[dispatch] VIPR - proposed charter version 2

[Cullen Jennings <[e-mail]>]

Thanks for all the comments on the list. Here is a revised version:

(PS. If anyone else wants to edit, this is in SVN and glad to get anyone write permission)

========================================

ViPR Charter Proposal (Version 2)

WG Name:  Verification Involving PSTN Reachability (VIPR)

There are two globally deployed address spaces for communications that
more than a billion people use on a daily basis. They are phone numbers
and DNS rooted address such as web servers and email addresses. The
inter-domain signaling design of SIP is primarily designed for email
style addresses yet a large percentage of SIP deployments mostly use
phone numbers for identifying users. The goal of this working group is
to enable inter-domains communications over the the internet, using
protocol such as SIP, while still allowing people to use phone numbers
to identify the person they wish to communicate with.

The VIPR WG will address this problem by developing a peer to peer based
approach to finding domains that claim to be responsible for a given
phone number and validation protocols to ensure a reasonable likelihood
that a given domain actually is responsible for the phone number. In
this context, we use "responsible" to mean an administrative domain
would would be at least one of the administrative domains that a PSTN
call to this phone number would be routed to. Once the domain
responsible for the phone number is found, existing protocols such as
SIP and XMPP can be used for inter-domain communications.

Some validation protocols may be based on knowledge gathered around a
SIP call, for example, the ability to prove a call was received over the
PSTN based on start and stop times. Other validation schemes, such as
examining fingerprints or watermarking of PSTN media, to show that a
domain received a particular PSTN phone call may also be considered by
the working group. The WG will select and standardize at least one
validation scheme.

To help mitigate SPAM issues when using SIP between domains, the WG will
define a mechanisms to enable one domain to check that incoming SIP
messages from a different domain are coming from a domain that
successfully validated a phone number. The working group will define new
SIP headers and option tags to enable this.

The essential characteristic of ViPR is establishing authentication by
PSTN reachability when it is not possible to use a direct reference to
ENUM databases or other direct assertions of PSTN number
ownership. Elements such as public ENUM easily coexist with VIPR but no
direct interaction with ENUM will be required.

The problem statement and some possible starting points for solutions
are further discussed in the following internet drafts which shall form
the bases of the WG documents:

draft-rosenberg-dispatch-vipr-overview
draft-rosenberg-dispatch-vipr-reload-usage
draft-rosenberg-dispatch-vipr-pvp
draft-rosenberg-dispatch-vipr-sip-antispam

The working group will carefully coordinate with the security area, O&M
area, as well as the appropriate RAI WG including sipcore and p2psip.