WG Review: Web-Based Push Notifications (webpush)

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Real-time Applications
and Infrastructure Area. The IESG has not made any determination yet. The
following draft charter was submitted, and is provided for informational
purposes only. Please send your comments to the IESG mailing list (iesg
at ietf.org) by 2014-10-01.

Web-Based Push Notifications (webpush)
------------------------------------------------
Current Status: Proposed WG

Assigned Area Director:
  Alissa Cooper <alissa@cooperw.in>

Mailing list
  Address: webpush@ietf.org
  To Subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/webpush
  Archive:
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/webpush/current/maillist.html

Charter:

Many applications require continuous access to network communications so
that real-time events - such as incoming calls or messages - can be
conveyed ("pushed") to the user in a timely fashion. Uncoordinated use 
of the network by multiple applications can contribute to unnecessary 
use of the network on devices.  For instance, maintaining sessions can 
dominate costs over the long term, since pushed events are relatively 
rare.  This is particularly onerous for battery-powered devices, on 
which network communication contributes a significant proportion of 
power usage.  Each independent session independently incurs overheads, 
causing unnecessary resource usage on devices.

Several modern computing platforms provide a push notification service
that consolidates application events, distributing those events to
applications as they arrive.  The single session avoids duplicated 
overhead costs on devices.

This working group will develop a protocol that applications can use to
request the delivery of data to a device using a consolidated push 
notification service. This protocol will include the ability to push the 
same message to multiple subscribed devices.  The work may describe a 
protocol that allows a device to subscribe to a push service and receive 
pushed messages.

This work will be done in collaboration with the W3C Webapps Working
Group, who are developing a Web Push API for use in web applications 
(see <http://www.w3.org/TR/push-api/>).

Milestones:
  Nov 2015 - Send web push protocol draft to the IESG as Proposed
Standard