SIPPING WG R. Mahy Internet-Draft Plantronics Intended status: Informational March 4, 2007 Expires: September 5, 2007 Marketing Buzzword "SIPPING 16" Considered Harmful draft-mahy-sipping-16-04.txt Status of this Memo By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. 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 September 5, 2007. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007). 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 Mahy Expires September 5, 2007 [Page 1] Internet-Draft SIPPING 16 March 2007 does not exist, and where to find out more information about SIP features. 1. Introduction 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. 2. Discussion 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 Mahy Expires September 5, 2007 [Page 2] Internet-Draft SIPPING 16 March 2007 referring to examples in the SIP Call Control Framework for which he was the editor at the time. 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 substantial amount of development experience has been acquired. 3. 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. 4. IANA Considerations This document requires no action by IANA. 5. References 5.1. 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. 5.2. 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., "Session Initiation Protocol Service Examples", draft-ietf-sipping-service-examples-12 (work in progress), January 2007. [4] Mahy, R., "A Call Control and Multi-party usage framework for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)", draft-ietf-sipping-cc-framework-06 (work in progress), March 2006. Mahy Expires September 5, 2007 [Page 3] Internet-Draft SIPPING 16 March 2007 [5] Sparks, R., "Session Initiation Protocol Call Control - Transfer", draft-ietf-sipping-cc-transfer-07 (work in progress), October 2006. Author's Address Rohan Mahy Plantronics 345 Encincal Street Santa Cruz, CA USA Email: rohan@ekabal.com Mahy Expires September 5, 2007 [Page 4] Internet-Draft SIPPING 16 March 2007 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007). 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. 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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. Acknowledgment Funding for the RFC Editor function is provided by the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA). Mahy Expires September 5, 2007 [Page 5]