path: root/doc/rfc/rfc5582.txt

Network Working Group                                     H. Schulzrinne
Request for Comments: 5582                                   Columbia U.
Category: Informational                                   September 2009


           Location-to-URL Mapping Architecture and Framework

Abstract

This document describes an architecture for a global, scalable,
resilient, and administratively distributed system for mapping
geographic location information to URLs, using the Location-to-Service
Translation (LoST) protocol.  The architecture generalizes well-known
approaches found in hierarchical lookup systems such as DNS.

Status of This Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2009 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents in effect on the date of
   publication of this document (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info).
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.




















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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
   2.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   3.  Definitions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   4.  Overview of Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     4.1.  The Principal Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     4.2.  Minimal System Architecture  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   5.  Seeker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   6.  Resolver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   7.  Trees: Maintaining Authoritative Knowledge . . . . . . . . . .  8
     7.1.  Basic Operation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     7.2.  Answering Queries  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     7.3.  Overlapping Coverage Regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     7.4.  Scaling and Reliability  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   8.  Forest Guides  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   9.  Configuring Service Numbers  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   10. Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   11. Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     12.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     12.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

1.  Introduction

   It is often desirable to allow users to access a service that
   provides a common function but that is actually offered by a variety
   of local service providers.  In many of these cases, the service
   provider chosen depends on the location of the person wishing to
   access that service.  Among the best-known public services of this
   kind is emergency calling, where emergency calls are routed to the
   most appropriate public safety answering point (PSAP) based on the
   caller's physical location.  Other services, from food delivery to
   directory services and roadside assistance, also follow this general
   pattern.  This is a mapping problem [RFC5012], where a geographic
   location and a service identifier [RFC5031] is translated into a set
   of URIs, the service URIs, that allow the Internet system to contact
   an appropriate network entity that provides the service.

   The caller does not need to know from where the service is being
   provided, and the location of the service provider may change over
   time, e.g., to deal with temporary overloads, failures in the primary
   service provider location, or long-term changes in system
   architecture.  For emergency services, this problem is described in
   more detail in [ECRIT-FRAME].






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   The overall emergency calling architecture [ECRIT-FRAME] separates
   mapping from placing calls or otherwise invoking the service, so the
   same mechanism can be used to verify that a mapping exists ("address
   validation") or to obtain test service URIs.

   Mapping locations to URIs that describe services requires a
   distributed, scalable, and highly resilient infrastructure.
   Authoritative knowledge about such mappings is distributed among a
   large number of autonomous entities that may have no direct knowledge
   of each other.  In this document, we describe an architecture for
   such a global service.  It allows significant freedom to combine and
   split functionality among actual servers and imposes few requirements
   as to who should operate particular services.

   Besides determining the service URI, end systems also need to
   determine the local service numbers.  As discussed in Section 9, the
   architecture described here can also address that problem.

   The architecture described here uses the Location-to-Service
   Translation (LoST) [RFC5222] protocol, although much of the
   discussion would also apply for other mapping protocols satisfying
   the mapping requirements [RFC5012].

2.  Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119] and
   indicate requirement levels for compliant implementations.

3.  Definitions

   In addition to the terms defined in [RFC5012], this document uses the
   following terms to describe LoST clients and servers:

   authoritative mapping server (AMS):  An authoritative mapping server
      (AMS) is a LoST server that can provide the authoritative answer
      to a particular set of queries, e.g., covering a set of Presence
      Information Data Information Location Object (PIDF-LO) civic
      labels or a particular region described by a geometric shape.  In
      some (rare) cases of territorial disputes, two resolvers may be
      authoritative for the same region.  An AMS may redirect or forward
      a query to another AMS within the tree.

   child:  A child is an AMS that is authoritative for a subregion of
      another AMS.  A child can in turn be parent for another AMS.





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   (tree node) cluster:  A node cluster is a group of LoST servers that
      all share the same mapping information and return the same results
      for queries.  Clusters provide redundancy and share query load.
      Clusters are fully-meshed, i.e., they all exchange updates with
      each other.

   coverage region:  The coverage region of an AMS is the geographic
      region within which the AMS is able to authoritatively answer
      mapping queries.  Coverage regions are generally, but not
      necessarily, contiguous and may be represented as either a subset
      of a civic address or a geometric object.

   forest guide (FG):  A forest guide (FG) has knowledge of the coverage
      region of trees for a particular top-level service.

   mapping:  A mapping is a short-hand for 'mapping from a location
      object to either another mapping server or the desired service
      URLs'.

   parent:  A mapping server that covers the region of all of its
      children.  A mapping server without a parent is a root AMS.

   resolver:  A resolver is contacted by a seeker, consults a forest
      mapping server, and then resolves the query using an appropriate
      tree.  Resolvers may cache query results.

   seeker:  A seeker is a LoST client requesting a mapping.  A seeker
      does not provide mapping services to others but may cache results
      for its own use.

   tree:  A tree consists of a self-contained hierarchy of authoritative
      mapping servers for a particular service.  Each tree exports its
      coverage region to the forest mapping servers.

4.  Overview of Architecture

4.1.  The Principal Components

   The mapping architecture distinguishes four logical roles: seekers,
   resolvers, authoritative mapping servers (AMS), and forest guides
   (FGs).  End users of the LoST-based [RFC5222] mapping mechanism,
   called seekers, contact resolvers that cache query results and know
   one or more forest guides.  Forest guides form the top level of a
   conceptual hierarchy, with one or more trees providing a hierarchical
   resolution service for different geographic regions.  Forest guides
   know the geographic coverage region of all or almost all trees and
   direct queries to the node at the top of the appropriate tree.  Trees




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   consist of authoritative mapping servers and maintain the
   authoritative mapping information.

   Seekers, resolvers, authoritative mapping servers, and forest guides
   all communicate using LoST; indeed, it is likely that, in many cases,
   the same software can operate as a resolver, authoritative mapping
   server, and forest guide.  In addition to the basic LoST query
   protocol [RFC5222], a synchronization protocol [LOST-SYNC] may be
   used to exchange information between forest guides or to push
   coverage information from a tree node to its parent.

   Seekers may be part of Voice over IP (VoIP) or other end systems, or
   of SIP proxies or similar call routing functions.

   Figure 1 shows the interaction of the components.  The lines
   indicating the connection between the forest guides are logical
   connections, indicating that they are synchronizing their information
   via the synchronization protocol [LOST-SYNC].

          /-\        /-\        +-----+                 +-----+
         | S +******* R *********  FG *-----------------+  FG |
          \-/        \-/        |     |*                |     |
                                +--+--+  *              +--+--+
                                   |      *                |
                                   |       *               |
                                   |        *              |
                                   |        *              |
                     /-\        +--+--+     *           +--+--+
                    | R +------>+  FG +-----*-----------+  FG |
                     \-/        |     |     *           |     |
                                +--+--+    *            +--+--+
                                   |      *                |
                                   |     *                 |
                                   |    *                  |
                                   |***                    ^
                                  / \                     / \
                                 /   \                   /   \
                                /     \                 /     \
                               /       \               /       \
                              -----------             -----------
                                tree                     tree

   Architecture diagram, showing seekers (S), resolvers (R), forest
   guides (FG), and trees.  The star (*) line indicates the flow of the
   query and responses in recursive mode, while the lines indicate
   synchronization relationships.

                                 Figure 1



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   The mapping function for the world is divided among trees.  The
   collection of trees may not cover the whole world, and trees are
   added and removed as the organization of mapping data changes.  We
   call the collection of trees a forest.  There is no limit on the
   number of trees within the forest, but the author guesses that the
   number of trees will likely be somewhere between a few hundred and a
   few thousand.  The lower estimate would apply if each country
   operates one tree, the higher if different governmental or private
   organizations within a country operate independent trees.  We assume
   that tree coverage information changes relatively slowly, on the
   order of less than one change per year per tree, although the system
   imposes no specific threshold.  Tree coverage would change, for
   example, if a country is split or merged or if two trees for
   different regions become part of a larger tree.  (On the other hand,
   information within a tree is likely to change much more frequently.)

4.2.  Minimal System Architecture

   It is possible to build a functioning system consisting only of
   seekers and resolvers if these resolvers have other means of
   obtaining mapping data.  For example, a company acting as a mapping
   service provider could collect mapping records manually and make them
   available to their customers through the resolver.  While feasible as
   a starting point, such an architecture is unlikely to scale globally.
   Among other problems, it becomes very hard for providers of
   authoritative data to ensure that all such providers have up-to-date
   information.  If new trees are set up, they would somehow make
   themselves known to these providers.  Such a mechanism would be
   similar to the old "hosts.txt" mechanism for distributing host
   information in the early Internet before DNS was developed.

   Below, we describe the operation of each component in more detail.

5.  Seeker

   Clients desiring location-to-service mappings are known as seekers.
   Seekers are consumers of mapping data and originate LoST queries as
   LoST protocol clients.  Seekers do not answer LoST queries.  They
   contact either forest guides or resolvers to find the appropriate
   tree that can authoritatively answer their questions.  Seekers can be
   end systems such as SIP user agents, or call routing entities such as
   SIP proxy servers.

   Seekers may need to obtain mapping information in several steps,
   i.e., they may obtain pointers to intermediate servers that lead them
   closer to the final mapping.  Seekers MAY cache query results for
   later use but otherwise have no obligations to other entities in the
   system.



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   Seekers need to be able to identify appropriate resolvers.  The
   mechanism for providing seekers with that information is likely to
   differ depending on who operates the resolvers.  For example, if the
   voice service provider operates the resolver, it might include the
   location of the resolver in the SIP configuration information it
   distributes to its user agents.  An Internet access provider or
   enterprise can provide a pointer to a resolver via DHCP [RFC5223].
   In an ad hoc or zero-configuration environment, appropriate service
   directories may advertise resolvers.

   Like other entities in the system, seekers can cache responses.  This
   is particularly useful if the response describes the result for a
   civic or geospatial region, rather than just a point.  For example,
   for mobile nodes, seekers would only have to update their resolution
   results when they leave the coverage area of a service provider, such
   as a PSAP for emergency services, and can avoid repeatedly polling
   for this information whenever the location information changes
   slightly.  (Mobile nodes would also need a location update mechanism
   that is either local or triggered when they leave the current service
   area.)  This will likely be of particular benefit for seekers
   representing a large user population, such as the outbound proxy in a
   corporate network.  For example, rather than having to query
   separately for each cubicle, information provided by the
   authoritative node may indicate that the whole campus is covered by
   the same service provider.

   Given this caching mechanism and cache lifetimes of several days,
   most mobile users traveling to and from work would only need to
   obtain service area information along their commute route once during
   each cache lifetime.

6.  Resolver

   A seeker can contact a forest guide (see below) directly, but may not
   be able to easily locate such a guide.  In addition, seekers in the
   same geographic area may already have asked the same question.  Thus,
   it makes sense to introduce another entity, known as a resolver in
   the architecture, that knows how to contact one or more forest guides
   and that caches earlier queries to accelerate the response to mapping
   queries and to improve the resiliency of the system.  Each resolver
   can decide autonomously which FGs to use, with possibly different
   choices for each top-level service.

   ISPs or Voice Service Providers (VSPs) may include the address of a
   suitable resolver in their configuration information, e.g., in SIP
   configuration for a VSP or DHCP [RFC5223] for an ISP.  Resolvers are
   manually configured with the name of one or more forest guides.




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7.  Trees: Maintaining Authoritative Knowledge

7.1.  Basic Operation

   The architecture assumes that authoritative knowledge about the
   mapping data is distributed among many independent administrative
   entities, but clients (seekers) may potentially need to find out
   mapping information for any spot on earth.  (Extensions to extra-
   terrestrial applications are left for future exploration.)
   Information is organized hierarchically, in a tree, with tree nodes
   representing larger geographic areas pointing to several child nodes,
   each representing a smaller area.  Each tree node can be a cluster of
   LoST servers that all contain the same information and back up each
   other.

   Each tree can map a location described by either civic or geographic
   coordinates, but not both, for one type of service (such as
   'sos.police', 'sos.fire' or 'counseling') and one location profile,
   although nothing prevents re-using the same servers for multiple,
   different services or both types of coordinates.  The collection of
   all trees for one service and location profile is known as a forest.

   Each tree root announces its coverage region to one or more forest
   guides.

   Each tree node cluster knows the coverage region of its children and
   sends queries to the appropriate server "down" the tree.  Each such
   tree node knows authoritatively about the service mappings for a
   particular region, typically, but not necessarily, contiguous.  The
   region can be described by any of the shapes in the LoST
   specification expressed in geospatial coordinates, such as circles or
   polygons, or a set of civic address descriptors (e.g., "country = DE,
   A1 = Bavaria").  These coverage regions may be aligned with political
   boundaries, but that is not required.  In most cases, to avoid
   confusion, only one cluster is responsible for a particular
   geographic or civic location, but the system can also deal with cases
   where coverage regions overlap.

   There are no assumptions about the coverage region of a tree as a
   whole.  For example, a tree could cover a single city, a state/
   province, or a whole country.  Nodes within a tree need to loosely
   coordinate their operation, but they do not need to be operated by
   the same administrator.

   The tree architecture is roughly similar to the domain name system
   (DNS), except that delegation is not by label but rather by region.
   (Naturally, DNS does not have the notion of forest guides.)  One can




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   also draw analogies to the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
   (LDAP) when deployed in a distributed fashion.

   Tree nodes maintain two types of information -- namely, coverage
   regions and mappings.  Coverage regions describe the region served by
   a child node in the tree and point to a child node for further
   resolution.  Mappings contain an actual service URI leading to a
   service provider or another signaling server representing a group of
   service providers, which in turn might further route signaling
   requests to more servers covering smaller regions.

   Leaf nodes, i.e., nodes without children, only maintain mappings,
   while tree nodes above the leaf nodes only maintain coverage regions.
   An example for emergency services of a leaf node entry is shown
   below, indicating how queries for three towns are directed to
   different PSAPs.  Queries for Englewood are directed to another LoST
   server instead.

   country   A1 A2         A3        resource or LoST server
   US        NJ Bergen     Leonia    sip:psap@leonianj.gov
   US        NJ Bergen     Fort Lee  sip:emergency@fortleenj.org
   US        NJ Bergen     Teaneck   sip:police@teanecknjgov.org
   US        NJ Bergen     Englewood englewoodnj.gov
   ....

   Coverage regions are described by sets of LoST-compatible shapes
   enclosing contiguous geographic areas or by descriptors enumerating
   groups of civic locations.  For the former, the LoST server performs
   the same matching operation as described in Section 12.2 of the LoST
   specification [RFC5222] to find the tree or AMS.

   As a civic location example, a state-level tree node for New Jersey
   in the United States may contain the coverage region entries shown
   below, indicating that any query matching a location in Bergen
   County, for example, would be redirected or forwarded to the node
   located at bergen.nj.example.org.

   There is no requirement that all child nodes cover the same level
   within the civic hierarchy.  As an example, in the table below, the
   city of Newark has decided to be listed directly within the state
   node, rather than through the county.  Longest-match rules allow
   partial coverage so that queries for all other towns within Essex
   county would be directed to the county node for further resolution.








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   C  A1 A2         A3     LoST server name
   US NJ Atlantic   *      atlantic.nj.example.org/sos
   US NJ Bergen     *      bergen.nj.example.org/sos
   US NJ Monmouth   *      monmouth.nj.example.org/sos
   US NJ Essex      *      essex.nj.example.org/sos
   US NJ Essex      Newark newark.example.com/sos
   ....

   Thus, there is no substantial difference between coverage region and
   mapping data.  The only difference is that coverage regions return
   names of LoST servers, while mapping entries contain service URLs.
   Mapping entries may be specific down to the house- or floor-level or
   may only contain street-level information.  For example, in the
   United States, civic mapping data for emergency services is generally
   limited to address ranges ("MSAG data"), so initial mapping databases
   may only contain street-level information.

   To automate the maintenance of trees, the LoST synchronization
   mechanism [LOST-SYNC] allows nodes to query other nodes for mapping
   data and coverage regions, both within a cluster and across different
   hierarchy levels in a tree.  In the example above, the state-run node
   would query the county nodes and use the records returned to
   distribute incoming LoST queries to the county nodes.  Conversely,
   nodes could also contact their parent nodes to tell them about their
   coverage region.  There is some benefit of child nodes contacting
   their parents, as this allows changes in coverage regions to
   propagate quickly up the tree.

7.2.  Answering Queries

   Within a tree, the basic operation is straightforward.  A query
   reaches the root of the tree.  That node determines which coverage
   region matches that request and forwards the request to the server
   indicated in the coverage region record, returning a response to the
   querier when it in turn receives an answer (recursion).
   Alternatively, the node returns the application unique string (server
   name) of that child node to the querier (iteration).  This process
   applies to each node, i.e., a node does not need to know whether the
   original query came from a parent node, a seeker, a forest guide, or
   a resolver.

   For efficiency, a node MAY return region information instead of a
   point answer.  Thus, instead of returning that a particular
   geospatial coordinate maps to a service URL or server name, it MAY
   return a polygon indicating the region for which this answer would be
   returned, along with expiration time (time-to-live) information.  The
   querying node can then cache this information for future use.




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   For civic coordinates, trees may not include individual mapping
   records for each floor, house number, or street.  To avoid giving the
   wrong indication that a particular location has been found valid,
   LoST can indicate which parts of the location information have
   actually been used to look up a mapping.

7.3.  Overlapping Coverage Regions

   In some cases, coverage regions may overlap, either because there is
   a dispute as to who handles a particular geographic region or, more
   likely, because the resolution of the coverage map may not be
   sufficiently high.  For example, a node may "shave some corners" off
   its polygon so that its coverage region appears to overlap with its
   geographic neighbor.  For civic coordinates, houses on the same
   street may be served by different PSAPs.  The mapping mechanism needs
   to work even if a coverage map is imprecise or if there are disputes
   about coverage.

   The solution for overlapping coverage regions is relatively simple.
   If a query matches multiple coverage regions, the node returns all
   URLs or server names, in redirection mode, or queries both children,
   if in recursive mode.  If the overlapping coverage is caused by
   imprecise coverage maps, only one will return a result and the others
   will return an error indication.  If the particular location is
   disputed territory, the response will contain all answers, leaving it
   to the querier to choose the preferred solution or try to contact all
   services in turn.

7.4.  Scaling and Reliability

   Since they provide authoritative information, tree nodes need to be
   highly reliable.  Thus, while this document refers to tree nodes as
   logical entities within the tree, an actual implementation would
   likely replicate node information across several servers, forming a
   cluster.  Each such node would have the same information.  Standard
   techniques such as DNS SRV records can be used to select one of the
   servers.  Replication within the cluster can use any suitable
   protocol mechanism, but a standardized, incremental update mechanism
   makes it easier to spread those nodes across multiple independently
   administered locations.  The techniques developed for the meshed
   Service Location Protocol (SLP) [RFC3528] are applicable here.

8.  Forest Guides

   Unfortunately, just having trees covering various regions of the
   world is not sufficient, as a client of the mapping protocol would
   not generally be able to keep track of all the trees in the forest.
   To facilitate orientation among the trees, we introduce a forest



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   guide (FG), which keeps track of the coverage regions of all the
   trees for one service and location profile.  For scalability and
   reliability, there will need to be a large number of forest guides,
   all providing the same information.  A seeker can contact a suitable
   forest guide and will then be directed to the right tree or, rarely,
   set of trees.  Forest guides do not provide mapping information
   themselves, but rather redirect to mapping servers.  In some
   configurations, not all forest guides may provide the same
   information, due to policy reasons.

   Forest guides fulfill a similar role to root servers in DNS.  They
   distribute information, signed for authenticity, offered by trees.
   However, introducing forest guides avoids creating a global root,
   with the attendant management and control issues.

   However, unlike DNS root servers, forest guides may offer different
   information based on local policy.  Forest guides can also restrict
   their data synchronization to parts of the information.  For example,
   if country C does not recognize country T, C can propagate tree
   regions for all but T.

   For authenticity, the coverage regions SHOULD be digitally signed by
   the authorities responsible for the region, as discussed in more
   detail in Section 10.  They are used by resolvers and possibly
   seekers to find the appropriate tree for a particular area.  All
   forest guides should have consistent information, i.e., a collection
   of all the coverage regions of all the trees.  A tree node at the top
   of a tree can contact any forest guide and inject new coverage region
   information into the system.  One would expect that each tree
   announces its coverage to more than one forest guide.  Each forest
   guide peers with one or more other guides and distributes new
   coverage region announcements to other guides.  Due to policy and
   maybe political reasons, not all forest guides may share the same
   coverage region data.

   Forest guides can, in principle, be operated by anybody, including
   voice service providers, Internet access providers, dedicated
   services providers, and enterprises.

   As in routing, peering with other forest guides implies a certain
   amount of trust in the peer.  Thus, peering is likely to require some
   negotiation between the administering parties concerned, rather than
   automatic configuration.  The mechanism itself does not imply a
   particular policy as to who gets to advertise a particular coverage
   region.






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9.  Configuring Service Numbers

   The section below is not directly related to the problem of
   determining service location but is an instance of the more generic
   problem solved by this architecture -- namely, mapping location
   information to service-related parameters, such as service numbers.

   For the foreseeable future, some user devices and software will
   emulate the user interface of a telephone, i.e., the only way to
   enter call address information is via a 12-button keypad with digits
   and the asterisk and hash symbols.  These devices use service numbers
   to identify services.  The best-known examples of service numbers are
   emergency numbers, such as 9-1-1 in North America and 1-1-2 in
   Europe.  However, many other public and private service numbers have
   been defined, ranging in the United States from 3-1-1 for non-
   emergency local government services to 4-1-1 for directory
   assistance, to various "800" numbers for anything from roadside
   assistance to legal services to home-delivery food.

   Such service numbers are likely to be used until essentially all
   communication devices feature IP connectivity and an alphanumeric
   keyboard.  Unfortunately, for emergency services, more than 60
   emergency numbers are in use throughout the world, with many of those
   numbers serving non-emergency purposes elsewhere, e.g., identifying
   repair or directory services.  Countries also occasionally change
   their emergency numbers to conform to regional agreements.  An
   example is the introduction of "1-1-2" for countries in Europe.

   Thus, a system that allows devices to be used internationally to
   place calls needs to allow devices to discover service numbers
   automatically.  In the Internet-based system proposed in
   [ECRIT-FRAME], these numbers are strictly used as a human-user
   interface mechanism and are generally not visible in call signaling
   messages, which carry the service URN [RFC5031] instead.

   For the best user experience, systems should be able to discover two
   sets of service numbers -- namely, those used in the user's home
   country and those used in the country the user is currently visiting.
   The user is most likely to remember the former, but a companion
   borrowing a device in an emergency, say, may only know the local
   emergency numbers.

   Determining home and local service numbers is a configuration
   problem, but unfortunately, existing configuration mechanisms are
   ill-suited for this purpose.  For example, a DHCP server might be
   able to provide the local service numbers but not the home numbers.
   When virtual private networks (VPNs) are used, even DHCP may provide
   numbers of uncertain origin, as a user may contact the home network



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   or some local branch office of the corporate network.  Similarly, SIP
   configuration [CONFIG-FRAME] would be able to provide the numbers
   valid at the location of the SIP service provider, but even a SIP
   service provider with a national footprint may serve customers that
   are visiting any number of other countries.

   Also, while initially there are likely to be only a few service
   numbers, e.g., for emergency services, the LoST architecture can be
   used to support other services, as noted.  Configuring every local
   DHCP or SIP configuration server with that information is likely to
   be error-prone and tedious.

   For these reasons, the LoST-based mapping architecture supports
   providing service numbers to end systems based on caller location.
   The mapping operation is almost exactly the same as for determining
   the service URL.  The mapping can be obtained along with the service
   URL.  The major difference between the two requests is that service
   numbers often have much larger regions of validity than the service
   URL itself.  Also, the service number is likely to be valid longer
   than the service URL.  Finally, an end system may want to look up the
   service number for its home location, not just its current (visited)
   location.

10.  Security Considerations

   Security considerations for emergency services mapping are discussed
   in [RFC5069], while [RFC5031] discusses issues related to the service
   URN, one of the inputs into the mapping protocol.  LoST-related
   security considerations are naturally discussed in the LoST
   specification [RFC5222].

   The architecture addresses the following security issues, usually
   through the underlying transport security associations:

   server impersonation:  Seekers, resolvers, fellow tree guides, and
      cluster members can assure themselves of the identity of the
      remote party by using the facilities in the underlying channel
      security mechanism, such as Transport Layer Security (TLS)
      [RFC5246].

   query or query result corruption:  To avoid the possibility of an
      attacker modifying the query or its result, the architecture
      RECOMMENDS the use of channel security, such as TLS.  Results
      SHOULD also be digitally signed, e.g., using XML digital
      signatures [W3C.REC-xmldsig-core-20020212].  Note, however, that
      simple origin assertion may not provide the end system with enough
      useful information as it has no good way of knowing that a
      particular signer is authorized to represent a particular



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      geographic area.  It might be necessary that certain well-known
      Certificate Authorities (CAs) vet sources of mapping information
      and provide special certificates for that purpose.  In many cases,
      a seeker will have to trust its local resolver to vet information
      for trustworthiness; in turn, the resolver may rely on trusted
      forest guides to steer it to the correct information.

   coverage region corruption:  To avoid the possibility of a third
      party or an untrustworthy member of a server population claiming a
      coverage region that it is not authorized for, any node
      introducing a new service boundary MUST sign the object by
      protecting the data with an XML digital signature
      [W3C.REC-xmldsig-core-20020212].  A recipient MUST verify, through
      a local policy mechanism, that the signing entity is indeed
      authorized to speak for that region.  Determining who can speak
      for a particular region is inherently difficult unless there is a
      small set of authorizing entities that participants in the mapping
      architecture can trust.  Receiving systems should be particularly
      suspicious if an existing coverage region is replaced with a new
      one with a new mapping address.  In many cases, trust will be
      mediated: a seeker will have a trust relationship with a resolver,
      and the resolver, in turn, will contact a trusted forest guide.

   Additional threats that need to be addressed by operational measures
   include denial-of-service attacks [PHONE-BCP].

11.  Acknowledgments

   Jari Arkko, Richard Barnes, Cullen Jennings, Jong Yul Kim, Otmar
   Lendl, Matt Lepinski, Chris Newman, Andrew Newton, Jon Peterson,
   Schida Schubert, Murugaraj Shanmugam, Richard Stastny, Hannes
   Tschofenig, and Karl Heinz Wolf provided helpful comments.


12.  References

12.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC5031]  Schulzrinne, H., "A Uniform Resource Name (URN) for
              Emergency and Other Well-Known Services", RFC 5031,
              January 2008.

   [RFC5222]  Hardie, T., Newton, A., Schulzrinne, H., and H.
              Tschofenig, "LoST: A Location-to-Service Translation
              Protocol", RFC 5222, August 2008.



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   [RFC5223]  Schulzrinne, H., Polk, J., and H. Tschofenig, "Discovering
              Location-to-Service Translation (LoST) Servers Using the
              Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)", RFC 5223,
              August 2008.

12.2.  Informative References

   [CONFIG-FRAME]
              Channabasappa, S., "A Framework for Session Initiation
              Protocol User Agent Profile Delivery", Work in Progress,
              February 2008.

   [ECRIT-FRAME]
              Rosen, B., Schulzrinne, H., Polk, J., and A. Newton,
              "Framework for Emergency Calling using Internet
              Multimedia", Work in Progress, March 2009.

   [LOST-SYNC]
              Schulzrinne, H. and H. Tschofenig, "Synchronizing
              Location-to-Service Translation (LoST) Protocol based
              Service Boundaries and Mapping Elements", Work
              in Progress, March 2009.

   [PHONE-BCP]
              Rosen, B. and J. Polk, "Best Current Practice for
              Communications Services in support of Emergency Calling",
              Work in Progress, March 2009.

   [RFC3528]  Zhao, W., Schulzrinne, H., and E. Guttman, "Mesh-enhanced
              Service Location Protocol (mSLP)", RFC 3528, April 2003.

   [RFC5012]  Schulzrinne, H. and R. Marshall, "Requirements for
              Emergency Context Resolution with Internet Technologies",
              RFC 5012, January 2008.

   [RFC5069]  Taylor, T., Tschofenig, H., Schulzrinne, H., and M.
              Shanmugam, "Security Threats and Requirements for
              Emergency Call Marking and Mapping", RFC 5069,
              January 2008.

   [RFC5246]  Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
              (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008.

   [W3C.REC-xmldsig-core-20020212]
              Solo, D., Eastlake, D., and J. Reagle, "XML-Signature
              Syntax and Processing", World Wide Web Consortium
              FirstEdition REC-xmldsig-core-20020212, February 2002,
              <http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/REC-xmldsig-core-20020212>.



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Author's Address

   Henning Schulzrinne
   Columbia University
   Department of Computer Science
   450 Computer Science Building
   New York, NY  10027
   US

   Phone: +1 212 939 7004
   EMail: hgs+ecrit@cs.columbia.edu
   URI:   http://www.cs.columbia.edu







































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