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Jingle ICE-UDP Transport Method This specification defines a Jingle transport method that results in sending media data using raw datagram sockets via the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). This transport method is negotiated via the Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) methodology defined by the IETF and thus provides robust NAT traversal for media traffic. &LEGALNOTICE; 0176 Proposed Standards Track Standards Council XMPP Core XEP-0166 NOT_YET_ASSIGNED &joebeda; &scottlu; &stpeter; &hildjj; &seanegan; 0.19 2008-06-04 psa

Allowed batching of multiple candidates in a single transport-info action for optional interworking with the SDP offer-answer model, and added urn:ietf:rfc:3264 service discovery feature to advertise such support; updated security considerations regarding sharing of IP addresses.

0.18 2008-05-28 psa

Removed content-replace action from acceptance flow, since in ICE that information is sent via STUN, not in the signalling channel.

0.17 2008-03-20 psa

Moved pwd and ufrag attributes from candidate element to transport element since they describe session-level or media-level information.

0.16 2008-02-29 psa

Changed content-modify to content-replace per XEP-0166.

0.15 2008-01-06 psa

Clarified several small points regarding candidate gathering procedures and STUN connectivity checks.

0.14 2008-01-02 psa

Modified flow for ICE completion to require content-modify from initiator to responder, thus mapping to sending of revised offer in SIP; added rem-addr and rem-port attributes to map to a=remote-candidates information in SDP; changed raddr and rport attributes to rel-addr and rel-port to prevent confusion with rem-addr and rem-port attributes.

0.13 2007-12-28 psa

Added further details about connectivity checks; defined raddr and rport attributes for complete mapping to SDP.

0.12 2007-11-28 psa

Moved ice-tcp definition to a separate specification.

0.11 2007-11-27 psa

Further editorial review; also added sections on modification of existing candidates and exchange of subsequent candidates.

0.10 2007-11-15 psa

Editorial review and consistency check.

0.9 2007-06-28 psa

Updated to track ICE-16.

0.8 2007-04-17 psa

Separately defined ice-tcp and ice-udp transport methods to enable clearer definition of transport methods and reuse by application types; specified Jingle conformance, including definition of ice-udp as lossy and ice-tcp as reliable.

0.7 2007-03-23 psa

Updated to track ICE-14 and ICE-TCP-03; moved text on discovery of STUN servers to separate specification.

0.6 2006-12-21 psa

Modified spec to use provisional namespace before advancement to Draft (per XEP-0053).

0.5 2006-10-31 psa

Updated to track ICE-12; corrected service discovery process; completed editorial review; removed mention of DTMF, which is for audio only.

0.4 2006-09-13 psa

Updated to track ICE-10; added section on service discovery.

0.3 2006-07-12 se/psa

Specified that DTMF must use in-band signalling (XEP-0181).

0.2 2006-03-24 psa

Recommended use of RTP-native methods for DTMF.

0.1 2006-03-01 psa/jb

Initial version (split from XEP-0166).

&xep0166; defines a framework for negotiating and managing out-of-band data sessions over XMPP. In order to provide a flexible framework, the base Jingle specification defines neither data transport methods nor application formats, leaving that up to separate specifications.

The current document defines a transport method for establishing and managing data exchanges between XMPP entities over the User Datagram Protocol (see &rfc0768;), using the ICE methodology developed within the IETF and specified in &ice; (hereafter referred to as &icecore;). Use of the ice-udp method results in a lossy transport suitable for media applications where some packet loss is tolerable (e.g., audio and video).

Note: &icecore; has been approved for publication as an RFC but has not yet been published as an RFC. While every effort has been made to keep this document synchronized with &icecore;, the interested reader is referred to &icecore; for a detailed description of the ICE methodology.

The process for ICE negotiation is largely the same in Jingle as it is in ICE. There are several differences:

The reader is referred to &icecore; for a description of various terms used in the context of ICE. Those terms are not reproduced here.

The Jingle transport method defined herein are designed to meet the following requirements:

  1. Make it possible to establish and manage out-of-band connections between two XMPP entities, even if they are behind Network Address Translators (NATs) or firewalls.
  2. Enable use of UDP as the transport protocol itself.
  3. Make it relatively easy to implement support in standard Jabber/XMPP clients.
  4. Where communication with non-XMPP entities is needed, push as much complexity as possible onto server-side gateways between the XMPP network and the non-XMPP network.

In accordance with Section 8 of XEP-0166, this document specifies the following information related to the Jingle ice-udp transport method:

  1. The transport negotiation process is defined in the Protocol Description section of this document.

  2. The semantics of the &TRANSPORT; element are defined in the ICE Negotiation section of this document.

  3. Successful negotiation of the ice-udp method results in use of a lossy transport that is suitable for applications where some packet loss is tolerable, such as audio and video.

  4. If multiple components are to be communicated over the transport in the context of the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP; see &rfc3550;), the component numbered "1" shall be associated with RTP and the component numbered "2" shall be associated with the Real Time Control Protocol (RTCP).

The overall protocol flow for negotiation of the Jingle ICE-UDP Transport Method is as follows (note: many of these events happen simultaneously, not in sequence). The examples follow the scenario described in Section 17 of &icecore;, except that we substitute the Shakespearean characters "Romeo" and "Juliet" for the generic entities "L" and "R".

| | Jingle ack (XMPP IQ-result) | |<-----------------------------------| | Jingle transport-info (candidate) | |----------------------------------->| | Jingle ack (XMPP IQ-result) | |<-----------------------------------| | Jingle transport-info (candidate) | |----------------------------------->| | Jingle ack (XMPP IQ-result) | |<-----------------------------------| | Jingle transport-info (candidate) | |<-----------------------------------| | Jingle ack (XMPP IQ-result) | |----------------------------------->| | STUN Binding Request | | (dropped) | | x---------------------------------| | STUN Binding Request | |----------------------------------->| | STUN Binding Result | |<-----------------------------------| | STUN Binding Request | |<-----------------------------------| | STUN Binding Result | |----------------------------------->| | Jingle session-accept | |<-----------------------------------| | Jingle ack (XMPP IQ-result) | |----------------------------------->| | | ]]>

In order for the initiator in a Jingle exchange to start the negotiation, it MUST send a Jingle "session-initiate" stanza as described in XEP-0166. A content type MUST include one transport method. If the initiator wishes to negotiate the ice-udp transport method for an application format, it MUST include an empty &TRANSPORT; child element qualified by the 'urn:xmpp:tmp:jingle:transports:ice-udp' namespace &NSNOTE;.

[ ... ] ]]>

The 'pwd' and 'ufrag' attributes MUST be included in the session-initate request, in subsequent content-add and content-replace actions, and when offering candidates via the transport-info action. The attributes SHOULD NOT be included in a session-accept action. The values are separately generated for both the initiator and the responder, in accordance with &icecore; and as shown in the examples. The attributes are defined as follows.

Name Description SDP Syntax Example
pwd A Password as defined in &icecore;. a=ice-pwd line asd88fgpdd777uzjYhagZg
ufrag A User Fragment as defined in &icecore;. a=ice-ufrag line 8hhy

As described in XEP-0166, to acknowledge receipt of the session initiation request, the responder returns an IQ-result:

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Once the responder acknowledges receipt of the session initiation request as shown above, both initiator and responder MUST immediately negotiate connectivity over the ICE transport by exchanging XML-formatted candidate transports for the channel. This negotiation proceeds immediately in order to maximize the possibility that media can be exchanged as quickly as possible. Concurrent with negotiation of the ICE candidates, it is possible for the initiator and responder to negotiate which content types the session will include, which transport methods will be tried for each content type, etc. Those negotiation flows are shown in other specifications, such as XEP-0166. This document specifies only negotiation of the ICE transport method.

Note: In order to expedite session establishment, the initiator MAY send transport candidates immediately after sending the "session-initiate" message and before receiving acknowledgement from the responder (i.e., the initiator MUST consider the session to be live even before receiving acknowledgement). Given in-order delivery, the responder should receive such "transport-info" messages after receiving the "session-initiate" message; if not, it is appropriate for the responder to return <unknown-session/> errors since according to its state machine the session does not exist. If either party receives an <unknown-session/> from the other party, it MUST terminate the negotiation and the session.

Note: See the Security Considerations section of this document regarding the exposure of IP addresses on behalf by the responder's client.

The candidate syntax and negotiation flow are described below.

The following is an example of the candidate format:

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The attributes of the <candidate/> element are described in the following table:

Name Description SDP Syntax Example
component A Component ID as defined in &icecore;. Component ID value in a=candidate line 1
foundation A Foundation as defined in &icecore;. Foundation value in a=candidate line 1
generation An index, starting at 0, that enables the parties to keep track of updates to the candidate throughout the life of the session. N/A 0
ip The Internet Protocol (IP) address for the candidate transport mechanism; this may be either an IPv4 address or an IPv6 address. IP Address value in a=candidate line 192.0.2.3
network An index, starting at 0, referencing which network this candidate is on for a given peer (used for diagnostic purposes if the calling hardware has more than one Network Interface Card). N/A 0
port The port at the candidate IP address. Port value in a=candidate line 45664
priority A Priority as defined in &icecore; In accordance with the rules specified in Section 4.1.1 of &icecore;, the priority values shown in the examples within this document have been calculated as follows. The "type preference" for host candidates is stipulated to be "126" and for server reflexive candidates "100". The "local preference" for network 0 is stipulated to be "4096", for network 1 "2048", and for network 2 "1024". Priority value in a=candidate line 2130706431
protocol The protocol to be used. The only allowable value is "udp". Transport protocol field in a=candidate line udp
rel-addr A related address as defined in &icecore;. raddr value in a=candidate line 10.0.1.1
rel-port A related port as defined in &icecore;. rport value in a=candidate line 8998
rem-addr A IP address for a remote address as defined in &icecore;. connection-address value in a=remote-candidates line 192.0.2.1
rem-port The port for a remote address as defined in &icecore;. port value in a=remote-candidates line 3478
type A Candidate Type as defined in &icecore;. The allowable values are "host" for host candidates, "prflx" for peer reflexive candidates, "relay" for relayed candidates, and "srflx" for server reflexive candidates. Typ field in a=candidate line srflx

The first step in negotiating connectivity is for each party to immediately begin sending transport candidates to the other party. The fact that both parties send candidates means that Jingle requires each party to be a full implementation of ICE, not a lite implementation as specified in &icecore;. These candidates SHOULD be gathered by following the procedure specified in Section 4.1.1 of &icecore; (typically by communicating with a stanadlone STUN server in order to discover the client's public IP address and port) and prioritized by following the procedure specified in Section 4.1.2 of &icecore;.

Each candidate or set of candidates shall be sent as <candidate/> children of a &TRANSPORT; element qualified by the 'urn:xmpp:tmp:jingle:transports:ice-udp' namespace. The &TRANSPORT; element shall be sent via a Jingle action of "transport-info" as shown in the examples below.

Either party MAY include multiple <candidate/> elements in one &TRANSPORT; element. Sending one candidate per transport-info action typically results in a faster negotiation because the candidates most likely to succeed are sent first and it is not necessary to gather all candidates before beginning to send any candidates. Furthermore, because certain candidates may be more "expensive" in terms of bandwidth or processing power, the initiator may not want to advertise their existence unless it is necessary to do so after other candidates have failed.) However, sending multiple candidates in a single "transport-info" action can help to ensure interoperability with entities that implement the SDP offer/answer model described in RFC 3264. An entity SHOULD send one candidate per "transport-info" action and send multiple such actions, instead of sending multiple candidates in a single "transport-info" action; the only exception is if the other party advertises support for the "urn:ietf:rfc:3264" service discovery feature.

If the responder receives and can successfully process a given candidate or set of candidates, it returns an IQ-result (if not, for example because the candidate data is improperly formatted, it returns an error). Note: The responder is only indicating receipt of the candidate or set of candidates, not telling the initiator that the candidate will be used.

The initiator keeps sending candidates (without stopping to receive an acknowledgement of receipt from the responder for each candidate) until it has exhausted its supply of possible or desirable candidate transports. For each candidate or set of candidates, the responder acknowledges receipt.

At the same time (i.e., immediately after acknowledging receipt of the session-initiate request, not waiting for the initiator to begin or finish sending candidates), the responder also begins sending potential candidates, in order of desirability according to the responder. As above, the initiator acknowledges receipt of the candidates.

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For each candidate received, the other party (in this case the responder) MUST acknowledge receipt or return an error.

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At the same time (i.e., immediately after acknowledging the session-initation request, not waiting for the initiator to begin or finish sending candidates), the responder also sends candidates that may work for it.

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As above for the candidates sent by the responder, here the initiator acknowledges receipt of the candidates sent by the responder.

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As the initiator and responder receive candidates, they probe the various candidate transports for connectivity. In performing these connectivity checks, each party SHOULD follow the procedure specified in Section 7 of &icecore;. The following business rules apply:

  1. Each party sends a STUN Binding Request (see &rfc3489bis;) from each local candidate it generated to each remote candidate it received.
  2. In accordance with &icecore;, the STUN Binding Request MUST include the PRIORITY attribute (computed according to Section 7.1.1.1. of &icecore;).
  3. For the purposes of the Jingle ICE-UDP Transport Method, both parties are full ICE implementations and therefore the controlling role MUST be assumed by the initiator and the controlled role MUST be assumed by the responder.
  4. The STUN Binding Requests generated by the initiator MAY include the USE-CANDIDATE attribute to indicate that the initiator wishes to cease checks for this component.
  5. The STUN Binding Requests generated by the initiator MUST include the ICE-CONTROLLING attribute.
  6. The STUN Binding Requests generated by the responder MUST include the ICE-CONTROLLED attribute.
  7. The parties MUST use STUN short term credentials to authenticate requests and perform message integrity checks. As in &icecore;, the username in the STUN Binding Request is of the form "ufrag-of-sender:ufrag-of-peer" and the password is the value of the 'pwd' attribute provided by the peer. Thus when Romeo sends a STUN Binding Request to Juliet the credentials will be STUN username "8hhy:9uB6" and password "YH75Fviy6338Vbrhrlp8Yh" whereas when Juliet sends a STUN Binding Request to Romeo the credentials will be STUN username "9uB6:8hhy" and password "asd88fgpdd777uzjYhagZg".

When it receives a STUN Binding Request, each party MUST return a STUN Binding Response, which may indicate either an error case or the success case. As described in Section 7.1.2.2 of &icecore;, a connectivity check succeeds if the STUN transaction generated a success response, the source IP address and port of the response equals the destination IP address and port that the Binding Request was sent to, and the destination IP address and port of the response match the source IP address and port that the Binding Request was sent from.

For the candidates exchanged in the previous section, the connectivity checks would be as follows. In particular, the parties send one STUN Binding Request from each of their local candidates to each of the remote candidates.

| | | | STUN Binding Request | | | from 192.0.2.3:45664 | | | to 192.0.2.1:3478 | | | USE-CANDIDATE | | |---------------------->| | | STUN Binding Response | | | from 192.0.2.1:3478 | | | to 192.0.2.3:45664 | | |<----------------------| | STUN Binding Response | | | from 192.0.2.1:3478 | | | to 10.0.1.1:8998 | | | map 192.0.2.3:45664 | | |<----------------------| | |================RTP now can flow==============>| | | STUN Binding Request | | | from 192.0.2.1:3478 | | | to 192.0.2.3:45664 | | |<----------------------| | STUN Binding Request | | | from 192.0.2.1:3478 | | | to 10.0.1.1:8998 | | |<----------------------| | | STUN Binding Response | | | from 10.0.1.1:8998 | | | to 192.0.2.1:3478 | | | map 192.0.2.1:3478 | | |---------------------->| | | | STUN Binding Response | | | from 192.0.2.3:45664 | | | to 192.0.2.1:3478 | | | map 192.0.2.1:3478 | | |---------------------->| |<===============RTP now can flow===============| | | | ]]>

Note: Here the initiator (controlling agent) is using "aggressive nomination" as described in Section 8.1.1.2 of &icecore; and therefore includes the USE-CANDIDATE attribute in the STUN Binding Requests it sends.

If, based on STUN connectivity checks, the parties determine that they will be able to exchange media between a given pair of local candidates and remote candidates (i.e., the pair is "nominated" and ICE processing is "completed"), the parties shall proceed as follows:

  1. The responder sends a Jingle session-accept action to the initiator.
  2. The initiator acknowledges receipt of the session-accept.

First, the responder sends a session-accept action to the initiator, specifying the candidate that succeeded. The session-accept MUST contain information about the nominated pair, including the "rem-addr" and "rem-port" attributes (which specify the IP address and port for the responder's end of the pair, which is a "remote address" according to the initiator). This enables both parties to explicitly agree to both ends of the connection pair (i.e., the local address+port and the remote address+port).

[ ... ] ]]>

The &JINGLE; element in the session-accept stanza SHOULD possess a 'responder' attribute that explicitly specifies the full JID of the responding entity. If the 'responder' attribute is provided, all future commmunications SHOULD be sent to the JID provided in the 'responder' attribute.

Since according to the connectivity checks the initiator can also send data over that candidate, it acknowledges the responder's acceptance:

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Now the initiator and responder can begin sending data over the negotiated connection (in fact, they could have sent data as soon as the connectivity checks succeeded, as shown in the preceding examples).

If a candidate succeeded for the responder but the initiator cannot send data over that candidate, it MUST return a ¬acceptable; error in response to the responder's acceptance of the successful candidate:

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If the responder cannot find a suitable candidate transport or it receives a ¬acceptable; error from the initiator in response to its acceptance of a suitable transport, it SHOULD terminate the session as described in Section 6.8 of XEP-0166.

The creator of a content type MAY modify an existing, in-use candidate at any time during the session, for example to change the IP address or port. This is done by sending a content-replace action with the changed candidate information, where the value of the 'generation' is incremented to specify that the candidate information is a modification to an existing candidate.

An example follows (change to IP address and port).

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The recipient then acknowledges receipt.

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If the content-replace is acceptable, the recipient then sends a content-accept action.

[ ... ] ]]>

The initiator then acknowledges the responder's acceptance:

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The parties then use the modified candidate in subsequent communications.

Even after content acceptance or session acceptance, either party MAY continue to send additional candidates to the other party (e.g., because the user agent has become aware of a new media proxy or NIC). As above, such candidates are shared by sending a transport-info action.

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The receiving party MUST acknowledge receipt of the candidate.

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The parties SHOULD check the newly-offered candidate for connectivity, as described previously. If the parties determine that media can flow over the candidate, the initiating party shall send a content-replace action to the responder.

[ ... ] ]]>

The responder then acknowledges the replaced content definition.

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The responder then accepts the replaced content definition.

[ ... ] ]]>

The initiator then acknowledges content acceptance.

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The parties then use the new candidate in subsequent communications.

If an entity supports the Jingle ice-udp transport, it MUST return a feature of "urn:xmpp:tmp:jingle:transports:ice-udp" &NSNOTE; in response to &xep0030; information requests.

]]> ... ... ]]>

Naturally, support MAY also be determined via the dynamic, presence-based profile of Service Discovery defined in &xep0115;.

If an entity supports the SDP offer / answer model described in RFC 3264 and therefore prefers to receive multiple candidates in a single "transport-info" action, it MUST advertise support for the "urn:ietf:rfc:3264" service discovery feature. Typically this feature will be advertised only by gateways between Jingle and SIP.

]]> ... ... ]]>

In order to speed the negotiation process so that media can flow as quickly as possible, the initiatior should gather and prioritize candidates in advance, or as soon as the principal begins the process of initiating a session.

The protocol-level "session-accept" action is not to be confused with an interface-level acceptance of the session request. After receiving and acknowledging the "session-initiate" action received from the initiator, the responder's client should present an interface element that enables a human user to explicitly agree to proceeding with the session (e.g., an "Accept Incoming Call?" pop-up window including "Yes" and "No" buttons). However, the responder's client should not return a "session-accept" action to the initiator until the responder has explicitly agreed to proceed with the session (unless the initiator is on a list of entities whose sessions are automatically accepted).

This specification applies exclusively to Jabber/XMPP clients and places no additional requirements on Jabber/XMPP servers. However, service administrators may wish to deploy a STUN server in order to ease the client-to-client negotiation process. See &xep0215; for related information.

By definition, the exchange of transport candidates results in exposure of the sender's IP addresses, which comprise a form of personally identifying information. A Jingle client MUST enable a user to control which entities will be allowed to receive such information. If a human user explicitly accepts a session request, then the client should consider that action to imply approval of IP address sharing. However, waiting for a human user to explicitly accept the session request can result in delays during session setup, since it is more efficient to immediately begin sharing transport candidates. Therefore, it is RECOMMENDED for the client to immediately send transport candidates to a contact (without waiting for explicit user approval of the session request) in the following cases:

  1. The user has permanently and formally authorized the contact to view the user's presence information via a presence subscription as reflected in an XMPP roster item (see &xmppim;).
  2. The user has temporarily and dynamically shared presence with the contact via "directed presence" as described in RFC 3921.
  3. The user has explicitly added the contact to a "whitelist" of entities who may access the user's personally-identifying information.

In order to secure the data stream that is negotiated via the Jingle ICE transport, implementations SHOULD use encryption methods appropriate to the transport method and media being exchanged (for details regarding RTP exchanges, refer to &xep0167;).

This document requires no interaction with &IANA;.

Until this specification advances to a status of Draft, its associated namespaces shall be:

  • urn:xmpp:tmp:jingle:transports:ice-udp

Upon advancement of this specification, the ®ISTRAR; shall issue permanent namespaces in accordance with the process defined in Section 4 of &xep0053;.

The following namespaces are requested, and are thought to be unique per the XMPP Registrar's requirements:

  • urn:xmpp:jingle:transport:ice-udp

If an entity supports the SDP offer / answer model described in RFC 3264 and therefore prefers to receive one "transport-info" action with multiple candidates, it MUST advertise support for the "urn:ietf:rfc:3264" feature.

The registry submission is as follows.

urn:ietf:rfc:3264 Signals support for the SDP offer / answer model described in RFC 3264 XEP-0176 ]]>

The XMPP Registrar shall include "ice-udp" in its registry of Jingle transport methods. The registry submission is as follows:

ice-udp A method for negotiation of out-of-band UDP connections with built-in NAT and firewall traversal, equivalent to the IETF's Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) methodology when resulting in the use of UDP as the transport protocol. lossy XEP-0176 ]]>
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Thanks to Diana Cionoiu, Olivier Crête, Tim Julien, Steffen Larsen, Robert McQueen, Mike Ruprecht, and Paul Witty for their feedback.