draft-mahy-sipping-16
SIPPING WG R. Mahy
Internet-Draft Cisco Systems, Inc.
Expires: January 30, 2005 Aug 2004
Marketing Buzzword "SIPPING 16" Considered Harmful
draft-mahy-sipping-16-00.txt
Status of this Memo
By submitting this Internet-Draft, I certify that any applicable
patent or other IPR claims of which I am aware have been disclosed,
and any of which I become aware will be disclosed, in accordance with
RFC 3668.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as
Internet-Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
This Internet-Draft will expire on January 30, 2005.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) has become very popular, and
with this popularity, the harmful misconceptions that there is a
specific limit to the number of features that can be implemented
using SIP primitives, and that informational documents produced by
the SIPPING Working Group that show example call flows place
restrictions on what can be implemented. One especially catchy
buzzword--The "SIPPING 16"--supposedly refers to the sixteen basic
features of SIP. This document describes why the mythical SIPPING 16
does not exist, and where to find out more information about SIP
features.
Mahy Expires January 30, 2005 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft SIPPING 16 Aug 2004
Table of Contents
1. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.1 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.2 Informational References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . 6
Mahy Expires January 30, 2005 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft SIPPING 16 Aug 2004
1. Discussion
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) [1] has become very popular,
and with this popularity has come a variety of misconceptions about
SIP in marketing literature, at conferences, and in the trade press.
One particularly harmful misconception is that there is some magic
limit to the number of phone-like features that can be implemented
with SIP primitives, and that informational documents produced by the
SIPPING Working Group that show example call flows place restrictions
on what can be implemented. One especially catchy buzzword--The
"SIPPING 16"--supposedly refers to the sixteen basic features of SIP.
Some vendors go so far as to make statements like "SIP only has 16
features", as an excuse for a poor SIP implementation, or in order to
steer customers to a proprietary approach.
Of course, the "SIPPING 16" does not exist. The vendors who have
latched onto the "SIPPING 16" idea do not even agree on what the
sixteen features are. The IETF does not standardize features, and
there is no finite limit on the number of features which can be built
using the SIP protocol. The concept of counting features is a
vestige of the same dubious practice in the telephony community.
This practice encouraged micro-fragmentation of features to inflate a
total feature count which was used purely for marketing purposes.
Meanwhile usability experts point out that human end-users of phone
systems use only a handful of the total features available. No
end-user will ever have a desire to use every feature in a typical
phone system, and many end-users do not use features that accomplish
a useful function due to traditionally poor user interfaces in these
systems.
The SIPPING Working Group (which describes the usage of SIP as one of
its core functions) has produced a number of informational documents
to provide examples of how popular features from the telephony world
can be implemented (for example: [3] and [4]). These examples do not
restrict the number or variety of features available, nor do they
even represent an exhaustive set of examples implemented in shipping
products. (Note that as of this writing, most low-cost consumer SIP
User Agents support many more than sixteen specific features.)
The author of this document was asked once to comment on the
"SIPPING 16" item mentioned in an RFI (Request For Information).
Much to his chagrin, he eventually realized that the customer was
referring to examples in the SIP Call Control Framework for which
he was the editor.
In some cases, SIPPING has produced Best Current Practice documents
(for example: [2] and [5]) to inform the implementation community
about difficult design decisions and to encourage interoperability.
These are necessarily rare, and are only published after a
Mahy Expires January 30, 2005 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft SIPPING 16 Aug 2004
substantial amount of development experience has been acquired.
2. Security Considerations
Misconceptions about the readiness of the SIP protocol can delay
deployment of SIP-based solutions. SIP-based solutions typically
support and use much stronger security than the proprietary systems
they replace. As a result, misconceptions which delay SIP-deployment
will generally downgrade the effective security of phone systems and
other real-time applications.
3. IANA Considerations
This document requires no action by IANA.
4. References
4.1 Normative References
[1] 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.
4.2 Informational References
[2] Rosenberg, J., Peterson, J., Schulzrinne, H. and G. Camarillo,
"Best Current Practices for Third Party Call Control (3pcc) in
the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)", BCP 85, RFC 3725, April
2004.
[3] Johnston, A. and R. Sparks, "Session Initiation Protocol Service
Examples", draft-ietf-sipping-service-examples-07 (work in
progress), July 2004.
[4] Mahy, R., "A Call Control and Multi-party usage framework for
the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)",
draft-ietf-sipping-cc-framework-03 (work in progress), October
2003.
[5] Sparks, R. and A. Johnston, "Session Initiation Protocol Call
Control - Transfer", draft-ietf-sipping-cc-transfer-02 (work in
progress), February 2004.
Mahy Expires January 30, 2005 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft SIPPING 16 Aug 2004
Author's Address
Rohan Mahy
Cisco Systems, Inc.
5617 Scotts Valley Drive, Suite 200
Scotts Valley, CA 95066
USA
EMail: rohan@cisco.com
Mahy Expires January 30, 2005 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft SIPPING 16 Aug 2004
Intellectual Property Statement
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information
on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
http://www.ietf.org/ipr.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at
ietf-ipr@ietf.org.
Disclaimer of Validity
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.
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.
Acknowledgment
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
Mahy Expires January 30, 2005 [Page 6]