Re: [MMUSIC] WGLC for draft-ietf-mmusic-data-channel-sdpneg

[Christian Groves <[e-mail]>]

Hello Paul,

How about an update to draft-ietf-mmusic-rfc4566bis clause 5.14 (or 
8.2.2)? This is the document that defines the PROTO field in the first 
place.

Regards, Christian

On 26/02/2016 8:38 AM, Paul Kyzivat wrote:
> On 2/24/16 7:24 PM, Christian Groves wrote:
>> Hello Juergen and Paul,
>>
>> Please see at end.
>>
>> Regards, Christian
>>
>> On 24/02/2016 8:26 AM, Paul Kyzivat wrote:
>>> ..snip..
>>>>
>>>> On 19.02.2016 17:42, EXT Paul Kyzivat wrote:
>>>>> On 2/17/16 8:12 AM, Juergen Stoetzer-Bradler wrote:
>>>>>> Hi Paul, Christian, Flemming, Bo,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Have just submitted version 08 of
>>>>>> draft-ietf-mmusic-data-channel-sdpneg.
>>>>>> The changes compared to version 07 are essentially as follows.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *   Two new paragraphs in section 5.1.2.1 (dcsa Attribute)
>>>>>> regarding the
>>>>>> relationship of subprotocols and their attributes.
>>>>>> *   Two new SDP offer/answer considerations in section 5.2.5 
>>>>>> (Various
>>>>>> SDP Offer/Answer Scenarios and Considerations) regarding unknown
>>>>>> subprotocol attributes or known subprotocol attributes, whose data
>>>>>> channel transport specific semantic is not known.
>>>>>> *   A new paragraph in section 8.1 (IANA Considerations / 
>>>>>> Subprotocol
>>>>>> Identifiers) related to cases, where a subprotocol is defined for 
>>>>>> data
>>>>>> channel and Websocket transport.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> These changes should address the points discussed in this email
>>>>>> thread.
>>>>>
>>>>> This is an improvement. But I think things could still be made 
>>>>> clearer.
>>>>>
>>>>> Consider the following addition to 5.1.2.1:
>>>>>
>>>>>    It is assumed that in general the usages of subprotocol related
>>>>> media
>>>>>    level attributes are independent from the subprotocol's transport
>>>>>    protocol.  Such transport protocol independent subprotocol related
>>>>>    attributes are used in the same way as defined in the original
>>>>>    subprotocol specification, also if the subprotocol is transported
>>>>>    over a data channel and if the attribute is correspondingly 
>>>>> embedded
>>>>>    in a "a=dcsa" attribute.
>>>>>
>>>>>    There may be cases, where the usage of a subprotocol related media
>>>>>    level attribute depends on the subprotocol's transport 
>>>>> protocol.  In
>>>>>    such cases the subprotocol related usage of the attribute is
>>>>> expected
>>>>>    to be described for the data channel transport.  A data channel
>>>>>    specific usage of a subprotocol attribute is expected to be
>>>>> specified
>>>>>    in the same document, which registers the subprotocol's identifier
>>>>>    for data channel usage as described in Section 8.1.
>>>>>
>>>>> This text makes sense when there is a clear distinction between
>>>>> subprotocol and protocol. Unfortunately, the way SDP has evolved 
>>>>> there
>>>>> is no such clear distinction in many cases, such as RTP over UDP or
>>>>> TCP, etc. Those are combined into a single protocol value. While that
>>>>> can usually be parsed apart at slashes, there isn't good terminology
>>>>> for it.
>>>>>
>>>>> My point is that when I read the above, I don't know how it applies
>>>>> to, say, RTP attributes. Or does it only apply for attributes that 
>>>>> are
>>>>> clearly defined for a *sub*protocol?
>>>>>
>>>>> I think this is primarily that we lack well defined vocabulary for 
>>>>> all
>>>>> of this. But I think it would be too much to expect this draft to
>>>>> *solve* the vocabulary problem. In lieu of doing so, maybe it 
>>>>> would be
>>>>> sufficient to give some concrete examples, even if they have to be
>>>>> hypothetical ones.
>>>>
>>>> [Juergen] Agree that it would be helpful to have more precise
>>>> definitions of the differences of the terms protocol and subprotocol,
>>>> especially when those terms are used outside the scope of data 
>>>> channels
>>>> (or Websockets). When only focusing on data channels the notion of a
>>>> "subprotocol" seems to be clearer - at least
>>>> draft-ietf-rtcweb-data-protocol explicitly refers to the "WebSocket
>>>> Subprotocol Name Registry" when specifying DCEP's "Protocol" 
>>>> parameter.
>>>> (But draft-ietf-rtcweb-data-channel does not define what a data
>>>> channel's "subprotocol" is.) So far the sdpneg draft relatively
>>>> informally starts using the term "subprotocol" in the introduction and
>>>> there refers to Websocket "subprotocols". Perhaps we should add the 
>>>> term
>>>> "subprotocol" to the list of used terminology in section 3.
>>>>
>>>> The sdpneg document, together with the data channel subprotocol 
>>>> specific
>>>> document (which defines the value of the a=dcmap attribute's
>>>> "subprotocol" parameter), should certainly give clear guidance on 
>>>> how to
>>>> interpret SDP offers or answers like e.g.:
>>>>
>>>>       m=application 10001 UDP/DTLS/SCTP webrtc-datachannel
>>>>       c=IN IP4 10.10.10.1
>>>>       a=max-message-size:100000
>>>>       a=sctp-port:5000
>>>>       ...
>>>>       a=dcmap:0 subprotocol="MSRP"
>>>>       a=dcsa:0 accept-types:message/cpim text/plain
>>>>       a=dcsa:0 framerate:...
>>>>       a=dcsa:0 lang:...
>>>>
>>>> An implementation receiving such an offer would need to decide what to
>>>> do with the dcsa embedded framerate and lang attributes. Or, someone
>>>> implementing MSRP over data channel based services may need to decide
>>>> whether or not to use these attributes, and if yes, how.
>>>> (I am using these two attributes just as hypothetical examples - don't
>>>> want to suggest that those may indeed be used for MSRP over data 
>>>> channel
>>>> transport).
>>>>
>>>> The msrp-usage-data-channel document doesn't mention these two
>>>> attributes. When looking at the IANA SDP attribute registry tables, I
>>>> would find both attributes specified in RFC 4566. There, 
>>>> "framerate" is
>>>> explicitly said to be defined only "for video media". Just to be 
>>>> sure I
>>>> could additionally have a look at the MSRP specifying documents, RFC
>>>> 4975 and RFC 4976, but there would not find any text at all related to
>>>> "framerate". So this case seems pretty clear and I would therefore
>>>> conclude that the "framerate" attribute should not be used for 
>>>> MSRP, and
>>>> that a receiver of such an offer or answer should ignore it.
>>>>
>>>> When looking at the definition of the "lang" attribute in RFC 4566 I
>>>> would not see any explicit hint of what protocols this attribute might
>>>> be used with, especially if "lang" could be used when negotiating an
>>>> MSRP session. When then looking at RFC 4975 I would indeed find 
>>>> "lang" -
>>>> but not as SDP attribute, rather as XML tag parameter within an 
>>>> example
>>>> MSRP message payload. Thus, the case of the "lang" attribute might not
>>>> be as unambiguous as the one with the "framerate" attribute, but here
>>>> too I think the typical choice would be to ignore that attribute when
>>>> receiving such an offer or answer.
>>>> It seems to me that the two new "ignore" rules in section 5.2.5 of
>>>> sdpneg-08 may also be applied in these cases.
>>>>
>>>> Admittedly, these examples may seem a bit far-fetched, but would those
>>>> go into the direction you had in mind?
>>>
>>> Yes. Note that using examples is just me grasping at straws, since a
>>> real solution looks like to big a problem for this draft to tackle by
>>> itself. I am entirely open to other ideas for how to deal with this.
>> [CNG] I don't see what the example buys? I don't see that the behaviour
>> is any different between using additional attributes in the datachannel
>> vs. the non data channel case. E.g. for
>>
>>      c=IN IP4 10.10.10.1
>>      m=message 7394 TCP/MSRP *
>>      a=accept-types:message/cpim text/plain text/html
>>      a=lang:....
>>      a=framerate:...
>> The ignore behaviour would be the same.
>> In the above example the attributes are scoped by the m= line. In the
>> data channel case the attributes are scoped by the relevant a=dcmap: 
>> line.
>
> My concern is that SDP has no notion of subprotocol, even though in 
> practice it shows up lots of places. It only has a notion of the 
> protocol field in the m-line. Beyond that a *convention* has developed 
> to denote a layering within the protocol through use of "/". AFAIK 
> this isn't formally written down anywhere.
>
> So, in principle we could define an RTP sub-protocol for use over a 
> data channel. And then we could talk about using the attributes that 
> apply to RTP in dcsa for a channel using RTP. But note there is no 
> formal definition of the *protocol*s where RTP attributes are relevant.
>
> A lot of the very old stuff was just sloppy. To be fair, it was 
> probably good enough for the cases in front of them at the time, and 
> they weren't yet in a position to foresee how things would evolve. It 
> is just another example of how old stuff rots and has to be refreshed 
> from time to time.
>
> But I don't think *this* draft is the place to fix it. So, in lieu of 
> doing that I'm just looking for some way to clarify things.
>
>     Thanks,
>     Paul
>
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