi Standards Track [Page 30]
RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
[10] Campbell, B., "SIMPLE Presence Publication Requirements", Work
in Progress, February 2003.
[11] Mahy, R., "A Message Summary and Message Waiting Indication
Event Package for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC
3842, August 2004.
[12] Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., and P. Kyzivat, "Indicating User
Agent Capabilities in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)",
RFC 3840, August 2004.
[13] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L.,
Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol --
HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
Author's Address
Aki Niemi (editor)
Nokia
P.O. Box 407
NOKIA GROUP, FIN 00045
Finland
Phone: +358 50 389 1644
EMail: aki.niemi@nokia.com
Niemi Standards Track [Page 31]
RFC 3903 SIP Event State Publication October 2004
Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).
This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
retain all their rights.
This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
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this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-
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Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
Niemi Standards Track [Page 32]