Subject: [Insipid] Communication Session

From: "Paul E. Jones" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2012 01:48:36 -0500

Folks,

I said I will publish a new revision of the requirements document.  I have a
list of things on my list, but I may have neglected a few items.  If you can
think of an important change you wanted made to the requirements draft, let
me know.

One thing that was discussed and for which I don't have an answer is that of
"communication session" vs. something else.  The requirements document
currently says:

In this document, the word "session" refers to a "communication session"
that may exist between two SIP user agents or that might pass through one or
more intermediary devices, including B2BUAs or SIP Proxies.

The term "end-to-end" in this document means the communication session from
the point of origin, passing through any number of intermediaries, to the
ultimate point of termination. It is recognized that legacy devices may not
support the "end-to-end" session identifier, though an identifier might be
created by an intermediary when it is absent from the session signaling.

There was a desire for changes in terminology.  Specifically what, though?
Please look at the terminology in the current draft and let's discuss what
changes to make:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-insipid-session-id-reqts-02

I'm not so confident that we'll have a quick answer, so what I might do is
go ahead and publish an -03 with what other changes I believe folks wanted
(and any I get between now and tomorrow evening).  Don't take that
publication as ignoring this point.  We can work on revising the terminology
even after the next version.

Charles Eckel proposed (on Nov. 3) to replace the words "communication
session" with "SIP message exchange".  Paul Kyzivat seemed to think that
might work, but I didn't see others comment.  Looking at the proposal, I'm
having trouble seeing how I'd use the term in these sentences:

.         "The identifier is intended to represents an end-to-end
communication session from the originating device to the terminating device"

.         "if a PBX joins or merges two communication sessions together
locally, the end-to-end properties of currently-defined identifiers are
lost"

.         "we need the ability to identify each communication session
through a single SIP header-value regardless of which type of SIP servers"

.         "A communication session might originate in an H.323 endpoint and
pass through a Session Border Controller before ultimately reaching a
terminating SIP user agent"

.         Etc.

The sentence with H.323 mentioned is a bit tricky and extends the term to
non-SIP signaling.  Still, we do want to cover that case and the intent
certainly was that a "communication session" is one that s

Personally, I like the term "communication session", but perhaps we just
need to modify it along the lines of what Charles suggested?  Can folks
offer a good replacement definition to put in Section 2? 

Paul