SIPPING Internet Draft Roni Even Document: draft-even-sipping-conference- Polycom scenarios-00.txt Nermeen Ismail Cisco Andrew Zmolek Aaaya Expires: February 2003 August 2002 SIP Conferencing Scenarios draft-even-sipping-conference-scenarios-00.txt Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026 [1]. 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. Abstract This document describes SIP conferencing scenarios. It will describe basic and advance conferencing scenarios. These conferencing scenarios will help with definition and evaluation of the requirements for SIP conferencing work frame. Conventions used in this document 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 RFC-2119 [2]. Even et al. Expires - February 2003 [Page 1] SIP Conferencing Scenarios August 2002 Table of Contents 1. Introduction...................................................2 2. Simple Conferencing scenarios..................................2 3. Advance Conferencing scenarios.................................3 4. IANA Considerations............................................6 5. Security Considerations........................................6 6. References.....................................................6 7. Author's Addresses.............................................6 1. Introduction This document describes SIP conferencing scenarios. It will describe basic and advance conferencing scenarios. These conferencing scenarios will help with The definition and the evaluation of the requirements for SIP conferencing work frame. The advanced scenarios will assume the UA functionality based on relevant SIP RFCs that will be needed in order to participate in the conference and take advantage of the conference functionality. The entities composing the conference will be the "focus" that is the center point for signalling and the members. A special member is the member who initiated the conference. The scenarios described are to demonstrate different conferencing services that can be offered in the SIP environment that will benefit from having some support in the UAs that will enable more robust and easier to use conferencing services. It will be up to the conferencing bridge manufacturers and the service provider to decide what services can be built and which services will be offered to the end users. 2. Simple Conferencing scenarios These scenarios will assume a UA that support basic SIP functionality as described in RFC3261 [3] and RFC3264 [4]. The reason for these scenarios is to enable a basic UA without any specific conferencing extensions to create, join and participate in a conference. The UA may use an out of band signalling to participate in a conference but this is not a mandatory requirement. The focus will have all the functionality it needs in order to supply the service offered to the members. The UA shall be able to provide DTMF tones. 2.1. Ad-hoc conference - a member has a service provisioned to him that enables him to start an ad-hoc conference when he calls the focus. When the member wants to start a conference he calls the conference service. The member may be identified by different means including the called number, the calling number or an IVR system Even et al. Expires - February 2003 [Page 2] SIP Conferencing Scenarios August 2002 using in-band DTMF tones. The conference is created automatically with the predefined functionality. The member who has such a service notifies the other participants how to call the conference via an external mean like email. The member may have the functionality of a focus and thus can create ad-hoc conference using his own UA functionality. An example of such a conference is an audio conference initiated by one of the members who has a conference service that enables him to start a conference when he calls a specific number (or URI). The conference may be created by the first person calling this number or it may be created only after the owner is authenticated using an IVR system, the other participants may get an announcement and are placed on hold if they call the conference before the owner. 2.2. Extension of a Point to point calls to a multipoint call - This is a simple case. The initiating member is in a call with one party and wants to add another party to the call. The initiating member cannot handle the focus on his UA nor can the other member. Both of them cannot support call transfer. The way to do this conference is by disconnecting and using the above method. The information about the conference will be conveyed in the point-to-point call. The focus may support dial out allowing the initiating member to call the third party. 2.3. Reserved conference - the reservation was done by out of band mechanism. The conference identification is allocated by the reservation system. It is sent to all participants. The participants join using the conference identification. The conference identification must be routable enabling the allocation of a focus with free resources at the time when the conference will actually run. The focus can also dial out to the conference members. The UAs will not be aware that they are in a conference. The participants may know via announcement from the conference that they are in a conference and who are the other members 3. Advance Conferencing scenarios These scenarios will assume UAs that support at least call transfer service and a way to communicate information on events from the focus to the UA. The focus will be able to know the capabilities of the members to identify if they support the call transfer. The section will specify in each scenario the dependencies. An advance conference can be initiated by a UA that has advanced features but some UAs in the conference may have lesser functionality. 3.1 Extending a point-to-point call to a multipoint call. The initiating member is in a point-to-point call and want to add a third member. The initiating member can start a multipoint call on a conferencing bridge known to him. The extension can be without Even et al. Expires - February 2003 [Page 3] SIP Conferencing Scenarios August 2002 consultation, which means that he moves the point-to-point call to the focus and then adds the third party (this can be done in various ways). The extension can be done with consultation, which means that he puts his current party on hold calls, the third party and asks him to join the conference and then transfers all the members to the conferencing bridge. 3.2 Lecture mode conferences - enable a conference with a lecturer that present a topic and can allow questions. The lecturer needs to know who are the participants and to be able to give them the right to speak. The right to speak can be based on floor control but can also be based on out of band mechanism. 3.3 Conference with non-SIP members - A focus can include participants that are not SIP UAs that are joining the focus via a gateway function. Those members may be basic participants or the GW function will proxy the advanced functionality between the different protocols and the SIP focus. 3.4 A reserved or ad-hoc conference with conference aware members. The initiating member will call the focus using for example a unique identifier in order to start the conference. The focus may use some authenticating method to qualify the member. The other participants may call the focus and join the conference. The focus will be able to find the capabilities of the members. In case of a reserved conference the focus will start the conference at the scheduled time. The members may join by call the conference ID or the focus may call them. The conference may have privilege levels associated with a specific conference or member. The privileges will be for the initiating member and for a regular member; the initiating member may delegate privileges to the other members. The privileges will allow functionalities as defined in the next section. 3.5 The following scenarios can be used in all the advance conferencing scenarios. In the examples given in this section, when referring to a member that has a functionality it means a member with the right privileges. These scenarios may be available in the advanced conferencing scenarios and are common in many conferencing applications. These are not a requirement list but some examples of how specific functionality is being used in a conference. Add Participants - A member may add a new member to the focus. This can be done, for example, by instructing the focus to call the participant or by the member calling the participant and pointing him to the conference. The member may delete participants from the focus if he can identify them. Even et al. Expires - February 2003 [Page 4] SIP Conferencing Scenarios August 2002 Authenticate participants - A member can authenticate members that want to join the focus. This can be done implicitly by assigning a password to the conference and letting the focus authenticate the new members or explicitly by directing the authentication requests to the initiating member who will authenticate each user. Controlling the presentation of media - during the conference the member may be able to manage whose media is being sent to each participant. For example the member may be able to decide that he wants to be the speaker and all the rest are listeners he may also specify whose media he wants to receive. The member may be able to mute a media stream during the conference. Giving privileges - the member may want, during the conference, to give a privilege to another member. The assigning of privileges may be implicit when requested or explicit by asking the member to grant a privilege. Side conferences or sidebars - the member may want to create a side conference that include some of the participants and when the side conference is done the members will return to the main conference. A side bar may have the same functionalities as the main conference. There can be some sidebars scenarios. The simple one will be based on capabilities of two participants to have two calls at the same time and they will have a point to point call in parallel to the main conference, it is an end point implementation to decide if to mix both calls streams or to enable the user to switch between them. The sidebar scenario that will use the focus will use the same call he is in and let the focus create the sidebar and compose the relevant sidebar stream mixes. These mixes can include the main conference as an incoming stream to the mix. The way to signal the creation of the sidebar and how to invite members and control the mixes should be available. Focus information - When a member joins the focus he is announced to the members. An announcement may be available when he leaves the focus. The members may query the focus for its current members. Extending of a conference - Reserved conferences and ad-hoc conferences may have a time limit. The focus will inform the members when the limit is close and may allow the extension of the conference. Adding and removing a media type to the conference - a member may want to start a power point presentation during a conference. He may want to distribute this new media to all the members. The member will request from the focus to start the new media channel and to allow him to send data in the new channel. Even et al. Expires - February 2003 [Page 5] SIP Conferencing Scenarios August 2002 4. IANA Considerations No IANA considerations in this specification 5. Security Considerations No specific security considerations for this draft. Security consideration will be available in the relevant drafts that will compose the suggested solution 6. References [1]S. Bradner, "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", BCP 9 ,RFC 2026, October 1996 [2] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997 [3] J. Rosenberg, H. Schulzrinne, et al. , "SIP: Session initiation protocol," RFC 3261, Internet Engineering Task Force, June 2002. [4] J.Rosenberg, H. Schulzrinne, "An Offer/Answer Model with Session Description Protocol (SDP)" RFC 3264, Internet Engineering Task Force. June 2002. 7. Author's Addresses Roni Even Polycom Network Systems 94 Derech Em Hamoshavot Phone: +972-3-9251200 Petach Tikva, Israel Email: roni.even@polycom.co.il Nermeen Ismail Cisco Systems, Inc. 170 West Tasman Drive Phone: +1 408 853 8714 San Jose, CA 95134-1706, USA Email: nismail@cisco.com Andrew Zmolek Avaya, Inc. 8740 Lucent Blvd. Phone +1 720 444 4001 Highlands Ranch, CO, USA Email: zmolek@avaya.com Even et al. Expires - February 2003 [Page 6]