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RFC 3859 - Common Profile for Presence (CPP)


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Network Working Group                                        J. Peterson
Request for Comments: 3859                                       NeuStar
Category: Standards Track                                    August 2004

                   Common Profile for Presence (CPP)

Status of this Memo

   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).

Abstract

   At the time this document was written, numerous presence protocols
   were in use (largely as components of commercial instant messaging
   services), and little interoperability between services based on
   these protocols has been achieved.  This specification defines common
   semantics and data formats for presence to facilitate the creation of
   gateways between presence services.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
   2.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   3.  Abstract Presence Service  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
       3.1.  Overview of the Presence Service . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
       3.2.  Identification of PRESENTITIES and WATCHERS  . . . . . .  6
             3.2.1.  Address Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
       3.3.  Format of Presence Information . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
       3.4.  The Presence Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
             3.4.1.  The Subscribe Operation  . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
             3.4.2.  The Notify Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
             3.4.3.  Subscribe Operation (with Zero Duration) . . . .  8
   4.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   5.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
       5.1.  The PRES URI Scheme  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   6.  Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   7.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
       7.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
       7.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

   A.  PRES URI IANA Registration Template  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       A.1.  URI Scheme Name  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       A.2.  URI Scheme Syntax  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       A.3.  Character Encoding Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       A.4.  Intended Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       A.5.  Applications and/or Protocols which use this URI Scheme
             Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
       A.6.  Interoperability Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
       A.7.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
       A.8.  Relevant Publications  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
       A.9.  Person & Email Address to Contact for Further
             Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
       A.10. Author/Change Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
       A.11. Applications and/or Protocols which use this URI Scheme
             Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   B.  Issues of Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
       B.1.  Address Mapping  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
       B.2.  Source-Route Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   C.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1.  Introduction

   Presence is defined in RFC2778 [5].  At the time this document was
   written, numerous presence protocols are in use (largely as
   components of commercial instant messaging services), and little
   interoperability between services based on these protocols has been
   achieved.  This specification defines semantics and data formats for
   common services of presence to facilitate the creation of gateways
   between presence services: a common profile for presence (CPP).

   Service behavior is described abstractly in terms of operations
   invoked between the consumer and provider of a service.  Accordingly,
   each presence service must specify how this behavior is mapped onto
   its own protocol interactions.  The choice of strategy is a local
   matter, providing that there is a clear relation between the abstract
   behaviors of the service (as specified in this memo) and how it is
   faithfully realized by a particular presence service.   For example,
   one strategy might transmit presence information as key/value pairs,
   another might use a compact binary representation, and a third might
   use nested containers.

   The parameters for each operation are defined using an abstract
   syntax.  Although the syntax specifies the range of possible data
   values, each presence service must specify how well-formed instances
   of the abstract representation are encoded as a concrete series of
   bits.

   In order to provide a means for the preservation of end-to-end
   features (especially security) to pass through presence
   interoperability gateways, this specification also provides
   recommendations for presence document formats that could be employed
   by presence protocols.

2.  Terminology

   In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
   "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT
   RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as
   described in BCP 14, RFC 2119 [1] and indicate requirement levels for
   compliant implementations.

   This memos makes use of the vocabulary defined in RFC 2778 [5].
   Terms such as CLOSED, INSTANT INBOX, PRESENCE, and OPEN are used in
   the same meaning as defined therein.

   The term 'gateway' used in this document denotes a network element
   responsible for interworking between diverse presence protocols.
   Although the presence protocols themselves are diverse, under the
   model in this document these protocols can carry a common payload
   that is relayed by the gateway.  Whether these interworking
   intermediaries should be called 'gateways' or 'relays' is therefore
   somewhat debatable; for the purposes of this document, they are
   called 'CPP gateways'.

   The term 'presence service' also derives from RFC 2778, but its
   meaning changes slightly due to the existence of gateways in the CPP
   model.  When a client sends an operation to a presence service, that
   service might either be an endpoint or an intermediary such as a CPP
   gateway - in fact, the client should not have to be aware which it is
   addressing, as responses from either will appear the same.

   This document defines operations and attributes of an abstract
   presence protocol.  In order for a compliant protocol to interface
   with a presence gateway, it must support all of the operations
   described in this document (i.e., the presence protocol must have
   some message or capability that provides the function described by
   all given operations).  Similarly, the attributes defined for these
   operations must correspond to information available in the presence
   protocol in order for the protocol to interface with gateways defined
   by this specification.  Note that these attributes provide only the
   minimum possible information that needs to be specified for
   interoperability - the functions in a presence protocol that
   correspond to the operations described in this document can contain
   additional information that will not be mapped by CPP.

3.  Abstract Presence Service

3.1.  Overview of the Presence Service

   When an application wants to subscriber to the presence information
   associated with a PRESENTITY (in order to receive periodic
   notifications of presence information), it invokes the subscribe
   operation, e.g.,

             +-------+                    +-------+
             |       |                    |       |
             | appl. | -- subscribe ----> | pres. |
             |       |                    | svc.  |
             +-------+                    +-------+

   The subscribe operation has the following attributes: watcher,
   target, duration, SubscriptID and TransID.  The 'watcher' and
   'target' identify the WATCHER and PRESENTITY, respectively, using the
   identifiers described in Section 3.2.  The duration specifies the
   maximum number of seconds that the SUBSCRIPTION should be active
   (which may be zero, in which case this is a one-time request for
   presence information).  The SubscriptID creates a reference to the
   SUBSCRIPTION that is used when unsubscribing.  The TransID is a
   unique identifier used to correlate the subscribe operation with a
   response operation.  Gateways should be capable of handling TransIDs
   and SubscriptIDs up to 40 bytes in length.

   Upon receiving a subscribe operation, the service immediately
   responds by invoking the response operation containing the same
   TransID, e.g.,

             +-------+                    +-------+
             |       |                    |       |
             | appl. | <----- response -- | pres. |
             |       |                    | svc.  |
             +-------+                    +-------+

   The response operation has the following attributes: status, TransID,
   and duration.  'status' indicates whether the subscribe operation has
   succeeded or failed.  The TransID of the response operation
   corresponds to the TransID of the subscription operation to which it
   is responding.  The 'duration' attribute specifies the number of
   seconds for which the subscription will be active (which may differ
   from the value requested in the subscribe operation).

   If the response operation indicates success, the service immediately
   invokes the notify operation to communicate the presence information
   to the WATCHER, e.g.,

             +-------+                    +-------+
             |       |                    |       |
             | appl. | <------- notify -- | pres. |
             |       |                    | svc.  |
             +-------+                    +-------+

   The notify operation has the following attributes: watcher, target,
   and TransID.  The values of 'watcher' and 'target' are identical to
   those given in the subscribe operation that triggered this notify
   operation.  The TransID is a unique identifier for this notification.

   The notify operation also has content, namely PRESENCE INFORMATION.
   Content details are specified in Section 3.3.

   If the duration parameter is non-zero, then for up to the specified
   duration, the service invokes the notify operation whenever there are
   any changes to the PRESENTITY's presence information.  Otherwise,
   exactly one notify operation is invoked, achieving a one-time poll of
   the presence information.  Regardless, there is no application
   response to the notify operation (i.e., the application does not
   invoke a response operation when a notify operation occurs) defined
   in CPP.

   The application may prematurely cancel a subscription by re-invoking
   the subscribe operation (as described above) with a duration of 0 and
   the same SubscriptID as the original subscribe operation , e.g.,

             +-------+                    +-------+
             |       |                    |       |
             | appl. | -- subscribe 0 --> | pres. |
             |       |                    | svc.  |
             +-------+                    +-------+

   Note that a notify operation will be invoked when a subscription is
   prematurely canceled in this fashion; this notification may be
   discarded by the watcher.

   The service immediately responds by invoking the response operation
   containing the same TransID; e.g.,

             +-------+                    +-------+
             |       |                    |       |
             | appl. | <----- response -- | pres. |
             |       |                    | svc.  |
             +-------+                    +-------+

   Note that this specification assumes that CPP-compliant presence
   protocols provide reliable message delivery; there are no
   application-layer message delivery assurance provisions in this
   specification.

3.2.  Identification of PRESENTITIES and WATCHERS

   A PRESENTITY is specified using the PRES URI scheme, which is further
   described in Appendix A.  An example would be:
   "pres:fred@example.com"

   WATCHERs identify themselves in the same manner as PRESENTITIES; that
   is, with a pres URI.

3.2.1.  Address Resolution

   A presence service client determines the next hop to forward an
   operation to by resolving the domain name portion of the service
   destination.  Compliant implementations SHOULD follow the guidelines
   for dereferencing URIs given in [2].

3.3.  Format of Presence Information

   This specification defines an abstract interoperability mechanism for
   presence protocols; the message content definition given here
   pertains to semantics rather than syntax.  However, some important
   properties for interoperability can only be provided if a common
   end-to-end format for presence is employed by the interoperating
   presence protocols, especially with respect to security.  In order to
   maintain end-to-end security properties, applications that send
   notification operations through a CPP gateway MUST support the format
   defined in PIDF [4].  Applications MAY support other content formats.

   CPP gateways MUST be capable of relaying the body of a notification
   operation between supported presence protocols without needing to
   modify or inspect the content.

3.4.  The Presence Service

   An implementation of the service must maintain information about both
   presence information and continual operations (like periodic
   notification) in persistent storage.

   Note that the subscription-identifier attribute used by the subscribe
   operation is potentially long-lived.  Accordingly, the values
   generated for this parameter should be unique across a significant
   duration of time.  The SubscriptID parameter should be intrinsically
   globally unique over time, not merely unique among operations sent to
   or from a particular WATCHER and PRESENTITY.

3.4.1.  The Subscribe Operation

   When an application wants to subscribe to the presence information
   associated with a PRESENTITY, it invokes the subscribe operation.

   When the service is informed of the subscribe operation, it performs
   these steps:

   1.  If the watcher or target parameter does not refer to a valid
       PRESENTITY, a response operation having status "failure" is
       invoked.

   2.  If access control does not permit the application to request this
       operation, a response operation having status "failure" is
       invoked.

   3.  If the duration parameter is non-zero, and if the watcher and
       target parameters refer to an in-progress subscribe operation for
       the application, a response operation having status "failure" is
       invoked.

   4.  Otherwise, if the service is able to successfully deliver the
       message:

         A response operation having status "success" is immediately
         invoked.  (If the service chooses a different duration for the
         subscription then it conveys this information in the response
         operation.)

         A notify operation, corresponding to the target's presence
         information, is immediately invoked for the watcher.

         For up to the amount of time indicated by the duration
         parameter of the notify operation (measured from the time that
         the subscribe operation was received), if the target's presence
         information changes, and if access control allows, a notify
         operation is invoked for the watcher.

   Note that if the duration parameter is zero-valued, then the
   subscribe operation is making a one-time poll of the presence
   information.  Accordingly, the final step above (continued
   notifications for the duration of the subscription) does not occur.

   When the service invokes a response operation as a result of this
   processing, the transID parameter is identical to the value found in
   the subscribe operation invoked by the application.

3.4.2.  The Notify Operation

   The service invokes the notify operation whenever the presence
   information associated with a PRESENTITY changes and there are
   subscribers requesting notifications for that PRESENTITY.

   There is no application response to the notify operation.

3.4.3.  Subscribe Operation (with Zero Duration)

   When an application wants to terminate a subscription, it issues a
   SUBSCRIBE 0 with the SubscriptID of an existing subscription.  Note
   that a notify operation will be invoked by the presentity when a
   subscription is canceled in this fashion; this notification can be
   discarded by the watcher.  There is no independent UNSUBSCRIBE
   operation.

   When an application wants to directly request presence information to
   be supplied immediately without initiating any persistent
   subscription, it issues a SUBSCRIBE 0 with a new SubscriptID.  There
   is no independent FETCH operation.

4.  Security Considerations

   Detailed security considerations for presence protocols given in RFC
   2779 [6] (in particular, requirements are given in sections 5.1
   through 5.3 with some motivating discussion in 8.2).

   CPP defines an interoperability function that is employed by gateways
   between presence protocols.  CPP gateways MUST be compliant with the
   minimum security requirements of the presence protocols with which
   they interface.

   The introduction of gateways to the security model of presence in RFC
   2779 also introduces some new risks.  End-to-end security properties
   (especially confidentiality and integrity) between presentities and
   watchers that interface through a CPP gateway can only be provided if
   a common presence format (such as the format described in [4]) is
   supported by the protocols interfacing with the CPP gateway.

   When end-to-end security is required, the notify operation MUST use
   PIDF, and MUST secure the PIDF MIME body with S/MIME [8], with
   encryption (CMS EnvelopeData) and/or S/MIME signatures (CMS
   SignedData).

   The S/MIME algorithms are set by CMS [9].  The AES [11] algorithm
   should be preferred, as it is expected that AES best suits the
   capabilities of many platforms.  Implementations MAY use AES as an
   encryption algorithm, but are REQUIRED to support only the baseline
   algorithms mandated by S/MIME and CMS.

   When PRES URIs are used in presence protocols, they convey the
   identity of watchers and/or presentities.  Certificates that are used
   for S/MIME presence operations SHOULD, for the purposes of reference
   integrity, contain a subjectAltName field containing the PRES URI of
   their subject.  Note that such certificates may also contain other
   identifiers, including those specific to particular presence
   protocols.  In order to further facilitate interoperability of secure
   presence services through CPP gateways, users and service providers
   are encouraged to employ trust anchors for certificates that are
   widely accepted rather than trust anchors specific to any particular
   presence service or provider.

   In some cases, anonymous presence services may be desired.  Such a
   capability is beyond the scope of this specification.

5.  IANA Considerations

   The IANA has assigned the "pres" URI scheme.

5.1.  The PRES URI Scheme

   The Presence (PRES) URI scheme designates an Internet resource,
   namely a PRESENTITY or WATCHER.

   The syntax of a PRES URI is given in Appendix A.

6.  Contributors

   Dave Crocker edited earlier versions of this document.

   The following individuals made substantial textual contributions to
   this document:

      Athanassios Diacakis (thanos.diacakis@openwave.com)

      Florencio Mazzoldi (flo@networkprojects.com)

      Christian Huitema (huitema@microsoft.com)

      Graham Klyne (gk@ninebynine.org)

      Jonathan Rosenberg (jdrosen@dynamicsoft.com)

      Robert Sparks (rsparks@dynamicsoft.com)

      Hiroyasu Sugano (suga@flab.fujitsu.co.jp)

7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

   [1]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to indicate requirement
        levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [2]  Peterson, J., "Address Resolution for Instant Messaging and
        Presence", RFC 3861, August 2004.

   [3]  Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", STD 11, RFC 2822, April
        2001.

   [4]  Sugano, H., Fujimoto, S., Klyne, G., Bateman, A., Carr, W., and
        J. Peterson, "Presence Information Data Format (PIDF)", RFC
        3863, August 2004.

   [5]  Day, M., Rosenberg, J., and H. Sugano, "A Model for Presence and
        Instant Messaging", RFC 2778, February 2000.

   [6]  Day, M., Aggarwal, S., and J. Vincent, "Instant Messaging /
        Presence Protocol Requirements", RFC 2779, February 2000.

   [7]  Allocchio, C., "GSTN Address Element Extensions in Email
        Services", RFC 2846, June 2000.

   [8]  Ramsdell, B., "Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
        (S/MIME) Version 3.1 Message Specification", RFC 3851, July
        2004.

   [9]  Housley, R., "Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS)", RFC 3852,
        July 2004.

   [10] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
        Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August
        1998.

7.2.  Informative References

   [11] Schaad, J., "Use of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
        Encryption Algorithm and in Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS)",
        RFC 3565, July 2003.

Appendix A.  PRES URI IANA Registration Template

   This section provides the information to register the pres: presence
   URI .

A.1.  URI Scheme Name

   pres

A.2.  URI Scheme Syntax

   The syntax follows the existing mailto: URI syntax specified in RFC
   2368.  The ABNF is:

   PRES-URI         = "pres:" [ to ] [ headers ]
   to             =  mailbox
   headers        =  "?" header *( "&" header )
   header         =  hname "=" hvalue
   hname          =  *uric
   hvalue         =  *uric

   Here the symbol "mailbox" represents an encoded mailbox name as
   defined in RFC 2822 [3], and the symbol "uric" denotes any character
   that is valid in a URL (defined in RFC 2396 [10]).

A.3.  Character Encoding Considerations

   Representation of non-ASCII character sets in local-part strings is
   limited to the standard methods provided as extensions to RFC 2822
   [3].

A.4.  Intended Usage

   Use of the pres: URI follows closely usage of the mailto: URI.  That
   is, invocation of an PRES URI will cause the user's instant messaging
   application to start, with destination address and message headers
   fill-in according to the information supplied in the URI.

A.5.  Applications and/or Protocols which use this URI Scheme Name

   It is anticipated that protocols compliant with RFC 2779, and meeting
   the interoperability requirements specified here, will make use of
   this URI scheme name.

A.6.  Interoperability Considerations

   The underlying exchange protocol used to send an instant message may
   vary from service to service.  Therefore complete, Internet-scale
   interoperability cannot be guaranteed.  However, a service conforming
   to this specification permits gateways to achieve interoperability
   sufficient to the requirements of RFC 2779.

A.7.  Security Considerations

   See Section 4.

A.8.  Relevant Publications

   RFC 2779, RFC 2778

A.9.  Person & Email Address to Contact for Further Information

   Jon Peterson [mailto:jon.peterson@neustar.biz]

A.10.  Author/Change Controller

   This scheme is registered under the IETF tree.  As such, IETF
   maintains change control.

A.11.  Applications and/or Protocols which use this URI Scheme Name

   Instant messaging service; presence service

Appendix B.  Issues of Interest

   This appendix briefly discusses issues that may be of interest when
   designing an interoperation gateway.

B.1.  Address Mapping

   When mapping the service described in this memo, mappings that place
   special information into the im: address local-part MUST use the
   meta-syntax defined in RFC2846 [7].

B.2.  Source-Route Mapping

   The easiest mapping technique is a form of source-routing and usually
   is the least friendly to humans having to type the string.  Source-
   routing also has a history of operational problems.

   Use of source-routing for exchanges between different services is by
   a transformation that places the entire, original address string into
   the im: address local part and names the gateway in the domain part.

   For example, if the destination INSTANT INBOX is "pepp://example.com/
   fred", then, after performing the necessary character conversions,
   the resulting mapping is:

             im:pepp=example.com/fred@relay-domain

   where "relay-domain" is derived from local configuration information.

   Experience shows that it is vastly preferable to hide this mapping
   from end-users - if possible, the underlying software should perform
   the mapping automatically.

Appendix C.  Acknowledgments

   The author would like to acknowledge John Ramsdell for his comments,
   suggestions and enthusiasm.  Thanks to Derek Atkins for editorial
   fixes.

Author's Address

   Jon Peterson
   NeuStar, Inc.
   1800 Sutter St
   Suite 570
   Concord, CA  94520
   US

   Phone: +1 925/363-8720
   EMail: jon.peterson@neustar.biz

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