Re: Last Call: draft-lawrence-sipforum-user-agent-config (Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) User Agent Configuration) to Informational RFC

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On 4/5/2010 8:00 AM, Scott Lawrence wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-04-02 at 12:05 -0400, Hadriel Kaplan wrote:
> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Scott Lawrence [mailto:xmlscott@xxxxxxxxx]
>>> Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 10:27 PM
>>> To: Hadriel Kaplan
>>>
>>> If the UA is not behind a NAT, the cost of the subscription is a few
>>> bytes of state in the configuration server.  
>>
>> Well, it's not just a "few" bytes - it's a whole dialog's worth of
>> state. (call-id, tags, To-URI, From-URI, list of routes, expires,
>> whatever)
>> But it's also the SIP signaling - every subscription expires interval
>> the UA has to send a Subscribe to refresh, the server has to process
>> it, update the subscription state, return a 200, send a Notify, and
>> get a 200 for that.  No?
>>
>> Obviously you could make the expiration interval long, but however
>> long you make it will be as long as the worst-case config-change time,
>> in case the Subscription server failed/restarted in-between.  So that
>> same time is also how long the polling interval could/would be if the
>> UA just checked the HTTP server instead.
> 
> You assume that the configuration server looses subscription state on a
> restart... that would be a pretty shabby implementation, especially
> given that one would expect the subscription times to be very long (if I
> were going to make a suggestion, it would be at least a week).

NOTHING can be "assumed about an IETF Standard which does not have an
accompanying use model or BCP" for its use, so this is in fact relevant
and appropriate.
> 
>>> If the UA is behind a NAT...
>>> [snipped text]
>>
>> Of course - I only mentioned the NAT issue because some folks had
>> talked about the subscription going to a config-server directly
>> without going through edge proxies.
> 
> Again, that would be very poor design on the part of the provider, and
> is entirely within the providers control since they are setting the URL
> value and all the DNS records that control routing for the domain in
> that URL.

But since you have not restricted them from doing this really stupid
thing you cannot assume they wont.

> 
>>> So ... why?  Many SIP features are implemented exclusively in or require
>>> close coordination with the capabilities of the UA.  This means that
>>> changing such features often requires that the UA be reconfigured.  In
>>> order to provide a good user experience, the time between a change
>>> request and when the change is in effect should be brief and
>>> predictable, which is inconsistent with long polling intervals.  Telling
>>> users to reboot a device to activate a change or wait some unpredictable
>>> time are unsatisfactory.  Having the configuration change notification
>>> mechanism allows the reconfiguration to be prompt and predictable.
>>
>> Of course telling users to reboot is untenable.  I'm not suggesting
>> they should.  But the actual config data identified in the draft, and
>> any I've seen in actual use, is not the kind that requires frequent
>> updating.  More to the point, some SSP's are perfectly fine with
>> rolling out new "features" over the course of a day or X hours instead
>> of this instant.  They don't just switch over instantly anyway, and
>> many SSP's require migration time and old-mode support for a period
>> because they can't disrupt established calls. 
> 
> Well, my experience is mostly in enterprise deployments (some quite
> large), but certainly  in those people expect immediate response
> (certainly less than a minute) when they make a change.  I think that as
> large scale service providers start to roll out better features like
> custom ring tones and fancy display features (which many of the current
> generation of SIP phones have, and which require configuration), they'll
> need similar responsiveness (or, put another way, the ones that provide
> immediate gratification will be perceived to be much higher quality
> those that don't).
> 
> I've never seen a SIP phone reboot during a call when told to
> reconfigure by any of the existing mechanisms; I would be amazed to see
> one do it with this - but again, that's an implementation quality issue.
> 
>> Regardless, my point isn't that it's not a nice feature to be able to
>> do it instantly - my point is it's a nice feature, not a requirement
>> for ua-configuration to work.  Let the operator decide whether to do
>> it.  Don't mandate it be used.
> 
> One of the things that I personally fought very hard for in this
> specification was removing optional behavior and choices of any kind
> whenever possible. 

Then why make any Assumptions about anything?

 This is purely my own personal opinion, but I think
> that many IETF specs have fallen into the trap of getting consensus by
> making too many protocol features optional or having alternative ways of
> doing things.  Simplicity is virtue, and conditional statements in
> specifications are sources of interoperability problems.  If we were to
> adjust this spec to, for example, allow the configuration server to
> decide whether or not the UA had to subscribe, then some providers would
> decide to not bother, and some UAs would decide that since today they
> only cared about that one provider they wouldn't bother to implement (or
> test) that part of the spec.  Pretty soon the feature is a real crap
> shoot and again SIP phones look flaky and hard to administer.  I freely
> admit to being something of a zealot in trying to keep the specification
> simple, with as few choices for any party as possible, because that's
> the best way to reach universal interoperability.
> 
>> p.s. and really instead of requiring permanent Subscriptions for every
>> SIP mechanism which needs instant notification, we should just define
>> a generic mechanism for asynchronous notification to UA's from their
>> SSP for this and other uses.  I know it needs some means for the UA to
>> authenticate the request, but that's a good problem to solve. :)
> 
> I'm quite supportive of that idea, although I'd suggest that the real
> need is for a standard mechanism to address a specific UA that is not
> related to the AOR of any user addresses it happens to also accept.  The
> old Pingtel phones had that (a 'hidden' registration that used the
> phones MAC address as the local part of the SIP URI), and I've missed
> having it countless times.  We've got hacks for this in our sipXecs
> system that Dale has described in an I-D, but a standard mechanism would
> be far better.  Solving that general problem is beyond the scope of
> this, though.
> 
> 
> 
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