RFC 7200
A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Load-Control Event Package
Pages: 44
Proposed Standard
Proposed Standard
Part 1 of 2 – Pages 1 to 20
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) C. Shen Request for Comments: 7200 H. Schulzrinne Category: Standards Track Columbia U. ISSN: 2070-1721 A. Koike NTT April 2014 A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Load-Control Event PackageAbstract
This specification defines a load-control event package for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). It allows SIP entities to distribute load-filtering policies to other SIP entities in the network. The load-filtering policies contain rules to throttle calls from a specific user or based on their source or destination domain, telephone number prefix. The mechanism helps to prevent signaling overload and complements feedback-based SIP overload control efforts. Status of This Memo This is an Internet Standards Track document. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7200. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................3 2. Conventions .....................................................3 3. SIP Load-Filtering Overview .....................................4 3.1. Load-Filtering Policy Format ...............................4 3.2. Load-Filtering Policy Computation ..........................4 3.3. Load-Filtering Policy Distribution .........................4 3.4. Applicable Network Domains .................................8 4. Load-Control Event Package ......................................9 4.1. Event Package Name .........................................9 4.2. Event Package Parameters ...................................9 4.3. SUBSCRIBE Bodies ...........................................9 4.4. SUBSCRIBE Duration .........................................9 4.5. NOTIFY Bodies .............................................10 4.6. Notifier Processing of SUBSCRIBE Requests .................10 4.7. Notifier Generation of NOTIFY Requests ....................10 4.8. Subscriber Processing of NOTIFY Requests ..................10 4.9. Handling of Forked Requests ...............................12 4.10. Rate of Notifications ....................................12 4.11. State Delta ..............................................12 5. Load-Control Document ..........................................13 5.1. Format ....................................................13 5.2. Namespace .................................................13 5.3. Conditions ................................................14 5.3.1. Call Identity ......................................14 5.3.2. Method .............................................16 5.3.3. Target SIP Entity ..................................17 5.3.4. Validity ...........................................18 5.4. Actions ...................................................18 6. XML Schema Definition for Load Control .........................20 7. Security Considerations ........................................23 8. IANA Considerations ............................................24 8.1. Load-Control Event Package Registration ...................24 8.2. application/load-control+xml Media Type Registration ......24 8.3. URN Sub-Namespace Registration ............................25 8.4. Load-Control Schema Registration ..........................26 9. Acknowledgements ...............................................27 10. References ....................................................27 10.1. Normative References .....................................27 10.2. Informative References ...................................28 Appendix A. Definitions ...........................................30 Appendix B. Design Requirements ...................................30 Appendix C. Discussion of How This Specification Meets the Requirements of RFC 5390 ..............................31 Appendix D. Complete Examples .....................................36 D.1. Load-Control Document Examples ............................36 D.2. Message Flow Examples .....................................40
Appendix E. Related Work .........................................41 E.1. Relationship to Load Filtering in PSTN ....................41 E.2. Relationship with Other IETF SIP Overload Control Efforts .421. Introduction
SIP load-control mechanisms are needed to prevent congestion collapse [RFC6357] in cases of SIP server overload [RFC5390]. There are two types of load-control approaches. In the first approach, feedback control, SIP servers provide load limits to upstream servers, to reduce the incoming rate of all SIP requests [SIP-OVERLOAD]. These upstream servers then drop or delay incoming SIP requests. Feedback control is reactive and affects signaling messages that have already been issued by user agent clients. This approach works well when SIP proxy servers in the core networks (core proxy servers) or destination-specific SIP proxy servers in the edge networks (edge proxy servers) are overloaded. By their nature, they need to distribute rate, drop, or window information to all upstream SIP proxy servers and normally affect all calls equally, regardless of destination. This specification proposes an additional, complementary load-control mechanism, called "load filtering". It is most applicable for situations where a traffic surge and its source/destination distribution can be predicted in advance. In those cases, network operators create load-filtering policies that indicate calls to specific destinations or from specific sources should be rate-limited or randomly dropped. These load-filtering policies are then distributed to SIP servers and possibly SIP user agents that are likely to generate calls to the affected destinations or from the affected sources. Load filtering works best if it prevents calls as close to the originating user agent clients as possible. The applicability of SIP load filtering can also be extended beyond overload control, e.g., to implement service level agreement commitments.2. Conventions
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 [RFC2119].
3. SIP Load-Filtering Overview
3.1. Load-Filtering Policy Format
Load-filtering policies are specified by sets of rules. Each rule contains both load-filtering conditions and actions. The load- filtering conditions define identities of the targets to be filtered (Section 5.3.1). For example, there are two typical resource limits in a possible overload situation, i.e., human destination limits (number of call takers) and node capacity limits. The load-filtering targets in these two cases can be the specific callee numbers or the destination domain corresponding to the overload. Load-filtering conditions also indicate the specific message type to be matched (Section 5.3.2), with which target SIP entity the filtering policy is associated (Section 5.3.3), and the period of time when the filtering policy should be activated and deactivated (Section 5.3.4). Load- filtering actions describe the desired control functions such as keeping the request rate below a specified level (Section 5.4).3.2. Load-Filtering Policy Computation
When computing the load-filtering policies, one needs to take into consideration information such as overload time, scope and network topology, as well as service policies. It is also important to make sure that there is no resource allocation loop and that server capacity is allocated in a way that both prevents overload and maximizes effective throughput (commonly called goodput). In some cases, in order to better utilize system resources, it may be preferable to employ an algorithm that dynamically computes the load- filtering policies based on currently observed server load status, rather than using a purely static filtering policy assignment. The computation algorithm for load-filtering policies is beyond the scope of this specification.3.3. Load-Filtering Policy Distribution
For distributing load-filtering policies, this specification defines the SIP event package for load control, which is an "instantiation" of the generic SIP event notification framework [RFC6665]. This specification also defines the XML schema of a load-control document (Section 5), which is used to encode load-filtering policies. In order for load-filtering policies to be properly distributed, each capable SIP entity in the network subscribes to the SIP load-control event package of each SIP entity to which it sends signaling requests. A SIP entity that accepts subscription requests is called a "notifier" (Section 4.6). Subscription is initiated and maintained during normal server operation. The subscription of neighboring SIP
entities needs to be persistent, as described in Sections 4.1 and 4.2 of [RFC6665]. The refresh procedure is described in Section 4.7 below. Subscribers may terminate the subscription if they have not received notifications for an extended time period, and can resubscribe if they determine that signaling with the notifier becomes active again. An example architecture is shown in Figure 1 to illustrate SIP load- filtering policy distribution. This scenario consists of two networks belonging to Service Provider A and Service Provider B, respectively. Each provider's network is made up of two SIP core proxy servers and four SIP edge proxy servers. The core proxy servers and edge proxy servers of Service Provider A are denoted as CPa1 to CPa2 and EPa1 to EPa4; the core proxy servers and edge proxy servers of Service Provider B are denoted as CPb1 to CPb2 and EPb1 to EPb4.
+-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+ | | | | | | | | | EPa1 | | EPa2 | | EPa3 | | EPa4 | | | | | | | | | +-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+ \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / +-----------+ +-----------+ | | | | | CPa1 |------------------| CPa2 | | | | | +-----------+ +-----------+ | | Service | | Provider A | | | | ================================================================= | | Service | | Provider B | | | | +-----------+ +-----------+ | | | | | CPb1 |------------------| CPb2 | | | | | +-----------+ +-----------+ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ +-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+ | | | | | | | | | EPb1 | | EPb2 | | EPb3 | | EPb4 | | | | | | | | | +-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+ Figure 1: Example Network Scenario Using SIP Load-Control Event Package Mechanism During the initialization stage, the proxy servers first identify all their outgoing signaling neighbors and subscribe to them. Service providers can provision neighbors, or the proxy servers can incrementally learn who their neighbors are by inspecting signaling messages that they send and receive. Assuming all signaling relationships in Figure 1 are bidirectional, after this initialization stage, each proxy server will be subscribed to all its neighbors.
Case I: EPa1 serves a TV program hotline and decides to limit the
total number of incoming calls to the hotline to prevent an overload.
To do so, EPa1 sends a notification to CPa1 with the specific hotline
number, time of activation, and total acceptable call rate.
Depending on the load-filtering policy computation algorithm, CPa1
may allocate the received total acceptable call rate among its
neighbors, namely, EPa2, CPa2, and CPb1, and notify them about the
resulting allocation along with the hotline number and the activation
time. CPa2 and CPb1 may perform further allocation among their own
neighbors and notify the corresponding proxy servers. This process
continues until all edge proxy servers in the network have been
informed about the event and have proper load-filtering policies
configured.
In the above case, the network entity where load-filtering policy is
first introduced is the SIP server providing access to the resource
that creates the overload situation. In other cases, the network
entry point of introducing load-filtering policy could also be an
entity that hosts this resource. For example, an operator may host
an application server that performs toll-free-number ("800 number")
translation services. The application server itself may be a SIP
proxy server or a SIP Back-to-Back User Agent (B2BUA). If one of the
toll-free numbers hosted at the application server creates the
overload condition, the load-filtering policies can be introduced
from the application server and then propagated to other SIP proxy
servers in the network.
Case II: A hurricane affects the region covered by CPb2, EPb3, and
EPb4. All three of these SIP proxy servers are overloaded. The
rescue team determines that outbound calls are more valuable than
inbound calls in this specific situation. Therefore, EPb3 and EPb4
are configured with load-filtering policies to accept more outbound
calls than inbound calls. CPb2 may be configured the same way or
receive dynamically computed load-filtering policies from EPb3 and
EPb4. Depending on the load-filtering policy computation algorithm,
CPb2 may also send out notifications to its outside neighbors, namely
CPb1 and CPa2, specifying a limit on the acceptable rate of inbound
calls to CPb2's responsible domain. CPb1 and CPa2 may subsequently
notify their neighbors about limiting the calls to CPb2's area. The
same process could continue until all edge proxy servers are notified
and have load-filtering policies configured.
Note that this specification does not define the provisioning
interface between the party who determines the load-filtering policy
and the network entry point where the policy is introduced. One of
the options for the provisioning interface is the Extensible Markup
Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP) [RFC4825].
3.4. Applicable Network Domains
This specification MUST be applied inside a "Trust Domain". The concept of a Trust Domain is similar to that defined in [RFC3324] and [RFC3325]. A Trust Domain, for the purpose of SIP load filtering, is a set of SIP entities such as SIP proxy servers that are trusted to exchange load-filtering policies defined in this specification. In the simplest case, a Trust Domain is a network of SIP entities belonging to a single service provider who deploys it and accurately knows the behavior of those SIP entities. Such simple Trust Domains may be joined to form larger Trust Domains by bilateral agreements between the service providers of the SIP entities. The key requirement of a Trust Domain for the purpose of SIP load filtering is that the behavior of all SIP entities within a given Trust Domain is known to comply to the following set of specifications. o SIP entities in the Trust Domain agree on the mechanisms used to secure the communication among SIP entities within the Trust Domain. o SIP entities in the Trust Domain agree on the manner used to determine which SIP entities are part of the Trust Domain. o SIP entities in the Trust Domain are compliant to SIP [RFC3261]. o SIP entities in the Trust Domain are compliant to SIP-Specific Event Notification[RFC6665]. o SIP entities in the Trust Domain are compliant to this specification. o SIP entities in the Trust Domain agree on what types of calls can be affected by this SIP load-filtering mechanism. For example, <call-identity> condition elements (Section 5.3.1) <one> and <many> might be limited to describe within certain prefixes. o SIP entities in the Trust Domain agree on the destinations to which calls may be redirected when the "redirect" action (Section 5.4) is used. For example, the URI might have to match a given set of domains. SIP load filtering is only effective if all neighbors that are possible signaling sources participate and enforce the designated load-filtering policies. Otherwise, a single non-conforming neighbor could make all filtering efforts useless by pumping in excessive traffic to overload the server. Therefore, the SIP server that
distributes load-filtering policies needs to take countermeasures towards any non-conforming neighbors. A simple method is to reject excessive requests with 503 "Service Unavailable" response messages as if they were obeying the rate. Considering the rejection costs, a more complicated but fairer method would be to allocate at the overloaded server the same amount of processing to the combination of both normal processing and rejection as the overloaded server would devote to processing requests for a conforming upstream SIP server. These approaches work as long as the total rejection cost does not overwhelm the entire server resources. In addition, SIP servers need to handle message prioritization properly while performing load filtering, which is described in Section 4.8.4. Load-Control Event Package
The SIP load-filtering mechanism defines a load-control event package for SIP based on [RFC6665].4.1. Event Package Name
The name of this event package is "load-control". This name is carried in the Event and Allow-Events header, as specified in [RFC6665].4.2. Event Package Parameters
No package-specific event header field parameters are defined for this event package.4.3. SUBSCRIBE Bodies
This specification does not define the content of SUBSCRIBE bodies. Future specifications could define bodies for SUBSCRIBE messages, for example, to request specific types of load-control event notifications. A SUBSCRIBE request sent without a body implies the default subscription behavior as specified in Section 4.7.4.4. SUBSCRIBE Duration
The default expiration time for a subscription to load-filtering policy is one hour. Since the desired expiration time may vary significantly for subscriptions among SIP entities with different signaling relationships, the subscribers and notifiers are RECOMMENDED to explicitly negotiate appropriate subscription duration when knowledge about the mutual signaling relationship is available.
4.5. NOTIFY Bodies
The body of a NOTIFY request in this event package contains load- filtering policies. The format of the NOTIFY request body MUST be in one of the formats defined in the Accept header field of the SUBSCRIBE request or be the default format, as specified in [RFC6665]. The default data format for the NOTIFY request body of this event package is "application/load-control+xml" (defined in Section 5). This means that when a NOTIFY request body exists but no Accept header field is specified in a SUBSCRIBE request, the NOTIFY request body MUST contain content conforming to the "application/ load-control+xml" format.4.6. Notifier Processing of SUBSCRIBE Requests
The notifier accepts a new subscription or updates an existing subscription upon receiving a valid SUBSCRIBE request. If the identity of the subscriber sending the SUBSCRIBE request is not allowed to receive load-filtering policies, the notifier MUST return a 403 "Forbidden" response. If none of the media types specified in the Accept header of the SUBSCRIBE request are supported, the notifier SHOULD return a 406 "Not Acceptable" response.4.7. Notifier Generation of NOTIFY Requests
A notifier MUST send a NOTIFY request with its current load-filtering policy to the subscriber upon successfully accepting or refreshing a subscription. If no load-filtering policy needs to be distributed when the subscription is received, the notifier SHOULD sent a NOTIFY request without a body to the subscriber. The content-type header field of this NOTIFY request MUST indicate the correct body format as if the body were present (e.g., "application/load-control+xml"). Notifiers are likely to send NOTIFY requests without a body when a subscription is initiated for the first time, e.g., when a SIP entity is just introduced, because there may be no planned events that require load filtering at that time. A notifier SHOULD generate NOTIFY requests each time the load-filtering policy changes, with the maximum notification rate not exceeding values defined in Section 4.10.4.8. Subscriber Processing of NOTIFY Requests
The subscriber is the load-filtering server that enforces load- filtering policies received from the notifier. The way subscribers process NOTIFY requests depends on the load-filtering policies
conveyed in the notifications. Typically, load-filtering policies
consist of rules specifying actions to be applied to requests
matching certain conditions. A subscriber receiving a notification
first installs these rules and then enforces corresponding actions on
requests matching those conditions, for example, limiting the sending
rate of call requests destined for a specific callee.
In the case when load-filtering policies specify a future validity,
it is possible that when the validity time arrives, the subscription
to the specific notifier that conveyed the rules has expired. In
this case, it is RECOMMENDED that the subscriber re-activate its
subscription with the corresponding notifier. Regardless of whether
or not this re-activation of subscription is successful, when the
validity time is reached, the subscriber SHOULD enforce the
corresponding rules.
Upon receipt of a NOTIFY request with a Subscription-State header
field containing the value "terminated", the subscription status with
the particular notifier will be terminated. Meanwhile, subscribers
MUST also terminate previously received load-filtering policies from
that notifier.
The subscriber MUST discard unknown bodies. If the NOTIFY request
contains several bodies, none of them being supported, it SHOULD
unsubscribe unless it has knowledge that it will possibly receive
NOTIFY requests with supported bodies from that notifier. A NOTIFY
request without a body indicates that no load-filtering policies need
to be updated.
When the subscriber enforces load-filtering policies, it needs to
prioritize requests and select those requests that need to be
rejected or redirected. This selection is largely a matter of local
policy. It is expected that the subscriber will follow local policy
as long as the result in reduction of traffic is consistent with the
overload algorithm in effect at that node. Accordingly, the
normative behavior described in the next three paragraphs should be
interpreted with the understanding that the subscriber will aim to
preserve local policy to the fullest extent possible.
o The subscriber SHOULD honor the local policy for prioritizing SIP
requests such as policies based on message type, e.g., INVITEs
versus requests associated with existing sessions.
o The subscriber SHOULD honor the local policy for prioritizing SIP
requests based on the content of the Resource-Priority header
(RPH, [RFC4412]). Specific (namespace.value) RPH contents may
indicate high-priority requests that should be preserved as much
as possible during overload. The RPH contents can also indicate a
low-priority request that is eligible to be dropped during times
of overload.
o The subscriber SHOULD honor the local policy for prioritizing SIP
requests relating to emergency calls as identified by the sos URN
[RFC5031] indicating an emergency request.
A local policy can be expected to combine both the SIP request type
and the prioritization markings and SHOULD be honored when overload
conditions prevail.
4.9. Handling of Forked Requests
Forking is not applicable when this load-control event package
mechanism is used within a single-hop distance between neighboring
SIP entities. If communication scope of the load-control event
package mechanism is among multiple hops, forking is also not
expected to happen because the subscription request is addressed to a
clearly defined SIP entity. However, in the unlikely case when
forking does happen, the load-control event package only allows the
first potential dialog-establishing message to create a dialog, as
specified in Section 5.4.9 of [RFC6665].
4.10. Rate of Notifications
The rate of notifications is unlikely to be of concern for this local
control event package mechanism when it is used in a non-real-time
mode for relatively static load-filtering policies. Nevertheless, if
a situation does arise in which a rather frequently used load
filtering policy update is needed, it is RECOMMENDED that the
notifier not generate notifications at a rate higher than once per
second in all cases, in order to avoid the NOTIFY request itself
overloading the system.
4.11. State Delta
It is likely that updates to specific load-filtering policies are
made by changing only part of the policy parameters (e.g., acceptable
request rate or percentage, but not matching identities). This will
typically be because the utilization of a resource subject to
overload depends upon dynamic unknowns such as holding time and the
relative distribution of offered loads over subscribing SIP entities.
The updates could originate manually or be determined automatically
by an algorithm that dynamically computes the load-filtering policies
(Section 3.2). Another factor that is usually not known precisely or
needs to be computed automatically is the duration of the event requiring load filtering. Therefore, it would also be common for the validity to change frequently. This event package allows the use of state delta as in [RFC6665] to accommodate frequent updates of partial policy parameters. For each NOTIFY transaction in a subscription, a version number that increases by exactly one MUST be included in the NOTIFY request body when the body is present. When the subscriber receives a state delta, it associates the partial updates to the particular policy by matching the appropriate rule id (Appendix D). If the subscriber receives a NOTIFY request with a version number that is increased by more than one, it knows that it has missed a state delta and needs to ask for a full state snapshot. Therefore, the subscriber ignores that NOTIFY request containing the state delta, and resends a SUBSCRIBE request to force a NOTIFY request containing a complete state snapshot.5. Load-Control Document
5.1. Format
A load-control document is an XML document that describes the load- filtering policies. It inherits and enhances the common policy document defined in [RFC4745]. A common policy document contains a set of rules. Each rule consists of three parts: conditions, actions, and transformations. The conditions part is a set of expressions containing attributes such as identity, domain, and validity time information. Each expression evaluates to TRUE or FALSE. Conditions are matched on "equality" or "greater than" style comparison. There is no regular expression matching. Conditions are evaluated on receipt of an initial SIP request for a dialog or standalone transaction. If a request matches all conditions in a rule set, the action part and the transformation part are consulted to determine the "permission" on how to handle the request. Each action or transformation specifies a positive grant to the policy server to perform the resulting actions. Well-defined mechanism are available for combining actions and transformations obtained from more than one sources.5.2. Namespace
The namespace URI for elements defined by this specification is a Uniform Resource Namespace (URN) ([RFC2141]), using the namespace identifier "ietf" defined by [RFC2648] and extended by [RFC3688]. The URN is as follows: urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:load-control
5.3. Conditions
[RFC4745] defines three condition elements: <identity>, <sphere>, and <validity>. This specification defines new condition elements and reuses the <validity> element. The <sphere> element is not used.5.3.1. Call Identity
Since the problem space of this specification is different from that of [RFC4745], the [RFC4745] <identity> element is not sufficient for use with load filtering. First, load filtering may be applied to different identities contained in a request, including identities of both the receiving entity and the sending entity. Second, the importance of authentication varies when different identities of a request are concerned. This specification defines new identity conditions that can accommodate the granularity of specific SIP identity header fields. The requirement for authentication depends on which field is to be matched. The identity condition for load filtering is specified by the <call-identity> element and its sub-element <sip>. The <sip> element itself contains sub-elements representing SIP sending and receiving identity header fields: <from>, <to>, <request-uri>, and <p-asserted-identity>. All those sub-elements are of an extended form of the [RFC4745] <identity> element. In addition to the sub- elements including <one>, <except>, and <many> in the <identity> element from [RFC4745], the extended form adds two new sub-elements, namely, <many-tel> and <except-tel>, which will be explained later in this section. The [RFC4745] <one> and <except> elements may contain an "id" attribute, which is the URI of a single entity to be included or excluded in the condition. When used in the <from>, <to>, <request-uri>, and <p-asserted-identity> elements, this "id" value is the URI contained in the corresponding SIP header field, i.e., From, To, Request-URI, and P-Asserted-Identity. When the <call-identity> element contains multiple <sip> sub- elements, the result is combined using logical OR. When the <from>, <to>, <request-uri>, and <p-asserted-identity> elements contain multiple <one>, <many>, or <many-tel> sub-elements, the result is also combined using logical OR. When the <many> sub-element further contains one or more <except> sub-elements, or when the <many-tel> sub-element further contains one or more <except-tel> sub-elements, the result of each <except> or <except-tel> sub-element is combined using a logical OR, similar to that of the [RFC4745] <identity> element. However, when the <sip> element contains multiple <from>, <to>, <request-uri>, and <p-asserted-identity> sub-elements, the
result is combined using logical AND. This allows the call identity
to be specified by multiple fields of a SIP request simultaneously,
e.g., both the From and the To header fields.
The following shows an example of the <call-identity> element, which
matches call requests whose To header field contains the SIP URI
"sip:alice@hotline.example.com" or the 'tel' URI
"tel:+1-212-555-1234".
<call-identity>
<sip>
<to>
<one id="sip:alice@hotline.example.com"/>
<one id="tel:+1-212-555-1234"/>
</to>
</sip>
</call-identity>
Before evaluating <call-identity> conditions, the subscriber shall
convert URIs received in SIP header fields in canonical form as per
[RFC3261], except that the "phone-context" parameter shall not be
removed, if present.
The [RFC4745] <many> and <except> elements may take a "domain"
attribute. The "domain" attribute specifies a domain name to be
matched by the domain part of the candidate identity. Thus, it
allows matching a large and possibly unknown number of entities
within a domain. The "domain" attribute works well for SIP URIs.
A URI identifying a SIP user, however, can also be a 'tel' URI.
Therefore, a similar way to match a group of 'tel' URIs is needed.
There are two forms of 'tel' URIs: for global numbers and local
numbers. According to [RFC3966], "All phone numbers MUST use the
global form unless they cannot be represented as such...Local numbers
MUST be tagged with a 'phone-context'". The global number 'tel' URIs
start with a "+". The "phone-context" parameter of local numbers may
be labeled as a global number or any number of its leading digits or
a domain name. Both forms of the 'tel' URI make the resulting URI
globally unique.
'tel' URIs of global numbers can be grouped by prefixes consisting of
any number of common leading digits. For example, a prefix formed by
a country code or both the country and area code identifies telephone
numbers within a country or an area. Since the length of the country
and area code for different regions are different, the length of the
number prefix also varies. This allows further flexibility such as
grouping the numbers into sub-areas within the same area code. 'tel' URIs of local numbers can be grouped by the value of the "phone-context" parameter. The <many> and <except> sub-elements in the <identity> element of [RFC4745] do not allow additional attributes to be added directly. Redefining behavior of their existing "domain" attribute creates backward-compatibility issues. Therefore, this specification defines the <many-tel> and <except-tel> sub-elements that extend the [RFC4745] <identity> element. Both of them have a "prefix" attribute for grouping 'tel' URIs, similar to the "domain" attribute for grouping SIP URIs in existing <many> and <except> sub-elements. For global numbers, the "prefix" attribute value holds any number of common leading digits, for example, "+1-212" for US phone numbers within area code "212" or "+1-212-854" for the organization with US area code "212" and local prefix "854". For local numbers, the "prefix" attribute value contains the "phone-context" parameter value. It should be noted that visual separators (such as the "-" sign) in 'tel' URIs are not used for URI comparison as per [RFC3966]. The following example shows the use of the "prefix" attribute along with the "domain" attribute. It matches those requests calling to the number "+1-202-999-1234" but are not calling from a "+1-212" prefix or a SIP From URI domain of "manhattan.example.com". <call-identity> <sip> <from> <many> <except domain="manhattan.example.com"/> </many> <many-tel> <except-tel prefix="+1-212"/> </many-tel> </from> <to> <one id="tel:+1-202-999-1234"/> </to> </sip> </call-identity>5.3.2. Method
The load created on a SIP server depends on the type of initial SIP requests for dialogs or standalone transactions. The <method> element specifies the SIP method to which the load-filtering action applies. When this element is not included, the load-filtering actions are applicable to all applicable initial requests. These
requests include INVITE, MESSAGE, REGISTER, SUBSCRIBE, OPTIONS, and
PUBLISH. Non-initial requests, such as ACK, BYE, and CANCEL MUST NOT
be subjected to load filtering. In addition, SUBSCRIBE requests are
not filtered if the event-type header field indicates the event
package defined in this specification.
The following example shows the use of the <method> element in the
case the filtering actions should be applied to INVITE requests.
<method>INVITE</method>
5.3.3. Target SIP Entity
A SIP server that performs load-filtering may have multiple paths to
route call requests matching the same set of call identity elements.
In those situations, the SIP load-filtering server may desire to take
advantage of alternative paths and only apply load-filtering actions
to matching requests for the next-hop SIP entity that originated the
corresponding load-filtering policy. To achieve that, the SIP load-
filtering server needs to associate every load-filtering policy with
its originating SIP entity. The <target-sip-entity> element is
defined for that purpose, and it contains the URI of the entity that
initiated the load-filtering policy, which is generally the
corresponding notifier. A notifier MAY include this element as part
of the condition of its filtering policy being sent to the
subscriber, as below.
<target-sip-entity>sip:biloxi.example.com</target-sip-entity>
When a SIP load-filtering server receives a policy with a
<target-sip-entity> element, it SHOULD record it and take it into
consideration when making load-filtering decisions. If the load-
filtering server receives a load-filtering policy that does not
contain a <target-sip-entity> element, it MAY still record the URI of
the load-filtering policy's originator as the <target-sip-entity>
information and consider it when making load-filtering decisions.
The following are two examples of using the <target-sip-entity>
element.
Use case I: The network has user A connected to SIP Proxy 1 (SP1),
user B connected to SIP Proxy 3 (SP3), SP1 and SP3 connected via
SIP Proxy 2 (SP2), and SP2 connected to an Application Server
(AS). Under normal load conditions, a call from A to B is routed
along the following path: A-SP1-SP2-AS-SP3-B. The AS provides a
nonessential service and can be bypassed in case of overload. Now
let's assume that AS is overloaded and sends to SP2 a load-
filtering policy requesting that 50% of all INVITE requests be
dropped. SP2 can maintain AS as the <target-sip-entity> for that
policy so that it knows the 50% drop action is only applicable to
call requests that must go through AS, without affecting those
calls directly routed through SP3 to B.
Use case II: A translation service for toll-free numbers is
installed on two Application Servers, AS1 and AS2. User A is
connected to SP1 and calls 800-1234-4529, which is translated by
AS1 and AS2 into a regular E.164 number depending on, e.g., the
caller's location. SP1 forwards INVITE requests with Request-URI
= "800 number" to AS1 or AS2 based on a load-balancing strategy.
As calls to 800-1234-4529 create a pre-overload condition in AS1,
AS1 sends to SP1 a load-filtering policy requesting that 50% of
calls towards 800-1234-4529 be rejected. In this case, SP1 can
maintain AS1 as the <target-sip-entity> for the rule, and only
apply the load-filtering policy on incoming requests that are
intended to be sent to AS1. Those requests that are sent to AS2,
although matching the <call-identity> of the filter, will not be
affected.
5.3.4. Validity
A filtering policy is usually associated with a validity period
condition. This specification reuses the <validity> element of
[RFC4745], which specifies a period of validity time by pairs of
<from> and <until> sub-elements. When multiple time periods are
defined, the validity condition is evaluated to TRUE if the current
time falls into any of the specified time periods. That is, it
represents a logical OR operation across all validity time periods.
The following example shows a <validity> element specifying a valid
period from 12:00 to 15:00 US Eastern Standard Time on 2008-05-31.
<validity>
<from>2008-05-31T12:00:00-05:00</from>
<until>2008-05-31T15:00:00-05:00</until>
</validity>
5.4. Actions
The actions a load-filtering server takes on loads matching the load-
filtering conditions are defined by the <accept> element in the load-
filtering policy, which includes any one of the three sub-elements
<rate>, <percent>, and <win>. The <rate> element denotes an absolute
value of the maximum acceptable request rate in requests per second;
the <percent> element specifies the relative percentage of incoming
requests that should be accepted; the <win> element describes the
acceptable window size supplied by the receiver, which is applicable
in window-based load-filtering. In static load-filtering policy configuration scenarios, using the <rate> sub-element is RECOMMENDED because it is hard to enforce the percentage rate or window-based load filtering when incoming load from upstream or reactions from downstream are uncertain. (See [SIP-OVERLOAD] and [RFC6357] for more details on rate-based, loss-based, and window-based load control.) In addition, the <accept> element takes an optional "alt-action" attribute that can be used to explicitly specify the desired action in case a request cannot be processed. The "alt-action" can take one of the following three values: "reject", "redirect", or "drop". o The "reject" action is the default value for "alt-action". It means that the load-filtering server will reject the request with a 503 "Service Unavailable" response message. o The "redirect" action means redirecting the request to another target. When it is used, an "alt-target" attribute MUST be defined. The "alt-target" specifies one URI or a list of URIs where the request should be redirected. The server sends out the redirect URIs in a 300-class response message. o The "drop" action means simply ignoring the request without doing anything, which can, in certain cases, help save processing capability during overload. For example, when SIP is running over a reliable transport such as TCP, the "drop" action does not send out the rejection response, neither does it close the transport connection. However, when running SIP over an unreliable transport such as UDP, using the "drop" action will create message retransmissions that further worsen the possible overload situation. Therefore, any "drop" action applied to an unreliable transport MUST be treated as if it were "reject". The above "alt-action" processing can also be illustrated through the following pseudocode. SWITCH "alt-action" "redirect": "redirect" "drop": IF unreliable-transport THEN treat as "reject" ELSE "drop" "reject": "reject" default: "reject" END
In the following <actions> element example, the server accepts
maximum of 100 call requests per second. The remaining calls are
redirected to an answering machine.
<actions>
<accept alt-action="redirect" alt-target=
"sip:answer-machine@example.com">
<rate>100</rate>
</accept>
</actions>
(page 20 continued on part 2)