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+
+Network Working Group M. Handley
+Request for Comments: 2974 ACIRI
+Category: Experimental C. Perkins
+ USC/ISI
+ E. Whelan
+ UCL
+ October 2000
+
+
+ Session Announcement Protocol
+
+Status of this Memo
+
+ This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
+ community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.
+ Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
+ Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
+
+Copyright Notice
+
+ Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
+
+Abstract
+
+ This document describes version 2 of the multicast session directory
+ announcement protocol, Session Announcement Protocol (SAP), and the
+ related issues affecting security and scalability that should be
+ taken into account by implementors.
+
+1 Introduction
+
+ In order to assist the advertisement of multicast multimedia
+ conferences and other multicast sessions, and to communicate the
+ relevant session setup information to prospective participants, a
+ distributed session directory may be used. An instance of such a
+ session directory periodically multicasts packets containing a
+ description of the session, and these advertisements are received by
+ other session directories such that potential remote participants can
+ use the session description to start the tools required to
+ participate in the session.
+
+ This memo describes the issues involved in the multicast announcement
+ of session description information and defines an announcement
+ protocol to be used. Sessions are described using the session
+ description protocol which is described in a companion memo [4].
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 1]
+
+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+2 Terminology
+
+ A SAP announcer periodically multicasts an announcement packet to a
+ well known multicast address and port. The announcement is multicast
+ with the same scope as the session it is announcing, ensuring that
+ the recipients of the announcement are within the scope of the
+ session the announcement describes (bandwidth and other such
+ constraints permitting). This is also important for the scalability
+ of the protocol, as it keeps local session announcements local.
+
+ A SAP listener learns of the multicast scopes it is within (for
+ example, using the Multicast-Scope Zone Announcement Protocol [5])
+ and listens on the well known SAP address and port for those scopes.
+ In this manner, it will eventually learn of all the sessions being
+ announced, allowing those sessions to be joined.
+
+ 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 [1].
+
+3 Session Announcement
+
+ As noted previously, a SAP announcer periodically sends an
+ announcement packet to a well known multicast address and port.
+ There is no rendezvous mechanism - the SAP announcer is not aware of
+ the presence or absence of any SAP listeners - and no additional
+ reliability is provided over the standard best-effort UDP/IP
+ semantics.
+
+ That announcement contains a session description and SHOULD contain
+ an authentication header. The session description MAY be encrypted
+ although this is NOT RECOMMENDED (see section 7).
+
+ A SAP announcement is multicast with the same scope as the session it
+ is announcing, ensuring that the recipients of the announcement are
+ within the scope of the session the announcement describes. There are
+ a number of possibilities:
+
+ IPv4 global scope sessions use multicast addresses in the range
+ 224.2.128.0 - 224.2.255.255 with SAP announcements being sent to
+ 224.2.127.254 (note that 224.2.127.255 is used by the obsolete
+ SAPv0 and MUST NOT be used).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 2]
+
+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+ IPv4 administrative scope sessions using administratively scoped IP
+ multicast as defined in [7]. The multicast address to be used for
+ announcements is the highest multicast address in the relevant
+ administrative scope zone. For example, if the scope range is
+ 239.16.32.0 - 239.16.33.255, then 239.16.33.255 is used for SAP
+ announcements.
+
+ IPv6 sessions are announced on the address FF0X:0:0:0:0:0:2:7FFE
+ where X is the 4-bit scope value. For example, an announcement
+ for a link-local session assigned the address
+ FF02:0:0:0:0:0:1234:5678, should be advertised on SAP address
+ FF02:0:0:0:0:0:2:7FFE.
+
+ Ensuring that a description is not used by a potential participant
+ outside the session scope is not addressed in this memo.
+
+ SAP announcements MUST be sent on port 9875 and SHOULD be sent with
+ an IP time-to-live of 255 (the use of TTL scoping for multicast is
+ discouraged [7]).
+
+ If a session uses addresses in multiple administrative scope ranges,
+ it is necessary for the announcer to send identical copies of the
+ announcement to each administrative scope range. It is up to the
+ listeners to parse such multiple announcements as the same session
+ (as identified by the SDP origin field, for example). The
+ announcement rate for each administrative scope range MUST be
+ calculated separately, as if the multiple announcements were
+ separate.
+
+ Multiple announcers may announce a single session, as an aid to
+ robustness in the face of packet loss and failure of one or more
+ announcers. The rate at which each announcer repeats its
+ announcement MUST be scaled back such that the total announcement
+ rate is equal to that which a single server would choose.
+ Announcements made in this manner MUST be identical.
+
+ If multiple announcements are being made for a session, then each
+ announcement MUST carry an authentication header signed by the same
+ key, or be treated as a completely separate announcement by
+ listeners.
+
+ An IPv4 SAP listener SHOULD listen on the IPv4 global scope SAP
+ address and on the SAP addresses for each IPv4 administrative scope
+ zone it is within. The discovery of administrative scope zones is
+ outside the scope of this memo, but it is assumed that each SAP
+ listener within a particular scope zone is aware of that scope zone.
+ A SAP listener which supports IPv6 SHOULD also listen to the IPv6 SAP
+ addresses.
+
+
+
+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 3]
+
+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+3.1 Announcement Interval
+
+ The time period between repetitions of an announcement is chosen such
+ that the total bandwidth used by all announcements on a single SAP
+ group remains below a preconfigured limit. If not otherwise
+ specified, the bandwidth limit SHOULD be assumed to be 4000 bits per
+ second.
+
+ Each announcer is expected to listen to other announcements in order
+ to determine the total number of sessions being announced on a
+ particular group. Sessions are uniquely identified by the
+ combination of the message identifier hash and originating source
+ fields of the SAP header (note that SAP v0 announcers always set the
+ message identifier hash to zero, and if such an announcement is
+ received the entire message MUST be compared to determine
+ uniqueness).
+
+ Announcements are made by periodic multicast to the group. The base
+ interval between announcements is derived from the number of
+ announcements being made in that group, the size of the announcement
+ and the configured bandwidth limit. The actual transmission time is
+ derived from this base interval as follows:
+
+ 1. The announcer initializes the variable tp to be the last time a
+ particular announcement was transmitted (or the current time if
+ this is the first time this announcement is to be made).
+
+ 2. Given a configured bandwidth limit in bits/second and an
+ announcement of ad_size bytes, the base announcement interval
+ in seconds is
+
+ interval =max(300; (8*no_of_ads*ad_size)/limit)
+
+ 3. An offset is calculated based on the base announcement interval
+
+ offset= rand(interval* 2/3)-(interval/3)
+
+ 4. The next transmission time for an announcement derived as
+
+ tn =tp+ interval+ offset
+
+ The announcer then sets a timer to expire at tn and waits. At time
+ tn the announcer SHOULD recalculate the next transmission time. If
+ the new value of tn is before the current time, the announcement is
+ sent immediately. Otherwise the transmission is rescheduled for the
+ new tn. This reconsideration prevents transient packet bursts on
+ startup and when a network partition heals.
+
+
+
+
+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 4]
+
+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+4 Session Deletion
+
+ Sessions may be deleted in one of several ways:
+
+ Explicit Timeout The session description payload may contain
+ timestamp information specifying the start- and end-times of the
+ session. If the current time is later than the end-time of the
+ session, then the session SHOULD be deleted from the receiver's
+ session cache.
+
+ Implicit Timeout A session announcement message should be received
+ periodically for each session description in a receiver's session
+ cache. The announcement period can be predicted by the receiver
+ from the set of sessions currently being announced. If a session
+ announcement message has not been received for ten times the
+ announcement period, or one hour, whichever is the greater, then
+ the session is deleted from the receiver's session cache. The one
+ hour minimum is to allow for transient network partitionings.
+
+ Explicit Deletion A session deletion packet is received specifying
+ the session to be deleted. Session deletion packets SHOULD have a
+ valid authentication header, matching that used to authenticate
+ previous announcement packets. If this authentication is missing,
+ the deletion message SHOULD be ignored.
+
+5 Session Modification
+
+ A pre-announced session can be modified by simply announcing the
+ modified session description. In this case, the version hash in the
+ SAP header MUST be changed to indicate to receivers that the packet
+ contents should be parsed (or decrypted and parsed if it is
+ encrypted). The session itself, as distinct from the session
+ announcement, is uniquely identified by the payload and not by the
+ message identifier hash in the header.
+
+ The same rules apply for session modification as for session
+ deletion:
+
+ o Either the modified announcement must contain an authentication
+ header signed by the same key as the cached session announcement
+ it is modifying, or:
+
+ o The cached session announcement must not contain an authentication
+ header, and the session modification announcement must originate
+ from the same host as the session it is modifying.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 5]
+
+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+ If an announcement is received containing an authentication header
+ and the cached announcement did not contain an authentication header,
+ or it contained a different authentication header, then the modified
+ announcement MUST be treated as a new and different announcement, and
+ displayed in addition to the un-authenticated announcement. The same
+ should happen if a modified packet without an authentication header
+ is received from a different source than the original announcement.
+
+ These rules prevent an announcement having an authentication header
+ added by a malicious user and then being deleted using that header,
+ and it also prevents a denial-of-service attack by someone putting
+ out a spoof announcement which, due to packet loss, reaches some
+ participants before the original announcement. Note that under such
+ circumstances, being able to authenticate the message originator is
+ the only way to discover which session is the correct session.
+
+ 0 1 2 3
+ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+ | V=1 |A|R|T|E|C| auth len | msg id hash |
+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+ | |
+ : originating source (32 or 128 bits) :
+ : :
+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+ | optional authentication data |
+ : .... :
+ *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
+ | optional payload type |
+ + +-+- - - - - - - - - -+
+ | |0| |
+ + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +-+ |
+ | |
+ : payload :
+ | |
+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+
+ Figure 1: Packet format
+
+6 Packet Format
+
+ SAP data packets have the format described in figure 1.
+
+ V: Version Number. The version number field MUST be set to 1 (SAPv2
+ announcements which use only SAPv1 features are backwards
+ compatible, those which use new features can be detected by other
+ means, so the SAP version number doesn't need to change).
+
+
+
+
+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 6]
+
+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+ A: Address type. If the A bit is 0, the originating source field
+ contains a 32-bit IPv4 address. If the A bit is 1, the
+ originating source contains a 128-bit IPv6 address.
+
+ R: Reserved. SAP announcers MUST set this to 0, SAP listeners MUST
+ ignore the contents of this field.
+
+ T: Message Type. If the T field is set to 0 this is a session
+ announcement packet, if 1 this is a session deletion packet.
+
+ E: Encryption Bit. If the encryption bit is set to 1, the payload of
+ the SAP packet is encrypted. If this bit is 0 the packet is not
+ encrypted. See section 7 for details of the encryption process.
+
+ C: Compressed bit. If the compressed bit is set to 1, the payload is
+ compressed using the zlib compression algorithm [3]. If the
+ payload is to be compressed and encrypted, the compression MUST be
+ performed first.
+
+ Authentication Length. An 8 bit unsigned quantity giving the number
+ of 32 bit words following the main SAP header that contain
+ authentication data. If it is zero, no authentication header is
+ present.
+
+ Authentication data containing a digital signature of the packet,
+ with length as specified by the authentication length header
+ field. See section 8 for details of the authentication process.
+
+ Message Identifier Hash. A 16 bit quantity that, used in combination
+ with the originating source, provides a globally unique identifier
+ indicating the precise version of this announcement. The choice
+ of value for this field is not specified here, except that it MUST
+ be unique for each session announced by a particular SAP announcer
+ and it MUST be changed if the session description is modified (and
+ a session deletion message SHOULD be sent for the old version of
+ the session).
+
+ Earlier versions of SAP used a value of zero to mean that the hash
+ should be ignored and the payload should always be parsed. This
+ had the unfortunate side-effect that SAP announcers had to study
+ the payload data to determine how many unique sessions were being
+ advertised, making the calculation of the announcement interval
+ more complex that necessary. In order to decouple the session
+ announcement process from the contents of those announcements, SAP
+ announcers SHOULD NOT set the message identifier hash to zero.
+
+ SAP listeners MAY silently discard messages if the message
+ identifier hash is set to zero.
+
+
+
+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 7]
+
+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+ Originating Source. This gives the IP address of the original source
+ of the message. This is an IPv4 address if the A field is set to
+ zero, else it is an IPv6 address. The address is stored in
+ network byte order.
+
+ SAPv0 permitted the originating source to be zero if the message
+ identifier hash was also zero. This practise is no longer legal,
+ and SAP announcers SHOULD NOT set the originating source to zero.
+ SAP listeners MAY silently discard packets with the originating
+ source set to zero.
+
+ The header is followed by an optional payload type field and the
+ payload data itself. If the E or C bits are set in the header both
+ the payload type and payload are encrypted and/or compressed.
+
+ The payload type field is a MIME content type specifier, describing
+ the format of the payload. This is a variable length ASCII text
+ string, followed by a single zero byte (ASCII NUL). The payload type
+ SHOULD be included in all packets. If the payload type is
+ `application/sdp' both the payload type and its terminating zero byte
+ MAY be omitted, although this is intended for backwards compatibility
+ with SAP v1 listeners only.
+
+ The absence of a payload type field may be noted since the payload
+ section of such a packet will start with an SDP `v=0' field, which is
+ not a legal MIME content type specifier.
+
+ All implementations MUST support payloads of type `application/sdp'
+ [4]. Other formats MAY be supported although since there is no
+ negotiation in SAP an announcer which chooses to use a session
+ description format other than SDP cannot know that the listeners are
+ able to understand the announcement. A proliferation of payload
+ types in announcements has the potential to lead to severe
+ interoperability problems, and for this reason, the use of non-SDP
+ payloads is NOT RECOMMENDED.
+
+ If the packet is an announcement packet, the payload contains a
+ session description.
+
+ If the packet is a session deletion packet, the payload contains a
+ session deletion message. If the payload format is `application/sdp'
+ the deletion message is a single SDP line consisting of the origin
+ field of the announcement to be deleted.
+
+ It is desirable for the payload to be sufficiently small that SAP
+ packets do not get fragmented by the underlying network.
+ Fragmentation has a loss multiplier effect, which is known to
+ significantly affect the reliability of announcements. It is
+
+
+
+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 8]
+
+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+ RECOMMENDED that SAP packets are smaller than 1kByte in length,
+ although if it is known that announcements will use a network with a
+ smaller MTU than this, then that SHOULD be used as the maximum
+ recommended packet size.
+
+7 Encrypted Announcements
+
+ An announcement is received by all listeners in the scope to which it
+ is sent. If an announcement is encrypted, and many of the receivers
+ do not have the encryption key, there is a considerable waste of
+ bandwidth since those receivers cannot use the announcement they have
+ received. For this reason, the use of encrypted SAP announcements is
+ NOT RECOMMENDED on the global scope SAP group or on administrative
+ scope groups which may have many receivers which cannot decrypt those
+ announcements.
+
+ The opinion of the authors is that encrypted SAP is useful in special
+ cases only, and that the vast majority of scenarios where encrypted
+ SAP has been proposed may be better served by distributing session
+ details using another mechanism. There are, however, certain
+ scenarios where encrypted announcements may be useful. For this
+ reason, the encryption bit is included in the SAP header to allow
+ experimentation with encrypted announcements.
+
+ This memo does not specify details of the encryption algorithm to be
+ used or the means by which keys are generated and distributed. An
+ additional specification should define these, if it is desired to use
+ encrypted SAP.
+
+ Note that if an encrypted announcement is being announced via a
+ proxy, then there may be no way for the proxy to discover that the
+ announcement has been superseded, and so it may continue to relay the
+ old announcement in addition to the new announcement. SAP provides
+ no mechanism to chain modified encrypted announcements, so it is
+ advisable to announce the unmodified session as deleted for a short
+ time after the modification has occurred. This does not guarantee
+ that all proxies have deleted the session, and so receivers of
+ encrypted sessions should be prepared to discard old versions of
+ session announcements that they may receive. In most cases however,
+ the only stateful proxy will be local to (and known to) the sender,
+ and an additional (local-area) protocol involving a handshake for
+ such session modifications can be used to avoid this problem.
+
+ Session announcements that are encrypted with a symmetric algorithm
+ may allow a degree of privacy in the announcement of a session, but
+ it should be recognized that a user in possession of such a key can
+ pass it on to other users who should not be in possession of such a
+ key. Thus announcements to such a group of key holders cannot be
+
+
+
+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 9]
+
+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+ assumed to have come from an authorized key holder unless there is an
+ appropriate authentication header signed by an authorized key holder.
+ In addition the recipients of such encrypted announcements cannot be
+ assumed to only be authorized key holders. Such encrypted
+ announcements do not provide any real security unless all of the
+ authorized key holders are trusted to maintain security of such
+ session directory keys. This property is shared by the multicast
+ session tools themselves, where it is possible for an un-trustworthy
+ member of the session to pass on encryption keys to un-authorized
+ users. However it is likely that keys used for the session tools
+ will be more short lived than those used for session directories.
+
+ Similar considerations should apply when session announcements are
+ encrypted with an asymmetric algorithm, but then it is possible to
+ restrict the possessor(s) of the private key, so that announcements
+ to a key-holder group can not be made, even if one of the untrusted
+ members of the group proves to be un-trustworthy.
+
+ 1 2 3
+ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+ | V=1 |P| Auth | |
+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |
+ | Format specific authentication subheader |
+ : .................. :
+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+
+ Figure 2: Format of the authentication data in the SAP header
+
+8 Authenticated Announcements
+
+ The authentication header can be used for two purposes:
+
+ o Verification that changes to a session description or deletion of
+ a session are permitted.
+
+ o Authentication of the identity of the session creator.
+
+ In some circumstances only verification is possible because a
+ certificate signed by a mutually trusted person or authority is not
+ available. However, under such circumstances, the session originator
+ may still be authenticated to be the same as the session originator
+ of previous sessions claiming to be from the same person. This may
+ or may not be sufficient depending on the purpose of the session and
+ the people involved.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 10]
+
+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+ Clearly the key used for the authentication should not be trusted to
+ belong to the session originator unless it has been separately
+ authenticated by some other means, such as being certified by a
+ trusted third party. Such certificates are not normally included in
+ an SAP header because they take more space than can normally be
+ afforded in an SAP packet, and such verification must therefore take
+ place by some other mechanism. However, as certified public keys are
+ normally locally cached, authentication of a particular key only has
+ to take place once, rather than every time the session directory
+ retransmits the announcement.
+
+ SAP is not tied to any single authentication mechanism.
+ Authentication data in the header is self-describing, but the precise
+ format depends on the authentication mechanism in use. The generic
+ format of the authentication data is given in figure 2. The
+ structure of the format specific authentication subheader, using both
+ the PGP and the CMS formats, is discussed in sections 8.1 and 8.2
+ respectively. Additional formats may be added in future.
+
+ Version Number, V: The version number of the authentication format
+ specified by this memo is 1.
+
+ Padding Bit, P: If necessary the authentication data is padded to be
+ a multiple of 32 bits and the padding bit is set. In this case
+ the last byte of the authentication data contains the number of
+ padding bytes (including the last byte) that must be discarded.
+
+ Authentication Type, Auth: The authentication type is a 4 bit
+ encoded field that denotes the authentication infrastructure the
+ sender expects the recipients to use to check the authenticity and
+ integrity of the information. This defines the format of the
+ authentication subheader and can take the values: 0 = PGP format,
+ 1 = CMS format. All other values are undefined and SHOULD be
+ ignored.
+
+ If a SAP packet is to be compressed or encrypted, this MUST be done
+ before the authentication is added.
+
+ The digital signature in the authentication data MUST be calculated
+ over the entire packet, including the header. The authentication
+ length MUST be set to zero and the authentication data excluded when
+ calculating the digital signature.
+
+ It is to be expected that sessions may be announced by a number of
+ different mechanisms, not only SAP. For example, a session
+ description may placed on a web page, sent by email or conveyed in a
+
+
+
+
+
+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 11]
+
+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+ session initiation protocol. To ease interoperability with these
+ other mechanisms, application level security is employed, rather than
+ using IPsec authentication headers.
+
+8.1 PGP Authentication
+
+ A full description of the PGP protocol can be found in [2]. When
+ using PGP for SAP authentication the basic format specific
+ authentication subheader comprises a digital signature packet as
+ described in [2]. The signature type MUST be 0x01 which means the
+ signature is that of a canonical text document.
+
+8.2 CMS Authentication
+
+ A full description of the Cryptographic Message Syntax can be found
+ in [6]. The format specific authentication subheader will, in the
+ CMS case, have an ASN.1 ContentInfo type with the ContentType being
+ signedData.
+
+ Use is made of the option available in PKCS#7 to leave the content
+ itself blank as the content which is signed is already present in the
+ packet. Inclusion of it within the SignedData type would duplicate
+ this data and increase the packet length unnecessarily. In addition
+ this allows recipients with either no interest in the authentication,
+ or with no mechanism for checking it, to more easily skip the
+ authentication information.
+
+ There SHOULD be only one signerInfo and related fields corresponding
+ to the originator of the SAP announcement. The signingTime SHOULD be
+ present as a signedAttribute. However, due to the strict size
+ limitations on the size of SAP packets, certificates and CRLs SHOULD
+ NOT be included in the signedData structure. It is expected that
+ users of the protocol will have other methods for certificate and CRL
+ distribution.
+
+9 Scalability and caching
+
+ SAP is intended to announce the existence of long-lived wide-area
+ multicast sessions. It is not an especially timely protocol:
+ sessions are announced by periodic multicast with a repeat rate on
+ the order of tens of minutes, and no enhanced reliability over UDP.
+ This leads to a long startup delay before a complete set of
+ announcements is heard by a listener. This delay is clearly
+ undesirable for interactive browsing of announced sessions.
+
+ In order to reduce the delays inherent in SAP, it is recommended that
+ proxy caches are deployed. A SAP proxy cache is expected to listen
+ to all SAP groups in its scope, and to maintain an up-to-date list of
+
+
+
+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 12]
+
+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+ all announced sessions along with the time each announcement was last
+ received. When a new SAP listeners starts, it should contact its
+ local proxy to download this information, which is then sufficient
+ for it to process future announcements directly, as if it has been
+ continually listening.
+
+ The protocol by which a SAP listener contacts its local proxy cache
+ is not specified here.
+
+10 Security Considerations
+
+ SAP contains mechanisms for ensuring integrity of session
+ announcements, for authenticating the origin of an announcement and
+ for encrypting such announcements (sections 7 and 8).
+
+ As stated in section 5, if a session modification announcement is
+ received that contains a valid authentication header, but which is
+ not signed by the original creator of the session, then the session
+ must be treated as a new session in addition to the original session
+ with the same SDP origin information unless the originator of one of
+ the session descriptions can be authenticated using a certificate
+ signed by a trusted third party. If this were not done, there would
+ be a possible denial of service attack whereby a party listens for
+ new announcements, strips off the original authentication header,
+ modifies the session description, adds a new authentication header
+ and re-announces the session. If a rule was imposed that such spoof
+ announcements were ignored, then if packet loss or late starting of a
+ session directory instance caused the original announcement to fail
+ to arrive at a site, but the spoof announcement did so, this would
+ then prevent the original announcement from being accepted at that
+ site.
+
+ A similar denial-of-service attack is possible if a session
+ announcement receiver relies completely on the originating source and
+ hash fields to indicate change, and fails to parse the remainder of
+ announcements for which it has seen the origin/hash combination
+ before.
+
+ A denial of service attack is possible from a malicious site close to
+ a legitimate site which is making a session announcement. This can
+ happen if the malicious site floods the legitimate site with huge
+ numbers of (illegal) low TTL announcements describing high TTL
+ sessions. This may reduce the session announcement rate of the
+ legitimate announcement to below a tenth of the rate expected at
+ remote sites and therefore cause the session to time out. Such an
+ attack is likely to be easily detectable, and we do not provide any
+ mechanism here to prevent it.
+
+
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+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+A. Summary of differences between SAPv0 and SAPv1
+
+ For this purpose SAPv0 is defined as the protocol in use by version
+ 2.2 of the session directory tool, sdr. SAPv1 is the protocol
+ described in the 19 November 1996 version of this memo. The packet
+ headers of SAP messages are the same in V0 and V1 in that a V1 tool
+ can parse a V0 announcement header but not vice-versa. In SAPv0, the
+ fields have the following values:
+
+ o Version Number: 0
+
+ o Message Type: 0 (Announcement)
+
+ o Authentication Type: 0 (No Authentication)
+
+ o Encryption Bit: 0 (No Encryption)
+
+ o Compression Bit: 0 (No compression)
+
+ o Message Id Hash: 0 (No Hash Specified)
+
+ o Originating Source: 0 (No source specified, announcement has
+ not been relayed)
+
+B. Summary of differences between SAPv1 and SAPv2
+
+ The packet headers of SAP messages are the same in V1 and V2 in that
+ a V2 tool can parse a V1 announcement header but not necessarily
+ vice-versa.
+
+ o The A bit has been added to the SAP header, replacing one of the
+ bits of the SAPv1 message type field. If set to zero the
+ announcement is of an IPv4 session, and the packet is backwards
+ compatible with SAPv1. If set to one the announcement is of an
+ IPv6 session, and SAPv1 listeners (which do not support IPv6) will
+ see this as an illegal message type (MT) field.
+
+ o The second bit of the message type field in SAPv1 has been
+ replaced by a reserved, must-be-zero, bit. This bit was unused in
+ SAPv1, so this change just codifies existing usage.
+
+ o SAPv1 specified encryption of the payload. SAPv2 includes the E
+ bit in the SAP header to indicate that the payload is encrypted,
+ but does not specify any details of the encryption.
+
+ o SAPv1 allowed the message identifier hash and originating source
+ fields to be set to zero, for backwards compatibility. This is no
+ longer legal.
+
+
+
+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 14]
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+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+ o SAPv1 specified gzip compression. SAPv2 uses zlib (the only known
+ implementation of SAP compression used zlib, and gzip compression
+ was a mistake).
+
+ o SAPv2 provides a more complete specification for authentication.
+
+ o SAPv2 allows for non-SDP payloads to be transported. SAPv1
+ required that the payload was SDP.
+
+ o SAPv1 included a timeout field for encrypted announcement, SAPv2
+ does not (and relies of explicit deletion messages or implicit
+ timeouts).
+
+C. Acknowledgements
+
+ SAP and SDP were originally based on the protocol used by the sd
+ session directory from Van Jacobson at LBNL. Version 1 of SAP was
+ designed by Mark Handley as part of the European Commission MICE
+ (Esprit 7602) and MERCI (Telematics 1007) projects. Version 2
+ includes authentication features developed by Edmund Whelan, Goli
+ Montasser-Kohsari and Peter Kirstein as part of the European
+ Commission ICE-TEL project (Telematics 1005), and support for IPv6
+ developed by Maryann P. Maher and Colin Perkins.
+
+
+
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+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+D. Authors' Addresses
+
+ Mark Handley
+ AT&T Center for Internet Research at ICSI,
+ International Computer Science Institute,
+ 1947 Center Street, Suite 600,
+ Berkeley, CA 94704, USA
+
+ EMail: mjh@aciri.org
+
+
+ Colin Perkins
+ USC Information Sciences Institute
+ 4350 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 620
+ Arlington, VA 22203, USA
+
+ EMail: csp@isi.edu
+
+
+ Edmund Whelan
+ Department of Computer Science,
+ University College London,
+ Gower Street,
+ London, WC1E 6BT, UK
+
+ EMail: e.whelan@cs.ucl.ac.uk
+
+
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+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 16]
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+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+References
+
+ [1] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to indicate requirement
+ levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
+
+ [2] Callas, J., Donnerhacke, L., Finney, H. and R. Thayer. "OpenPGP
+ message format", RFC 2440, November 1998.
+
+ [3] Deutsch, P. and J.-L. Gailly, "Zlib compressed data format
+ specification version 3.3", RFC 1950, May 1996.
+
+ [4] Handley, M. and V. Jacobson, "SDP: Session Description Protocol",
+ RFC 2327, April 1998.
+
+ [5] Handley, M., Thaler, D. and R. Kermode, "Multicast-scope zone
+ announcement protocol (MZAP)", RFC 2776, February 2000.
+
+ [6] Housley, R., "Cryptographic message syntax", RFC 2630, June 1999.
+
+ [7] Mayer, D., "Administratively scoped IP multicast", RFC 2365, July
+ 1998.
+
+
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+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 17]
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+RFC 2974 Session Announcement Protocol October 2000
+
+
+Full Copyright Statement
+
+ Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
+
+ This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
+ others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
+ or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
+ and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
+ kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
+ included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
+ document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
+ the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
+ Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
+ developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
+ copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
+ followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
+ English.
+
+ The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
+ revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
+
+ This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
+ "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
+ TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS 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.
+
+Acknowledgement
+
+ Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
+ Internet Society.
+
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+Handley, et al. Experimental [Page 18]
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