VoIP and ENUM

The VOIPEER (VoIP Peering and Interconnect) BoF is taking place on Thursday, November 10th, in morning session I, 0900-1130.

VOIPEER is closely related to ENUM, as already has been pointed out at IETF#63 in Paris.

The separation in scope is shown in the figure below. A description of this figure can be found in draft-meyer-voipeer-terminology-01.txt


E.164 number <--- Peer Discovery
|
| <--- ENUM lookup of NAPTR in DNS
|
|
| ENUM Working Group Scope
=============================================
| VOIPEER Working Group Scope
|
|
SIP URI <--- Call Routing Data (CRD)
|
| <--- Service Location (Lookup of SRV in DNS)
|
| Hostname <--- VoIP addressing and session establishment
|
| <---- Lookup of A and AAAA in DNS
|
Ip address
|
| <---- Routing protocols, ARP etc
|
Mac-address

According to the agenda, the main part of the BoF is dedicated to the discussion of the charter and the quite extensive goals and milestones (see below). As we have already seen in Paris, the only common consensus is that a VOIPEER WG is required and necessary, in the details the opinions differ substantually, or as Rich Shockey pointed out in a discussion at the Fall VON: "There have been about 200 participants at in the room in Paris and 250 opinions".

My take is that we should at least agree on the charter, so a workgroup can be established and work can start immediately, because it is urgently needed. I only have some concerns about number of work items and the lenght of the timeframe. March 2007 for the minimum requirements is too late.

The remainder of the BoF is dedicated to the discussion of the terminology draft mentioned above.

The proposed charter and the proposed goals and milestones:

Description of Working Group:

The term "VoIP Peering" has historically been used to describe many different aspects of provider interconnect and the delivery of SIP call termination over that interconnection. Further, since VoIP peering focuses on how to identify and route calls at the application level ("Layer 5"), it does not (necessarily) involve the exchange of packet routing data. In particular, "layer 5 network" is used here to refer to the interconnection between SIP servers (as opposed to interconnection at the IP layer).

The voippeer working group focuses on call-routing architectures for delay-sensitive ("real-time") interpersonal communications using the SIP protocol, such as VoIP. More specifically, voipeer focuses on call routing architectures for layer 5 networks and their instantiations (i.e., use cases). This includes the specification of the various types of packet flows in such networks, including both VoIP trunking and peer-to-peer flows. In addition, voipeer considers requirements for the feedback of operational conditions (e.g., congestion control) that enable the application of dynamic policy.

In addition, voipeer develops best current practices regarding exchange of calls (more generally, real-time sessions) among VoIP providers, and in particular, how such calls are routed, both between Internet connected sites and between the Internet and the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). The voipeer work-plan is also intimately related to the work-plan being pursued by ENUM working group. In particular, while the ENUM Working Group is primarily concerned with the structure (and lookup) of data for the translation of E.164 numbers into SIP URIs (RFC3761), voipeer is concerned with the use of that data for use in signaling and routing real-time sessions.

Note that the properties of networks underlying the "interconnecting links", such as IP access and transit networks (including admission control), are out of scope for voipeer. Further issues that are out of scope for voipeer include:

o Interoperability, and NITS/profiling of existing protocols such as SIP, RTP, and SRTP,

o SPIT prevention,

o Routing of sessions which are not signaled using SIP. In particular, voipeer is constrained to consider only those scenarios in which call routing is signaled using the SIP protocol and addressed by SIP or SIPS URIs or E.164 (public telephone number) addresses. By extension, national and private formats numbering formats are out of scope for voipeer.

--- Goals and Milestones:

Mar 06 Submit voipeer terminology I-D
Mar 06 Submit I-D defining the voipeer routing architecture to the IESG (Informational)
Dec 06 Submit I-D defining the call flows associated with the voipeer routing architecture
Jan 07 Submit I-D on the use of DNS SRV and NAPTR records as specified by RFC 3263 (BCP)
Jan 07 Submit I-D on the use of DNS SRV and NAPTR
Jan 07 Submit I-D on the minimum set of requirements for VoIP interconnection
Mar 07 Submit I-D specifying the use of addressing forms and provides strong identities (BCP)
Jun 07 Submit I-D(s) on use cases (BCP)
Jun 06 Submit voipeer terminology document to IESG (Informational)
Mar 07 Submit document to the IESG on the minimum set of requirements for VoIP interconnection
Mar 07 Submit document defining the call flows associated with the voipeer routing architecture to the IESG (Proposed Standard)
Jul 06 Submit document defining the voipeer routing architecture to the IESG (Informational)
Mar 07 Submit document to IESG specifying the use of addressing forms and the provision of strong identities (BCP)
Jun 07 Submit document to IESG on the use of DNS SRV and NAPTR records as specified by RFC 3263 (BCP)
Jun 07 Submit document(s) to IESG on use cases (BCP) (ongoing)