Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                           C. Shen
Request for Comments: 7200                                H. Schulzrinne
Category: Standards Track                                    Columbia U.
ISSN: 2070-1721                                                 A. Koike
                                                                    NTT
                                                             April 2014


    A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Load-Control Event Package

Abstract

  This specification defines a load-control event package for the
  Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).  It allows SIP entities to
  distribute load-filtering policies to other SIP entities in the
  network.  The load-filtering policies contain rules to throttle calls
  from a specific user or based on their source or destination domain,
  telephone number prefix.  The mechanism helps to prevent signaling
  overload and complements feedback-based SIP overload control efforts.

Status of This Memo

  This is an Internet Standards Track document.

  This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
  (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
  received public review and has been approved for publication by the
  Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Further information on
  Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.

  Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
  and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
  http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7200.

Copyright Notice

  Copyright (c) 2014 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
  (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
  publication of this document.  Please review these documents
  carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
  to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
  include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
  the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
  described in the Simplified BSD License.



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Table of Contents

  1. Introduction ....................................................3
  2. Conventions .....................................................3
  3. SIP Load-Filtering Overview .....................................4
     3.1. Load-Filtering Policy Format ...............................4
     3.2. Load-Filtering Policy Computation ..........................4
     3.3. Load-Filtering Policy Distribution .........................4
     3.4. Applicable Network Domains .................................8
  4. Load-Control Event Package ......................................9
     4.1. Event Package Name .........................................9
     4.2. Event Package Parameters ...................................9
     4.3. SUBSCRIBE Bodies ...........................................9
     4.4. SUBSCRIBE Duration .........................................9
     4.5. NOTIFY Bodies .............................................10
     4.6. Notifier Processing of SUBSCRIBE Requests .................10
     4.7. Notifier Generation of NOTIFY Requests ....................10
     4.8. Subscriber Processing of NOTIFY Requests ..................10
     4.9. Handling of Forked Requests ...............................12
     4.10. Rate of Notifications ....................................12
     4.11. State Delta ..............................................12
  5. Load-Control Document ..........................................13
     5.1. Format ....................................................13
     5.2. Namespace .................................................13
     5.3. Conditions ................................................14
          5.3.1. Call Identity ......................................14
          5.3.2. Method .............................................16
          5.3.3. Target SIP Entity ..................................17
          5.3.4. Validity ...........................................18
     5.4. Actions ...................................................18
  6. XML Schema Definition for Load Control .........................20
  7. Security Considerations ........................................23
  8. IANA Considerations ............................................24
     8.1. Load-Control Event Package Registration ...................24
     8.2. application/load-control+xml Media Type Registration ......24
     8.3. URN Sub-Namespace Registration ............................25
     8.4. Load-Control Schema Registration ..........................26
  9. Acknowledgements ...............................................27
  10. References ....................................................27
     10.1. Normative References .....................................27
     10.2. Informative References ...................................28
  Appendix A. Definitions ...........................................30
  Appendix B. Design Requirements ...................................30
  Appendix C. Discussion of How This Specification Meets the
              Requirements of RFC 5390 ..............................31
  Appendix D. Complete Examples .....................................36
     D.1. Load-Control Document Examples ............................36
     D.2. Message Flow Examples .....................................40



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  Appendix E.  Related Work .........................................41
     E.1. Relationship to Load Filtering in PSTN ....................41
     E.2. Relationship with Other IETF SIP Overload Control Efforts .42

1.  Introduction

  SIP load-control mechanisms are needed to prevent congestion collapse
  [RFC6357] in cases of SIP server overload [RFC5390].  There are two
  types of load-control approaches.  In the first approach, feedback
  control, SIP servers provide load limits to upstream servers, to
  reduce the incoming rate of all SIP requests [SIP-OVERLOAD].  These
  upstream servers then drop or delay incoming SIP requests.  Feedback
  control is reactive and affects signaling messages that have already
  been issued by user agent clients.  This approach works well when SIP
  proxy servers in the core networks (core proxy servers) or
  destination-specific SIP proxy servers in the edge networks (edge
  proxy servers) are overloaded.  By their nature, they need to
  distribute rate, drop, or window information to all upstream SIP
  proxy servers and normally affect all calls equally, regardless of
  destination.

  This specification proposes an additional, complementary load-control
  mechanism, called "load filtering".  It is most applicable for
  situations where a traffic surge and its source/destination
  distribution can be predicted in advance.  In those cases, network
  operators create load-filtering policies that indicate calls to
  specific destinations or from specific sources should be rate-limited
  or randomly dropped.  These load-filtering policies are then
  distributed to SIP servers and possibly SIP user agents that are
  likely to generate calls to the affected destinations or from the
  affected sources.  Load filtering works best if it prevents calls as
  close to the originating user agent clients as possible.  The
  applicability of SIP load filtering can also be extended beyond
  overload control, e.g., to implement service level agreement
  commitments.

2.  Conventions

  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 [RFC2119].










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3.  SIP Load-Filtering Overview

3.1.  Load-Filtering Policy Format

  Load-filtering policies are specified by sets of rules.  Each rule
  contains both load-filtering conditions and actions.  The load-
  filtering conditions define identities of the targets to be filtered
  (Section 5.3.1).  For example, there are two typical resource limits
  in a possible overload situation, i.e., human destination limits
  (number of call takers) and node capacity limits.  The load-filtering
  targets in these two cases can be the specific callee numbers or the
  destination domain corresponding to the overload.  Load-filtering
  conditions also indicate the specific message type to be matched
  (Section 5.3.2), with which target SIP entity the filtering policy is
  associated (Section 5.3.3), and the period of time when the filtering
  policy should be activated and deactivated (Section 5.3.4).  Load-
  filtering actions describe the desired control functions such as
  keeping the request rate below a specified level (Section 5.4).

3.2.  Load-Filtering Policy Computation

  When computing the load-filtering policies, one needs to take into
  consideration information such as overload time, scope and network
  topology, as well as service policies.  It is also important to make
  sure that there is no resource allocation loop and that server
  capacity is allocated in a way that both prevents overload and
  maximizes effective throughput (commonly called goodput).  In some
  cases, in order to better utilize system resources, it may be
  preferable to employ an algorithm that dynamically computes the load-
  filtering policies based on currently observed server load status,
  rather than using a purely static filtering policy assignment.  The
  computation algorithm for load-filtering policies is beyond the scope
  of this specification.

3.3.  Load-Filtering Policy Distribution

  For distributing load-filtering policies, this specification defines
  the SIP event package for load control, which is an "instantiation"
  of the generic SIP event notification framework [RFC6665].  This
  specification also defines the XML schema of a load-control document
  (Section 5), which is used to encode load-filtering policies.

  In order for load-filtering policies to be properly distributed, each
  capable SIP entity in the network subscribes to the SIP load-control
  event package of each SIP entity to which it sends signaling
  requests.  A SIP entity that accepts subscription requests is called
  a "notifier" (Section 4.6).  Subscription is initiated and maintained
  during normal server operation.  The subscription of neighboring SIP



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  entities needs to be persistent, as described in Sections 4.1 and 4.2
  of [RFC6665].  The refresh procedure is described in Section 4.7
  below.  Subscribers may terminate the subscription if they have not
  received notifications for an extended time period, and can
  resubscribe if they determine that signaling with the notifier
  becomes active again.

  An example architecture is shown in Figure 1 to illustrate SIP load-
  filtering policy distribution.  This scenario consists of two
  networks belonging to Service Provider A and Service Provider B,
  respectively.  Each provider's network is made up of two SIP core
  proxy servers and four SIP edge proxy servers.  The core proxy
  servers and edge proxy servers of Service Provider A are denoted as
  CPa1 to CPa2 and EPa1 to EPa4; the core proxy servers and edge proxy
  servers of Service Provider B are denoted as CPb1 to CPb2 and EPb1 to
  EPb4.



































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     +-----------+   +-----------+   +-----------+   +-----------+
     |           |   |           |   |           |   |           |
     |   EPa1    |   |   EPa2    |   |   EPa3    |   |   EPa4    |
     |           |   |           |   |           |   |           |
     +-----------+   +-----------+   +-----------+   +-----------+
             \         /                    \          /
              \       /                      \        /
               \     /                        \      /
             +-----------+                  +-----------+
             |           |                  |           |
             |   CPa1    |------------------|   CPa2    |
             |           |                  |           |
             +-----------+                  +-----------+
                   |                              |
     Service       |                              |
     Provider A    |                              |
                   |                              |
    =================================================================
                   |                              |
     Service       |                              |
     Provider B    |                              |
                   |                              |
             +-----------+                  +-----------+
             |           |                  |           |
             |   CPb1    |------------------|   CPb2    |
             |           |                  |           |
             +-----------+                  +-----------+
               /      \                        /     \
              /        \                      /       \
             /          \                    /         \
     +-----------+   +-----------+   +-----------+   +-----------+
     |           |   |           |   |           |   |           |
     |   EPb1    |   |   EPb2    |   |   EPb3    |   |   EPb4    |
     |           |   |           |   |           |   |           |
     +-----------+   +-----------+   +-----------+   +-----------+

     Figure 1: Example Network Scenario Using SIP Load-Control Event
                            Package Mechanism

  During the initialization stage, the proxy servers first identify all
  their outgoing signaling neighbors and subscribe to them.  Service
  providers can provision neighbors, or the proxy servers can
  incrementally learn who their neighbors are by inspecting signaling
  messages that they send and receive.  Assuming all signaling
  relationships in Figure 1 are bidirectional, after this
  initialization stage, each proxy server will be subscribed to all its
  neighbors.




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  Case I: EPa1 serves a TV program hotline and decides to limit the
  total number of incoming calls to the hotline to prevent an overload.
  To do so, EPa1 sends a notification to CPa1 with the specific hotline
  number, time of activation, and total acceptable call rate.
  Depending on the load-filtering policy computation algorithm, CPa1
  may allocate the received total acceptable call rate among its
  neighbors, namely, EPa2, CPa2, and CPb1, and notify them about the
  resulting allocation along with the hotline number and the activation
  time.  CPa2 and CPb1 may perform further allocation among their own
  neighbors and notify the corresponding proxy servers.  This process
  continues until all edge proxy servers in the network have been
  informed about the event and have proper load-filtering policies
  configured.

  In the above case, the network entity where load-filtering policy is
  first introduced is the SIP server providing access to the resource
  that creates the overload situation.  In other cases, the network
  entry point of introducing load-filtering policy could also be an
  entity that hosts this resource.  For example, an operator may host
  an application server that performs toll-free-number ("800 number")
  translation services.  The application server itself may be a SIP
  proxy server or a SIP Back-to-Back User Agent (B2BUA).  If one of the
  toll-free numbers hosted at the application server creates the
  overload condition, the load-filtering policies can be introduced
  from the application server and then propagated to other SIP proxy
  servers in the network.

  Case II: A hurricane affects the region covered by CPb2, EPb3, and
  EPb4.  All three of these SIP proxy servers are overloaded.  The
  rescue team determines that outbound calls are more valuable than
  inbound calls in this specific situation.  Therefore, EPb3 and EPb4
  are configured with load-filtering policies to accept more outbound
  calls than inbound calls.  CPb2 may be configured the same way or
  receive dynamically computed load-filtering policies from EPb3 and
  EPb4.  Depending on the load-filtering policy computation algorithm,
  CPb2 may also send out notifications to its outside neighbors, namely
  CPb1 and CPa2, specifying a limit on the acceptable rate of inbound
  calls to CPb2's responsible domain.  CPb1 and CPa2 may subsequently
  notify their neighbors about limiting the calls to CPb2's area.  The
  same process could continue until all edge proxy servers are notified
  and have load-filtering policies configured.

  Note that this specification does not define the provisioning
  interface between the party who determines the load-filtering policy
  and the network entry point where the policy is introduced.  One of
  the options for the provisioning interface is the Extensible Markup
  Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP) [RFC4825].




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3.4.  Applicable Network Domains

  This specification MUST be applied inside a "Trust Domain".  The
  concept of a Trust Domain is similar to that defined in [RFC3324] and
  [RFC3325].  A Trust Domain, for the purpose of SIP load filtering, is
  a set of SIP entities such as SIP proxy servers that are trusted to
  exchange load-filtering policies defined in this specification.  In
  the simplest case, a Trust Domain is a network of SIP entities
  belonging to a single service provider who deploys it and accurately
  knows the behavior of those SIP entities.  Such simple Trust Domains
  may be joined to form larger Trust Domains by bilateral agreements
  between the service providers of the SIP entities.

  The key requirement of a Trust Domain for the purpose of SIP load
  filtering is that the behavior of all SIP entities within a given
  Trust Domain is known to comply to the following set of
  specifications.

  o  SIP entities in the Trust Domain agree on the mechanisms used to
     secure the communication among SIP entities within the Trust
     Domain.

  o  SIP entities in the Trust Domain agree on the manner used to
     determine which SIP entities are part of the Trust Domain.

  o  SIP entities in the Trust Domain are compliant to SIP [RFC3261].

  o  SIP entities in the Trust Domain are compliant to SIP-Specific
     Event Notification[RFC6665].

  o  SIP entities in the Trust Domain are compliant to this
     specification.

  o  SIP entities in the Trust Domain agree on what types of calls can
     be affected by this SIP load-filtering mechanism.  For example,
     <call-identity> condition elements (Section 5.3.1) <one> and
     <many> might be limited to describe within certain prefixes.

  o  SIP entities in the Trust Domain agree on the destinations to
     which calls may be redirected when the "redirect" action
     (Section 5.4) is used.  For example, the URI might have to match a
     given set of domains.

  SIP load filtering is only effective if all neighbors that are
  possible signaling sources participate and enforce the designated
  load-filtering policies.  Otherwise, a single non-conforming neighbor
  could make all filtering efforts useless by pumping in excessive
  traffic to overload the server.  Therefore, the SIP server that



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  distributes load-filtering policies needs to take countermeasures
  towards any non-conforming neighbors.  A simple method is to reject
  excessive requests with 503 "Service Unavailable" response messages
  as if they were obeying the rate.  Considering the rejection costs, a
  more complicated but fairer method would be to allocate at the
  overloaded server the same amount of processing to the combination of
  both normal processing and rejection as the overloaded server would
  devote to processing requests for a conforming upstream SIP server.
  These approaches work as long as the total rejection cost does not
  overwhelm the entire server resources.  In addition, SIP servers need
  to handle message prioritization properly while performing load
  filtering, which is described in Section 4.8.

4.  Load-Control Event Package

  The SIP load-filtering mechanism defines a load-control event package
  for SIP based on [RFC6665].

4.1.  Event Package Name

  The name of this event package is "load-control".  This name is
  carried in the Event and Allow-Events header, as specified in
  [RFC6665].

4.2.  Event Package Parameters

  No package-specific event header field parameters are defined for
  this event package.

4.3.  SUBSCRIBE Bodies

  This specification does not define the content of SUBSCRIBE bodies.
  Future specifications could define bodies for SUBSCRIBE messages, for
  example, to request specific types of load-control event
  notifications.

  A SUBSCRIBE request sent without a body implies the default
  subscription behavior as specified in Section 4.7.

4.4.  SUBSCRIBE Duration

  The default expiration time for a subscription to load-filtering
  policy is one hour.  Since the desired expiration time may vary
  significantly for subscriptions among SIP entities with different
  signaling relationships, the subscribers and notifiers are
  RECOMMENDED to explicitly negotiate appropriate subscription duration
  when knowledge about the mutual signaling relationship is available.




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4.5.  NOTIFY Bodies

  The body of a NOTIFY request in this event package contains load-
  filtering policies.  The format of the NOTIFY request body MUST be in
  one of the formats defined in the Accept header field of the
  SUBSCRIBE request or be the default format, as specified in
  [RFC6665].  The default data format for the NOTIFY request body of
  this event package is "application/load-control+xml" (defined in
  Section 5).  This means that when a NOTIFY request body exists but no
  Accept header field is specified in a SUBSCRIBE request, the NOTIFY
  request body MUST contain content conforming to the "application/
  load-control+xml" format.

4.6.  Notifier Processing of SUBSCRIBE Requests

  The notifier accepts a new subscription or updates an existing
  subscription upon receiving a valid SUBSCRIBE request.

  If the identity of the subscriber sending the SUBSCRIBE request is
  not allowed to receive load-filtering policies, the notifier MUST
  return a 403 "Forbidden" response.

  If none of the media types specified in the Accept header of the
  SUBSCRIBE request are supported, the notifier SHOULD return a 406
  "Not Acceptable" response.

4.7.  Notifier Generation of NOTIFY Requests

  A notifier MUST send a NOTIFY request with its current load-filtering
  policy to the subscriber upon successfully accepting or refreshing a
  subscription.  If no load-filtering policy needs to be distributed
  when the subscription is received, the notifier SHOULD sent a NOTIFY
  request without a body to the subscriber.  The content-type header
  field of this NOTIFY request MUST indicate the correct body format as
  if the body were present (e.g., "application/load-control+xml").
  Notifiers are likely to send NOTIFY requests without a body when a
  subscription is initiated for the first time, e.g., when a SIP entity
  is just introduced, because there may be no planned events that
  require load filtering at that time.  A notifier SHOULD generate
  NOTIFY requests each time the load-filtering policy changes, with the
  maximum notification rate not exceeding values defined in
  Section 4.10.

4.8.  Subscriber Processing of NOTIFY Requests

  The subscriber is the load-filtering server that enforces load-
  filtering policies received from the notifier.  The way subscribers
  process NOTIFY requests depends on the load-filtering policies



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  conveyed in the notifications.  Typically, load-filtering policies
  consist of rules specifying actions to be applied to requests
  matching certain conditions.  A subscriber receiving a notification
  first installs these rules and then enforces corresponding actions on
  requests matching those conditions, for example, limiting the sending
  rate of call requests destined for a specific callee.

  In the case when load-filtering policies specify a future validity,
  it is possible that when the validity time arrives, the subscription
  to the specific notifier that conveyed the rules has expired.  In
  this case, it is RECOMMENDED that the subscriber re-activate its
  subscription with the corresponding notifier.  Regardless of whether
  or not this re-activation of subscription is successful, when the
  validity time is reached, the subscriber SHOULD enforce the
  corresponding rules.

  Upon receipt of a NOTIFY request with a Subscription-State header
  field containing the value "terminated", the subscription status with
  the particular notifier will be terminated.  Meanwhile, subscribers
  MUST also terminate previously received load-filtering policies from
  that notifier.

  The subscriber MUST discard unknown bodies.  If the NOTIFY request
  contains several bodies, none of them being supported, it SHOULD
  unsubscribe unless it has knowledge that it will possibly receive
  NOTIFY requests with supported bodies from that notifier.  A NOTIFY
  request without a body indicates that no load-filtering policies need
  to be updated.

  When the subscriber enforces load-filtering policies, it needs to
  prioritize requests and select those requests that need to be
  rejected or redirected.  This selection is largely a matter of local
  policy.  It is expected that the subscriber will follow local policy
  as long as the result in reduction of traffic is consistent with the
  overload algorithm in effect at that node.  Accordingly, the
  normative behavior described in the next three paragraphs should be
  interpreted with the understanding that the subscriber will aim to
  preserve local policy to the fullest extent possible.

  o  The subscriber SHOULD honor the local policy for prioritizing SIP
     requests such as policies based on message type, e.g., INVITEs
     versus requests associated with existing sessions.

  o  The subscriber SHOULD honor the local policy for prioritizing SIP
     requests based on the content of the Resource-Priority header
     (RPH, [RFC4412]).  Specific (namespace.value) RPH contents may
     indicate high-priority requests that should be preserved as much




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     as possible during overload.  The RPH contents can also indicate a
     low-priority request that is eligible to be dropped during times
     of overload.

  o  The subscriber SHOULD honor the local policy for prioritizing SIP
     requests relating to emergency calls as identified by the sos URN
     [RFC5031] indicating an emergency request.

  A local policy can be expected to combine both the SIP request type
  and the prioritization markings and SHOULD be honored when overload
  conditions prevail.

4.9.  Handling of Forked Requests

  Forking is not applicable when this load-control event package
  mechanism is used within a single-hop distance between neighboring
  SIP entities.  If communication scope of the load-control event
  package mechanism is among multiple hops, forking is also not
  expected to happen because the subscription request is addressed to a
  clearly defined SIP entity.  However, in the unlikely case when
  forking does happen, the load-control event package only allows the
  first potential dialog-establishing message to create a dialog, as
  specified in Section 5.4.9 of [RFC6665].

4.10.  Rate of Notifications

  The rate of notifications is unlikely to be of concern for this local
  control event package mechanism when it is used in a non-real-time
  mode for relatively static load-filtering policies.  Nevertheless, if
  a situation does arise in which a rather frequently used load
  filtering policy update is needed, it is RECOMMENDED that the
  notifier not generate notifications at a rate higher than once per
  second in all cases, in order to avoid the NOTIFY request itself
  overloading the system.

4.11.  State Delta

  It is likely that updates to specific load-filtering policies are
  made by changing only part of the policy parameters (e.g., acceptable
  request rate or percentage, but not matching identities).  This will
  typically be because the utilization of a resource subject to
  overload depends upon dynamic unknowns such as holding time and the
  relative distribution of offered loads over subscribing SIP entities.
  The updates could originate manually or be determined automatically
  by an algorithm that dynamically computes the load-filtering policies
  (Section 3.2).  Another factor that is usually not known precisely or





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  needs to be computed automatically is the duration of the event
  requiring load filtering.  Therefore, it would also be common for the
  validity to change frequently.

  This event package allows the use of state delta as in [RFC6665] to
  accommodate frequent updates of partial policy parameters.  For each
  NOTIFY transaction in a subscription, a version number that increases
  by exactly one MUST be included in the NOTIFY request body when the
  body is present.  When the subscriber receives a state delta, it
  associates the partial updates to the particular policy by matching
  the appropriate rule id (Appendix D).  If the subscriber receives a
  NOTIFY request with a version number that is increased by more than
  one, it knows that it has missed a state delta and needs to ask for a
  full state snapshot.  Therefore, the subscriber ignores that NOTIFY
  request containing the state delta, and resends a SUBSCRIBE request
  to force a NOTIFY request containing a complete state snapshot.

5.  Load-Control Document

5.1.  Format

  A load-control document is an XML document that describes the load-
  filtering policies.  It inherits and enhances the common policy
  document defined in [RFC4745].  A common policy document contains a
  set of rules.  Each rule consists of three parts: conditions,
  actions, and transformations.  The conditions part is a set of
  expressions containing attributes such as identity, domain, and
  validity time information.  Each expression evaluates to TRUE or
  FALSE.  Conditions are matched on "equality" or "greater than" style
  comparison.  There is no regular expression matching.  Conditions are
  evaluated on receipt of an initial SIP request for a dialog or
  standalone transaction.  If a request matches all conditions in a
  rule set, the action part and the transformation part are consulted
  to determine the "permission" on how to handle the request.  Each
  action or transformation specifies a positive grant to the policy
  server to perform the resulting actions.  Well-defined mechanism are
  available for combining actions and transformations obtained from
  more than one sources.

5.2.  Namespace

  The namespace URI for elements defined by this specification is a
  Uniform Resource Namespace (URN) ([RFC2141]), using the namespace
  identifier "ietf" defined by [RFC2648] and extended by [RFC3688].
  The URN is as follows:

  urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:load-control




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5.3.  Conditions

  [RFC4745] defines three condition elements: <identity>, <sphere>, and
  <validity>.  This specification defines new condition elements and
  reuses the <validity> element.  The <sphere> element is not used.

5.3.1.  Call Identity

  Since the problem space of this specification is different from that
  of [RFC4745], the [RFC4745] <identity> element is not sufficient for
  use with load filtering.  First, load filtering may be applied to
  different identities contained in a request, including identities of
  both the receiving entity and the sending entity.  Second, the
  importance of authentication varies when different identities of a
  request are concerned.  This specification defines new identity
  conditions that can accommodate the granularity of specific SIP
  identity header fields.  The requirement for authentication depends
  on which field is to be matched.

  The identity condition for load filtering is specified by the
  <call-identity> element and its sub-element <sip>.  The <sip> element
  itself contains sub-elements representing SIP sending and receiving
  identity header fields: <from>, <to>, <request-uri>, and
  <p-asserted-identity>.  All those sub-elements are of an extended
  form of the [RFC4745] <identity> element.  In addition to the sub-
  elements including <one>, <except>, and <many> in the <identity>
  element from [RFC4745], the extended form adds two new sub-elements,
  namely, <many-tel> and <except-tel>, which will be explained later in
  this section.

  The [RFC4745] <one> and <except> elements may contain an "id"
  attribute, which is the URI of a single entity to be included or
  excluded in the condition.  When used in the <from>, <to>,
  <request-uri>, and <p-asserted-identity> elements, this "id" value is
  the URI contained in the corresponding SIP header field, i.e., From,
  To, Request-URI, and P-Asserted-Identity.

  When the <call-identity> element contains multiple <sip> sub-
  elements, the result is combined using logical OR.  When the <from>,
  <to>, <request-uri>, and <p-asserted-identity> elements contain
  multiple <one>, <many>, or <many-tel> sub-elements, the result is
  also combined using logical OR.  When the <many> sub-element further
  contains one or more <except> sub-elements, or when the <many-tel>
  sub-element further contains one or more <except-tel> sub-elements,
  the result of each <except> or <except-tel> sub-element is combined
  using a logical OR, similar to that of the [RFC4745] <identity>
  element.  However, when the <sip> element contains multiple <from>,
  <to>, <request-uri>, and <p-asserted-identity> sub-elements, the



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  result is combined using logical AND.  This allows the call identity
  to be specified by multiple fields of a SIP request simultaneously,
  e.g., both the From and the To header fields.

  The following shows an example of the <call-identity> element, which
  matches call requests whose To header field contains the SIP URI
  "sip:[email protected]" or the 'tel' URI
  "tel:+1-212-555-1234".

              <call-identity>
                  <sip>
                      <to>
                          <one id="sip:[email protected]"/>
                          <one id="tel:+1-212-555-1234"/>
                      </to>
                  </sip>
              </call-identity>

  Before evaluating <call-identity> conditions, the subscriber shall
  convert URIs received in SIP header fields in canonical form as per
  [RFC3261], except that the "phone-context" parameter shall not be
  removed, if present.

  The [RFC4745] <many> and <except> elements may take a "domain"
  attribute.  The "domain" attribute specifies a domain name to be
  matched by the domain part of the candidate identity.  Thus, it
  allows matching a large and possibly unknown number of entities
  within a domain.  The "domain" attribute works well for SIP URIs.

  A URI identifying a SIP user, however, can also be a 'tel' URI.
  Therefore, a similar way to match a group of 'tel' URIs is needed.
  There are two forms of 'tel' URIs: for global numbers and local
  numbers.  According to [RFC3966], "All phone numbers MUST use the
  global form unless they cannot be represented as such...Local numbers
  MUST be tagged with a 'phone-context'".  The global number 'tel' URIs
  start with a "+".  The "phone-context" parameter of local numbers may
  be labeled as a global number or any number of its leading digits or
  a domain name.  Both forms of the 'tel' URI make the resulting URI
  globally unique.

  'tel' URIs of global numbers can be grouped by prefixes consisting of
  any number of common leading digits.  For example, a prefix formed by
  a country code or both the country and area code identifies telephone
  numbers within a country or an area.  Since the length of the country
  and area code for different regions are different, the length of the
  number prefix also varies.  This allows further flexibility such as





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  grouping the numbers into sub-areas within the same area code. 'tel'
  URIs of local numbers can be grouped by the value of the
  "phone-context" parameter.

  The <many> and <except> sub-elements in the <identity> element of
  [RFC4745] do not allow additional attributes to be added directly.
  Redefining behavior of their existing "domain" attribute creates
  backward-compatibility issues.  Therefore, this specification defines
  the <many-tel> and <except-tel> sub-elements that extend the
  [RFC4745] <identity> element.  Both of them have a "prefix" attribute
  for grouping 'tel' URIs, similar to the "domain" attribute for
  grouping SIP URIs in existing <many> and <except> sub-elements.  For
  global numbers, the "prefix" attribute value holds any number of
  common leading digits, for example, "+1-212" for US phone numbers
  within area code "212" or "+1-212-854" for the organization with US
  area code "212" and local prefix "854".  For local numbers, the
  "prefix" attribute value contains the "phone-context" parameter
  value.  It should be noted that visual separators (such as the "-"
  sign) in 'tel' URIs are not used for URI comparison as per [RFC3966].

  The following example shows the use of the "prefix" attribute along
  with the "domain" attribute.  It matches those requests calling to
  the number "+1-202-999-1234" but are not calling from a "+1-212"
  prefix or a SIP From URI domain of "manhattan.example.com".

              <call-identity>
                  <sip>
                      <from>
                          <many>
                              <except domain="manhattan.example.com"/>
                          </many>
                          <many-tel>
                              <except-tel prefix="+1-212"/>
                          </many-tel>
                      </from>
                      <to>
                          <one id="tel:+1-202-999-1234"/>
                      </to>
                  </sip>
              </call-identity>

5.3.2.  Method

  The load created on a SIP server depends on the type of initial SIP
  requests for dialogs or standalone transactions.  The <method>
  element specifies the SIP method to which the load-filtering action
  applies.  When this element is not included, the load-filtering
  actions are applicable to all applicable initial requests.  These



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  requests include INVITE, MESSAGE, REGISTER, SUBSCRIBE, OPTIONS, and
  PUBLISH.  Non-initial requests, such as ACK, BYE, and CANCEL MUST NOT
  be subjected to load filtering.  In addition, SUBSCRIBE requests are
  not filtered if the event-type header field indicates the event
  package defined in this specification.

  The following example shows the use of the <method> element in the
  case the filtering actions should be applied to INVITE requests.

          <method>INVITE</method>

5.3.3.  Target SIP Entity

  A SIP server that performs load-filtering may have multiple paths to
  route call requests matching the same set of call identity elements.
  In those situations, the SIP load-filtering server may desire to take
  advantage of alternative paths and only apply load-filtering actions
  to matching requests for the next-hop SIP entity that originated the
  corresponding load-filtering policy.  To achieve that, the SIP load-
  filtering server needs to associate every load-filtering policy with
  its originating SIP entity.  The <target-sip-entity> element is
  defined for that purpose, and it contains the URI of the entity that
  initiated the load-filtering policy, which is generally the
  corresponding notifier.  A notifier MAY include this element as part
  of the condition of its filtering policy being sent to the
  subscriber, as below.

  <target-sip-entity>sip:biloxi.example.com</target-sip-entity>

  When a SIP load-filtering server receives a policy with a
  <target-sip-entity> element, it SHOULD record it and take it into
  consideration when making load-filtering decisions.  If the load-
  filtering server receives a load-filtering policy that does not
  contain a <target-sip-entity> element, it MAY still record the URI of
  the load-filtering policy's originator as the <target-sip-entity>
  information and consider it when making load-filtering decisions.

     The following are two examples of using the <target-sip-entity>
     element.

     Use case I: The network has user A connected to SIP Proxy 1 (SP1),
     user B connected to SIP Proxy 3 (SP3), SP1 and SP3 connected via
     SIP Proxy 2 (SP2), and SP2 connected to an Application Server
     (AS).  Under normal load conditions, a call from A to B is routed
     along the following path: A-SP1-SP2-AS-SP3-B.  The AS provides a
     nonessential service and can be bypassed in case of overload.  Now
     let's assume that AS is overloaded and sends to SP2 a load-
     filtering policy requesting that 50% of all INVITE requests be



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     dropped.  SP2 can maintain AS as the <target-sip-entity> for that
     policy so that it knows the 50% drop action is only applicable to
     call requests that must go through AS, without affecting those
     calls directly routed through SP3 to B.

     Use case II: A translation service for toll-free numbers is
     installed on two Application Servers, AS1 and AS2.  User A is
     connected to SP1 and calls 800-1234-4529, which is translated by
     AS1 and AS2 into a regular E.164 number depending on, e.g., the
     caller's location.  SP1 forwards INVITE requests with Request-URI
     = "800 number" to AS1 or AS2 based on a load-balancing strategy.
     As calls to 800-1234-4529 create a pre-overload condition in AS1,
     AS1 sends to SP1 a load-filtering policy requesting that 50% of
     calls towards 800-1234-4529 be rejected.  In this case, SP1 can
     maintain AS1 as the <target-sip-entity> for the rule, and only
     apply the load-filtering policy on incoming requests that are
     intended to be sent to AS1.  Those requests that are sent to AS2,
     although matching the <call-identity> of the filter, will not be
     affected.

5.3.4.  Validity

  A filtering policy is usually associated with a validity period
  condition.  This specification reuses the <validity> element of
  [RFC4745], which specifies a period of validity time by pairs of
  <from> and <until> sub-elements.  When multiple time periods are
  defined, the validity condition is evaluated to TRUE if the current
  time falls into any of the specified time periods.  That is, it
  represents a logical OR operation across all validity time periods.

  The following example shows a <validity> element specifying a valid
  period from 12:00 to 15:00 US Eastern Standard Time on 2008-05-31.

              <validity>
                  <from>2008-05-31T12:00:00-05:00</from>
                  <until>2008-05-31T15:00:00-05:00</until>
              </validity>

5.4.  Actions

  The actions a load-filtering server takes on loads matching the load-
  filtering conditions are defined by the <accept> element in the load-
  filtering policy, which includes any one of the three sub-elements
  <rate>, <percent>, and <win>.  The <rate> element denotes an absolute
  value of the maximum acceptable request rate in requests per second;
  the <percent> element specifies the relative percentage of incoming
  requests that should be accepted; the <win> element describes the
  acceptable window size supplied by the receiver, which is applicable



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  in window-based load-filtering.  In static load-filtering policy
  configuration scenarios, using the <rate> sub-element is RECOMMENDED
  because it is hard to enforce the percentage rate or window-based
  load filtering when incoming load from upstream or reactions from
  downstream are uncertain.  (See [SIP-OVERLOAD] and [RFC6357] for more
  details on rate-based, loss-based, and window-based load control.)

  In addition, the <accept> element takes an optional "alt-action"
  attribute that can be used to explicitly specify the desired action
  in case a request cannot be processed.  The "alt-action" can take one
  of the following three values: "reject", "redirect", or "drop".

  o  The "reject" action is the default value for "alt-action".  It
     means that the load-filtering server will reject the request with
     a 503 "Service Unavailable" response message.

  o  The "redirect" action means redirecting the request to another
     target.  When it is used, an "alt-target" attribute MUST be
     defined.  The "alt-target" specifies one URI or a list of URIs
     where the request should be redirected.  The server sends out the
     redirect URIs in a 300-class response message.

  o  The "drop" action means simply ignoring the request without doing
     anything, which can, in certain cases, help save processing
     capability during overload.  For example, when SIP is running over
     a reliable transport such as TCP, the "drop" action does not send
     out the rejection response, neither does it close the transport
     connection.  However, when running SIP over an unreliable
     transport such as UDP, using the "drop" action will create message
     retransmissions that further worsen the possible overload
     situation.  Therefore, any "drop" action applied to an unreliable
     transport MUST be treated as if it were "reject".

  The above "alt-action" processing can also be illustrated through the
  following pseudocode.

          SWITCH "alt-action"
            "redirect": "redirect"
            "drop":
              IF unreliable-transport
                THEN treat as "reject"
              ELSE
                "drop"
            "reject": "reject"
            default: "reject"
          END





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  In the following <actions> element example, the server accepts
  maximum of 100 call requests per second.  The remaining calls are
  redirected to an answering machine.

          <actions>
              <accept alt-action="redirect" alt-target=
                      "sip:[email protected]">
                  <rate>100</rate>
              </accept>
          </actions>

6.  XML Schema Definition for Load Control

  This section defines the XML schema for the load-control document.
  It extends the Common Policy schema in [RFC4745] in two ways.
  Firstly, it defines two mandatory attributes for the <ruleset>
  element: "version" and "state".  The "version" attribute allows the
  recipient of the notification to properly order them.  Versions start
  at zero and increase by one for each new document sent to a
  subscriber within the same subscription.  Versions MUST be
  representable using a non-negative 32-bit integer.  The "state"
  attribute indicates whether the document contains a full load-
  filtering policy update or only state delta as partial update.
  Secondly, it defines new members of the <conditions> and <actions>
  elements.

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <xs:schema targetNamespace="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:load-control"
      xmlns:lc="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:load-control"
      xmlns:cp="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:common-policy"
      xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
      elementFormDefault="qualified"
      attributedFormDefault="unqualified">

  <xs:import namespace="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:common-policy"/>

  <!-- RULESET -->

  <xs:element name="ruleset">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:complexContent>
        <xs:restriction base="xs:anyType">
          <xs:sequence>
            <xs:element name="rule" type="cp:ruleType"
            minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
          </xs:sequence>
        </xs:restriction>
      </xs:complexContent>



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      <xs:attribute name="version" type="xs:integer" use="required"/>
      <xs:attribute name="state" use="required">
        <xs:simpleType>
          <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
            <xs:enumeration value="full"/>
            <xs:enumeration value="partial"/>
          </xs:restriction>
        </xs:simpleType>
      </xs:attribute>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>

  <!-- CONDITIONS -->

  <!-- CALL IDENTITY -->
  <xs:element name="call-identity" type="lc:call-identity-type"/>

  <!-- CALL IDENTITY TYPE -->
  <xs:complexType name="call-identity-type">
    <xs:choice>
      <xs:element name="sip" type="lc:sip-id-type"/>
      <any namespace="##other" processContents="lax" minOccurs="0"
      maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
    </xs:choice>
    <anyAtrribute namespace="##other" processContents="lax"/>
  </xs:complexType>

  <!-- SIP ID TYPE -->
  <xs:complexType name="sip-id-type">
    <xs:sequence>
      <element name="from" type="lc:identityType" minOccurs="0"/>
      <element name="to" type="lc:identityType" minOccurs="0"/>
      <element name="request-uri" type="lc:identityType"
      minOccurs="0"/>
      <element name="p-asserted-identity" type="lc:identityType"
      minOccurs="0"/>
      <any namespace="##other" processContents="lax" minOccurs="0"
      maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
    </xs:sequence>
    <anyAtrribute namespace="##other" processContents="lax"/>
  </xs:complexType>

  <!-- IDENTITY TYPE -->
  <xs:complexType name="identityType">
    <xs:complexContent>
      <xs:restriction base="xs:anyType">
        <xs:choice minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="unbounded">
          <xs:element name="one" type="cp:oneType"/>



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          <xs:element name="many" type="lc:manyType"/>
          <xs:element name="many-tel" type="lc:manyTelType"/>
          <xs:any namespace="##other" processContents="lax"/>
        </xs:choice>
      </xs:restriction>
    </xs:complexContent>
  </xs:complexType>

  <!-- MANY-TEL TYPE -->
  <xs:complexType name="manyTelType">
    <xs:complexContent>
      <xs:restriction base="xs:anyType">
        <xs:choice minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded">
          <xs:element name="except-tel" type="lc:exceptTelType"/>
          <xs:any namespace="##other"
          minOccurs="0" processContents="lax"/>
        </xs:choice>
        <xs:attribute name="prefix"
        use="optional" type="xs:string"/>
      </xs:restriction>
    </xs:complexContent>
  </xs:complexType>

  <!-- EXCEPT-TEL TYPE -->
  <xs:complexType name="exceptTelType">
    <xs:attribute name="prefix" type="xs:string" use="optional"/>
    <xs:attribute name="id" type="xs:anyURI" use="optional"/>
  </xs:complexType>

  <!-- METHOD -->
  <xs:element name="method" type="lc:method-type"/>

  <!-- METHOD TYPE -->
  <xs:simpleType name="method-type">
    <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
      <xs:enumeration value="INVITE"/>
      <xs:enumeration value="MESSAGE"/>
      <xs:enumeration value="REGISTER"/>
      <xs:enumeration value="SUBSCRIBE"/>
      <xs:enumeration value="OPTIONS"/>
      <xs:enumeration value="PUBLISH"/>
    </xs:restriction>
  </xs:simpleType>

  <!-- TARGET SIP ENTITY -->
  <xs:element name="target-sip-entity" type="xs:anyURI" minOccurs="0"/>

  <!-- ACTIONS -->



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  <xs:element name="accept">
    <xs:choice>
      <element name="rate" type="xs:decimal" minOccurs="0"/>
      <element name="win" type="xs:integer" minOccurs="0"/>
      <element name="percent" type="xs:decimal" minOccurs="0"/>
      <any namespace="##other" processContents="lax" minOccurs="0"
      maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
    </xs:choice>
    <xs:attribute name="alt-action" type="xs:string" default="reject"/>
    <xs:attribute name="alt-target" type="lc:alt-target-type"
    use="optional"/>
    <anyAtrribute namespace="##other" processContents="lax"/>
  </xs:element>

  <!-- ALT TARGET TYPE -->
  <xs:simpleType name="alt-target-type">
    <xs:list itemType="xs:anyURI"/>
  </xs:simpleType>

  </xs:schema>

7.  Security Considerations

  Two primary security considerations arise from this specification.
  One is the distribution mechanism for the load filtering policy that
  is based on the SIP event notification framework, and the other is
  the enforcement mechanism for the load-filtering policy.

  Security considerations for SIP event package mechanisms are covered
  in Section 6 of [RFC6665].  A particularly relevant security concern
  for this event package is that if the notifiers can be spoofed,
  attackers can send fake notifications asking subscribers to throttle
  all traffic, leading to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.  Therefore,
  this SIP load-filtering mechanism MUST be used in a Trust Domain
  (Section 3.4).  But if a legitimate notifier in the Trust Domain is
  itself compromised, additional mechanisms will be needed to detect
  the attack.

  Security considerations for load-filtering policy enforcement depends
  very much on the contents of the policy.  This specification defines
  a possible match of the following SIP header fields in a load-
  filtering policy: <from>, <to>, <request-uri>, and
  <p-asserted-identity>.  The exact requirement to authenticate and
  authorize these fields is up to the service provider.  In general, if
  the identity field represents the source of the request, it SHOULD be
  authenticated and authorized; if the identity field represents the
  destination of the request, the authentication and authorization is
  optional.



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  In addition, the "redirect" action (Section 5.4) could facilitate a
  reflection denial-of-service attack.  If a number of SIP proxy
  servers in a Trust Domain are using UDP and configured to get their
  policies from a central server.  An attacker spoofs the central
  server's address to send a number of NOTIFY bodies telling the proxy
  servers to redirect all calls to [email protected].
  The proxy servers then redirect all calls to the victim, who then
  becomes a victim of Denial of Service attack and becomes
  inaccessiable from the Internet.  To address this type of threat,
  this specification requires that a Trust Domain agrees on what types
  of calls can be affected as well as on the destinations to which
  calls may be redirected, as in Section 3.4.

8.  IANA Considerations

  This specification registers a SIP event package, a new media type, a
  new XML namespace, and a new XML schema.

8.1.  Load-Control Event Package Registration

  This section registers an event package based on the registration
  procedures defined in [RFC6665].

  Package name: load-control

  Type: package

  Published specification: This specification

  Person to contact: Charles Shen, [email protected]

8.2.  application/load-control+xml Media Type Registration

  This section registers a new media type based on the procedures
  defined in [RFC6838] and guidelines in [RFC3023].

  Type name: application

  Subtype name: load-control+xml

  Required parameters: none

  Optional parameters: Same as charset parameter of application/xml as
  specified in [RFC3023].

  Encoding considerations: Same as encoding considerations of
  application/xml as specified in [RFC3023].




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  Security considerations: See Section 10 of [RFC3023] and Section 7 of
  this specification.

  Interoperability considerations: none

  Published specification: This specification

  Applications that use this media type: Applications that perform load
  control of SIP entities.

  Fragment identifier considerations: Same as fragment identifier
  considerations of application/xml as specified in [RFC3023].

  Additional Information:

     Deprecated alias names for this type: none

     Magic Number(s): none

     File Extension(s): .xml

     Macintosh file type code(s): "TEXT"

  Person and email address for further information: Charles Shen,
  [email protected]

  Intended usage: COMMON

  Restrictions on usage: none

  Author: Charles Shen, Henning Schulzrinne, Arata Koike

  Change controller: IESG

  Provisional registration? (standards tree only): no

8.3.  URN Sub-Namespace Registration

  This section registers a new XML namespace, as per the guidelines in
  [RFC3688]

  URI: The URI for this namespace is

     urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:load-control

  Registrant Contact: IETF SOC Working Group <[email protected]>,
  as designated by the IESG <[email protected]>




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  XML:

  BEGIN
  <?xml version="1.0"?>
  <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML Basic 1.0//EN"
               "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-basic/xhtml-basic10.dtd">
  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="content-type"
      content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1"/>
    <title>SIP Load-Control Namespace</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Namespace for SIP Load Control</h1>
    <h2>urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:load-control</h2>
    <p>See <a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7200.txt">
        RFC 7200</a>.</p>
  </body>
  </html>
  END

8.4.  Load-Control Schema Registration

  URI: urn:ietf:params:xml:schema:load-control

  Registrant Contact: IETF SOC working group, Charles Shen
  ([email protected]).

  XML: the XML schema contained in Section 6 has been registered.

  Its first line is

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

  and its last line is

  </xs:schema>














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9.  Acknowledgements

  The authors would like to thank Jari Arkko, Richard Barnes, Stewart
  Bryant, Gonzalo Camarillo, Bruno Chatras, Benoit Claise, Spencer
  Dawkins, Martin Dolly, Keith Drage, Ashutosh Dutta, Donald Eastlake,
  Adrian Farrel, Stephen Farrell, Janet Gunn, Vijay Gurbani, Brian
  Haberman, Volker Hilt, Geoff Hunt, Carolyn Johnson, Hadriel Kaplan,
  Paul Kyzivat, Barry Leiba, Pearl Liang, Salvatore Loreto, Timothy
  Moran, Eric Noel, Parthasarathi R, Pete Resnick, Adam Roach, Dan
  Romascanu, Shida Schubert, Robert Sparks, Martin Stiemerling, Sean
  Turner, Phil Williams, and other members of the SOC and SIPPING
  working groups for many helpful comments.  In particular, Bruno
  Chatras proposed the <method> and <target-sip-entity> condition
  elements along with many other text improvements.  Janet Gunn
  provided detailed text suggestions including Appendix C. Eric Noel
  suggested clarification on load-filtering policy distribution
  initialization process.  Shida Schubert made many suggestions such as
  terminology usage.  Phil Williams suggested adding support for delta
  updates.  Ashutosh Dutta gave pointers to Public Switched Telephone
  Network (PSTN) references.  Adam Roach suggested improvements related
  to RFC 6665 and offered other helpful clarifications.  Richard Barnes
  made many suggestions such as referencing the Trust Domain concept of
  RFCs 3324 and 3325, the use of a separate element for 'tel' URI
  grouping, and addressing the "redirect" action security threat.

10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

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

  [RFC2141]  Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.

  [RFC3023]  Murata, M., St. Laurent, S., and D. Kohn, "XML Media
             Types", RFC 3023, January 2001.

  [RFC3261]  Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston,
             A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E.
             Schooler, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261,
             June 2002.

  [RFC3688]  Mealling, M., "The IETF XML Registry", BCP 81, RFC 3688,
             January 2004.

  [RFC3966]  Schulzrinne, H., "The tel URI for Telephone Numbers", RFC
             3966, December 2004.




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  [RFC4745]  Schulzrinne, H., Tschofenig, H., Morris, J., Cuellar, J.,
             Polk, J., and J. Rosenberg, "Common Policy: A Document
             Format for Expressing Privacy Preferences", RFC 4745,
             February 2007.

  [RFC6665]  Roach, A., "SIP-Specific Event Notification", RFC 6665,
             July 2012.

  [RFC6838]  Freed, N., Klensin, J., and T. Hansen, "Media Type
             Specifications and Registration Procedures", BCP 13, RFC
             6838, January 2013.

10.2.  Informative References

  [E.300SerSup3]
             ITU-T, "North American Precise Audible Tone Plan",
             Recommendation E.300 Series Supplement 3, November 1988.

  [E.412]    ITU-T, "Network Management Controls", Recommendation
             E.412-2003, January 2003.

  [Q.1248.2] ITU-T, "Interface Recommendation for Intelligent Network
             Capability Set4:SCF-SSF interface", Recommendation
             Q.1248.2, July 2001.

  [RFC2648]  Moats, R., "A URN Namespace for IETF Documents", RFC 2648,
             August 1999.

  [RFC3324]  Watson, M., "Short Term Requirements for Network Asserted
             Identity", RFC 3324, November 2002.

  [RFC3325]  Jennings, C., Peterson, J., and M. Watson, "Private
             Extensions to the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for
             Asserted Identity within Trusted Networks", RFC 3325,
             November 2002.

  [RFC4412]  Schulzrinne, H. and J. Polk, "Communications Resource
             Priority for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC
             4412, February 2006.

  [RFC4825]  Rosenberg, J., "The Extensible Markup Language (XML)
             Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP)", RFC 4825, May 2007.

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





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  [RFC5390]  Rosenberg, J., "Requirements for Management of Overload in
             the Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 5390, December 2008.

  [RFC6357]  Hilt, V., Noel, E., Shen, C., and A. Abdelal, "Design
             Considerations for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
             Overload Control", RFC 6357, August 2011.

  [SIP-OVERLOAD]
             Gurbani, V., Ed., Hilt, V., and H. Schulzrinne, "Session
             Initiation Protocol (SIP) Overload Control", Work in
             Progress, March 2014.








































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Appendix A.  Definitions

  This specification reuses the definitions for "Event Package",
  "Notification", "Notifier", "Subscriber", and "Subscription" as in
  [RFC6665].  The following additional definitions are also used.

  Load Filtering:  A load-control mechanism that applies specific
     actions to selected loads (e.g., SIP requests) matching specific
     conditions.

  Load-Filtering Policy:  A set of zero or more load-filtering rules,
     also known as load-filtering rule set.

  Load-Filtering Rule:  Conditions and actions to be applied for load
     filtering.

  Load-Filtering Condition:  Elements that describe how to select loads
     to apply load-filtering actions.  This specification defines the
     <call-identity>, <method>, <target-sip-identity>, and <validity>
     condition elements (Section 5.3).

  Load-Filtering Action:  An operation to be taken by a load-filtering
     server on loads that match the load-filtering conditions.  This
     specification allows actions such as accept, reject, and redirect
     of loads (Section 5.4).

  Load-Filtering Server:  A server that performs load filtering.  In
     the context of this specification, the load-filtering server is
     the subscriber, which receives load-filtering policies from the
     notifier and enforces those policies during load filtering.

  Load-Control Document:  An XML document that describes the load-
     filtering policies (Section 5).  It inherits and enhances the
     common policy document defined in [RFC4745].

Appendix B.  Design Requirements

  The SIP load-filtering mechanism needs to satisfy the following
  requirements:

  o  For simplicity, the solution should focus on a method for
     controlling SIP load, rather than a generic application-layer
     mechanism.

  o  The load-filtering policy needs to be distributed efficiently to
     possibly a large subset of all SIP elements.





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  o  The solution should reuse existing SIP protocol mechanisms to
     reduce implementation and deployment complexity.

  o  For predictable overload situations, such as holidays and mass
     calling events, the load-filtering policy should specify during
     what time it is to be applied, so that the information can be
     distributed ahead of time.

  o  For destination-specific overload situations, the load-filtering
     policy should be able to describe the destination domain or the
     callee.

  o  To address accidental and intentional high-volume call generators,
     the load-filtering policy should be able to specify the caller.

  o  Caller and callee need to be specified as both SIP URIs and 'tel'
     URIs [RFC3966] in load-filtering policies.

  o  It should be possible to specify particular information in the SIP
     headers (e.g., prefixes in telephone numbers) that allow load
     filtering over limited regionally focused overloads.

  o  The solution should draw upon experiences from related PSTN
     mechanisms [Q.1248.2] [E.412] [E.300SerSup3] where applicable.

  o  The solution should be extensible to meet future needs.

Appendix C.  Discussion of How This Specification Meets the Requirements
            of RFC 5390

  This section evaluates whether the load-control event package
  mechanism defined in this specification satisfies various SIP
  overload control requirements set forth by [RFC5390].  As mentioned
  in Section 1, this specification complements other efforts in the
  overall SIP load-control solution space.  Therefore, not all RFC 5390
  requirements are found applicable to this specification.  This
  specification categorizes the assessment results into Yes (the
  requirement is met), P/A (Partially Applicable), No (must be used in
  conjunction with another mechanism to meet the requirement), and N/A
  (Not Applicable).

     REQ 1: The overload mechanism shall strive to maintain the overall
     useful throughput (taking into consideration the quality-of-
     service needs of the using applications) of a SIP server at
     reasonable levels, even when the incoming load on the network is
     far in excess of its capacity.  The overall throughput under load
     is the ultimate measure of the value of an overload control
     mechanism.



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  P/A.  The goal of load filtering is to prevent overload or maintain
  overall goodput during the time of overload, but it is dependent on
  the predictions of the load and the computations as well as
  distribution of the filtering policies.  If the load predictions or
  filtering policy computations are incorrect, or the filtering policy
  is not properly distributed, the mechanism will be less effective.
  On the other hand, if the load can be accurately predicted and
  filtering policies be computed and distributed appropriately, this
  requirement can be met.

     REQ 2: When a single network element fails, goes into overload, or
     suffers from reduced processing capacity, the mechanism should
     strive to limit the impact of this on other elements in the
     network.  This helps to prevent a small-scale failure from
     becoming a widespread outage.

  N/A if load-filtering policies are installed in advance and do not
  change during the potential overload period, P/A if load-filtering
  policies are dynamically adjusted.  The algorithm to dynamically
  compute load-filtering policies is outside the scope of this
  specification, while the distribution of the updated filtering
  policies uses the event package mechanism of this specification.

     REQ 3: The mechanism should seek to minimize the amount of
     configuration required in order to work.  For example, it is
     better to avoid needing to configure a server with its SIP message
     throughput, as these kinds of quantities are hard to determine.

  No.  This mechanism is entirely dependent on advance configuration,
  based on advance knowledge.  In order to satisfy REQ 3, it should be
  used in conjunction with other mechanisms that are not based on
  advance configuration.

     REQ 4: The mechanism must be capable of dealing with elements that
     do not support it, so that a network can consist of a mix of
     elements that do and don't support it.  In other words, the
     mechanism should not work only in environments where all elements
     support it.  It is reasonable to assume that it works better in
     such environments, of course.  Ideally, there should be
     incremental improvements in overall network throughput as
     increasing numbers of elements in the network support the
     mechanism.

  No.  This mechanism is entirely dependent on the participation of all
  possible neighbors.  In order to satisfy REQ 4, it should be used in
  conjunction with other mechanisms, some of which are described in
  Section 3.4.




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     REQ 5: The mechanism should not assume that it will only be
     deployed in environments with completely trusted elements.  It
     should seek to operate as effectively as possible in environments
     where other elements are malicious; this includes preventing
     malicious elements from obtaining more than a fair share of
     service.

  No.  This mechanism is entirely dependent on the non-malicious
  participation of all possible neighbors.  In order to satisfy REQ 5,
  it should be used in conjunction with other mechanisms, some of which
  are described in Section 3.4.

     REQ 6: When overload is signaled by means of a specific message,
     the message must clearly indicate that it is being sent because of
     overload, as opposed to other, non overload-based failure
     conditions.  This requirement is meant to avoid some of the
     problems that have arisen from the reuse of the 503 response code
     for multiple purposes.  Of course, overload is also signaled by
     lack of response to requests.  This requirement applies only to
     explicit overload signals.

  N/A.  This mechanism signals anticipated overload, not actual
  overload.  However, the signals in this mechanism are not used for
  any other purpose.

     REQ 7: The mechanism shall provide a way for an element to
     throttle the amount of traffic it receives from an upstream
     element.  This throttling shall be graded so that it is not all-
     or-nothing as with the current 503 mechanism.  This recognizes the
     fact that "overload" is not a binary state and that there are
     degrees of overload.

  Yes.  This event package allows rate-/loss-/window-based overload
  control options as discussed in Section 5.4.

     REQ 8: The mechanism shall ensure that, when a request was not
     processed successfully due to overload (or failure) of a
     downstream element, the request will not be retried on another
     element that is also overloaded or whose status is unknown.  This
     requirement derives from REQ 1.

  N/A to the load-control event package mechanism itself.

     REQ 9: That a request has been rejected from an overloaded element
     shall not unduly restrict the ability of that request to be
     submitted to and processed by an element that is not overloaded.
     This requirement derives from REQ 1.




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  Yes.  For example, load-filtering policy (Section 3.1) can include
  alternative forwarding destinations for rejected requests.

     REQ 10: The mechanism should support servers that receive requests
     from a large number of different upstream elements, where the set
     of upstream elements is not enumerable.

  No.  Because this mechanism requires advance configuration of
  specifically identified neighbors, it does not support environments
  where the number and identity of the upstream neighbors are not known
  in advance.  In order to satisfy REQ 10, it should be used in
  conjunction with other mechanisms.

     REQ 11: The mechanism should support servers that receive requests
     from a finite set of upstream elements, where the set of upstream
     elements is enumerable.

  Yes.  See also answer to REQ 10.

     REQ 12: The mechanism should work between servers in different
     domains.

  Yes.  The load-control event package mechanism is not limited by
  domain boundaries.  However, it is likely more applicable in intra-
  domain scenarios than in inter-domain scenarios due to security and
  other concerns (see also Section 3.4).

     REQ 13: The mechanism must not dictate a specific algorithm for
     prioritizing the processing of work within a proxy during times of
     overload.  It must permit a proxy to prioritize requests based on
     any local policy, so that certain ones (such as a call for
     emergency services or a call with a specific value of the
     Resource-Priority header field [RFC4412]) are given preferential
     treatment, such as not being dropped, being given additional
     retransmission, or being processed ahead of others.

  P/A.  This mechanism does not specifically address the prioritizing
  of work during times of overload.  But it does not preclude any
  particular local policy.

     REQ 14: The mechanism should provide unambiguous directions to
     clients on when they should retry a request and when they should
     not.  This especially applies to TCP connection establishment and
     SIP registrations, in order to mitigate against avalanche restart.

  N/A to the load-control event package mechanism itself.





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     REQ 15: In cases where a network element fails, is so overloaded
     that it cannot process messages, or cannot communicate due to a
     network failure or network partition, it will not be able to
     provide explicit indications of the nature of the failure or its
     levels of congestion.  The mechanism must properly function in
     these cases.

  P/A.  Because the load-filtering policies are provisioned in advance,
  they are not affected by the overload or failure of other network
  elements.  On the other hand, they may not, in those cases, be able
  to protect the overloaded network elements (see REQ 1).

     REQ 16: The mechanism should attempt to minimize the overhead of
     the overload control messaging.

  Yes.  The standardized SIP event package mechanism [RFC6665] is used.

     REQ 17: The overload mechanism must not provide an avenue for
     malicious attack, including DoS and DDoS attacks.

  P/A.  This mechanism does provide a potential avenue for malicious
  attacks.  Therefore, the security mechanisms for SIP event packages,
  in general, [RFC6665] and Section 7 of this specification should be
  used.

     REQ 18: The overload mechanism should be unambiguous about whether
     a load indication applies to a specific IP address, host, or URI,
     so that an upstream element can determine the load of the entity
     to which a request is to be sent.

  Yes.  The identity of load indication is covered in the load-
  filtering policy format definition in Section 3.1.

     REQ 19: The specification for the overload mechanism should give
     guidance on which message types might be desirable to process over
     others during times of overload, based on SIP-specific
     considerations.  For example, it may be more beneficial to process
     a SUBSCRIBE refresh with Expires of zero than a SUBSCRIBE refresh
     with a non-zero expiration (since the former reduces the overall
     amount of load on the element), or to process re-INVITEs over new
     INVITEs.

  N/A to the load-control event package mechanism itself.

     REQ 20: In a mixed environment of elements that do and do not
     implement the overload mechanism, no disproportionate benefit
     shall accrue to the users or operators of the elements that do not
     implement the mechanism.



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  No.  This mechanism is entirely dependent on the participation of all
  possible neighbors.  In order to satisfy REQ 20, it should be used in
  conjunction with other mechanisms, some of which are described in
  Section 3.4.

     REQ 21: The overload mechanism should ensure that the system
     remains stable.  When the offered load drops from above the
     overall capacity of the network to below the overall capacity, the
     throughput should stabilize and become equal to the offered load.

  N/A to the load-control event package mechanism itself.

     REQ 22: It must be possible to disable the reporting of load
     information towards upstream targets based on the identity of
     those targets.  This allows a domain administrator who considers
     the load of their elements to be sensitive information, to
     restrict access to that information.  Of course, in such cases,
     there is no expectation that the overload mechanism itself will
     help prevent overload from that upstream target.

  N/A to the load-control event package mechanism itself.

     REQ 23: It must be possible for the overload mechanism to work in
     cases where there is a load balancer in front of a farm of
     proxies.

  Yes.  The load-control event package mechanism does not preclude its
  use in a scenario with server farms.

Appendix D.  Complete Examples

D.1.  Load-Control Document Examples

  This section presents two complete examples of load-control documents
  valid with respect to the XML schema defined in Section 6.

  The first example assumes that a set of hotlines are set up at
  "sip:[email protected]" and "tel:+1-212-555-1234".  The
  hotlines are activated from 12:00 to 15:00 US Eastern Standard Time
  on 2008-05-31.  The goal is to limit the incoming calls to the
  hotlines to 100 requests per second.  Calls that exceed the rate
  limit are explicitly rejected.









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  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <ruleset xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:common-policy"
              xmlns:lc="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:load-control"
              version="0" state="full">

      <rule id="f3g44k1">
          <conditions>
              <lc:call-identity>
                  <lc:sip>
                      <lc:to>
                          <one id="sip:[email protected]"/>
                          <one id="tel:+1-212-555-1234"/>
                      </lc:to>
                  </lc:sip>
              </lc:call-identity>
              <method>INVITE</method>
              <validity>
                  <from>2008-05-31T12:00:00-05:00</from>
                  <until>2008-05-31T15:00:00-05:00</until>
              </validity>
          </conditions>
          <actions>
              <lc:accept alt-action="reject">
                  <lc:rate>100</lc:rate>
              </lc:accept>
          </actions>

      </rule>
  </ruleset>

  The second example optimizes the usage of server resources during the
  three-day period following a hurricane.  Incoming calls to the domain
  "sandy.example.com" or to call destinations with prefix "+1-212" will
  be limited to a rate of 100 requests per second, except for those
  calls originating from a particular rescue team domain
  "rescue.example.com".  Outgoing calls from the hurricane domain or
  calls within the local domain are never limited.  All calls that are
  throttled due to the rate limit will be forwarded to an answering
  machine with updated hurricane rescue information.












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  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <ruleset xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:common-policy"
      xmlns:lc="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:load-control"
      version="1" state="full">

      <rule id="f3g44k2">
          <conditions>
              <lc:call-identity>
                  <lc:sip>
                      <lc:to>
                          <many domain="sandy.example.com"/>
                          <many-tel prefix="+1-212"/>
                      </lc:to>
                      <lc:from>
                          <many>
                              <except domain="sandy.example.com"/>
                              <except domain="rescue.example.com"/>
                          </many>
                      </lc:from>
                  </lc:sip>
              </lc:call-identity>
              <method>INVITE</method>
              <validity>
                  <from>2012-10-25T09:00:00+01:00</from>
                  <until>2012-10-28T09:00:00+01:00</until>
              </validity>
          </conditions>
          <actions>
              <lc:accept alt-action="redirect" alt-target=
                      "sip:[email protected]">
                  <lc:rate>100</lc:rate>
              </lc:accept>
          </actions>

      </rule>
  </ruleset>

  Sometimes it may occur that multiple rules in a ruleset define
  actions that match the same methods, call identity and validity.  In
  those cases, the "first-match-wins" principle is used.  For example,
  in the following ruleset, the first rule requires all calls from the
  "example.com" domain to be rejected.  Even though the rule following
  that one specifies that calls from "sip:[email protected]" be
  redirected to a specific target "sip:[email protected]", the calls from
  "sip:[email protected]" will still be rejected because they have
  already been matched by the earlier rule.





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  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <ruleset xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:common-policy"
      xmlns:lc="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:load-control"
      version="1" state="full">

      <rule id="f3g44k3">
          <conditions>
              <lc:call-identity>
                  <lc:sip>
                      <lc:from>
                          <many domain="example.com"/>
                      </lc:from>
                  </lc:sip>
              </lc:call-identity>
              <method>INVITE</method>
              <validity>
                  <from>2013-7-2T09:00:00+01:00</from>
                  <until>2013-7-3T09:00:00+01:00</until>
              </validity>
          </conditions>
          <actions>
              <lc:accept alt-action="reject">
                  <lc:rate>0</lc:rate>
              </lc:accept>
          </actions>
      </rule>

      <rule id="f3g44k4">
          <conditions>
              <lc:call-identity>
                  <lc:sip>
                      <lc:from>
                          <one id="sip:[email protected]"/>
                      </lc:from>
                  </lc:sip>
              </lc:call-identity>
              <method>INVITE</method>
              <validity>
                  <from>2013-7-2T09:00:00+01:00</from>
                  <until>2013-7-3T09:00:00+01:00</until>
              </validity>
          </conditions>
          <actions>
              <lc:accept alt-action="redirect" alt-target=
                      "sip:[email protected]">
                  <lc:rate>0</lc:rate>
              </lc:accept>
          </actions>



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      </rule>
  </ruleset>

D.2.  Message Flow Examples

  This section presents an example message flow of using the load-
  control event package mechanism defined in this specification.

     atlanta             biloxi
        | F1 SUBSCRIBE      |
        |------------------>|
        | F2 200 OK         |
        |<------------------|
        | F3 NOTIFY         |
        |<------------------|
        | F4 200 OK         |
        |------------------>|

     F1 SUBSCRIBE atlanta.example.com -> biloxi.example.com

        SUBSCRIBE sip:biloxi.example.com SIP/2.0
        Via: SIP/2.0/TCP atlanta.example.com;branch=z9hG4bKy7cjbu3
        From: sip:atlanta.example.com;tag=162ab5
        To: sip:biloxi.example.com
        Call-ID: [email protected]
        CSeq: 2012 SUBSCRIBE
        Contact: sip:atlanta.example.com
        Event: load-control
        Max-Forwards: 70
        Accept: application/load-control+xml
        Expires: 3600
        Content-Length: 0

     F2 200 OK   biloxi.example.com -> atlanta.example.com

        SIP/2.0 200 OK
        Via: SIP/2.0/TCP biloxi.example.com;branch=z9hG4bKy7cjbu3
          ;received=192.0.2.1
        To: <sip:biloxi.example.com>;tag=331dc8
        From: <sip:atlanta.example.com>;tag=162ab5
        Call-ID: [email protected]
        CSeq: 2012 SUBSCRIBE
        Expires: 3600
        Contact: sip:biloxi.example.com
        Content-Length: 0






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     F3 NOTIFY  biloxi.example.com -> atlanta.example.com

        NOTIFY sip:atlanta.example.com SIP/2.0
        Via: SIP/2.0/TCP biloxi.example.com;branch=z9hG4bKy71g2ks
        From: <sip:biloxi.example.com>;tag=331dc8
        To: <sip:atlanta.example.com>;tag=162ab5
        Call-ID: [email protected]
        Event: load-control
        Subscription-State: active;expires=3599
        Max-Forwards: 70
        CSeq: 1775 NOTIFY
        Contact: sip:biloxi.example.com
        Content-Type: application/load-control+xml
        Content-Length: ...

        [Load-Control Document]

     F4 200 OK atlanta.example.com -> biloxi.example.com

        SIP/2.0 200 OK
        Via: SIP/2.0/TCP atlanta.example.com;branch=z9hG4bKy71g2ks
          ;received=192.0.2.2
        From: <sip:biloxi.example.com>;tag=331dc8
        To: <sip:atlanta.example.com>;tag=162ab5
        Call-ID: [email protected]
        CSeq: 1775 NOTIFY
        Content-Length: 0

Appendix E.  Related Work

E.1.  Relationship to Load Filtering in PSTN

  It is known that an existing PSTN network also uses a load-filtering
  mechanism to prevent overload and the filtering policy configuration
  is done manually except in specific cases when the Intelligent
  Network architecture is used [Q.1248.2][E.412].  This specification
  defines a load-filtering mechanism based on the SIP event
  notification framework that allows automated filtering policy
  distribution in suitable environments.

  PSTN overload control uses messages that specify an outgoing control
  list, call gap duration, and control duration [Q.1248.2][E.412].
  These items correspond roughly to the identity, action, and time
  fields of the SIP load-filtering policy defined in this
  specification.  However, the load-filtering policy defined in this
  specification is much more generic and flexible as opposed to its
  PSTN counterpart.




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  Firstly, PSTN load filtering only applies to telephone numbers.  The
  identity element of SIP load-filtering policy allows both SIP URI and
  telephone numbers (through 'tel' URI) to be specified.  These
  identities can be arbitrarily grouped by SIP domains or any number of
  leading prefixes of the telephone numbers.

  Secondly, the PSTN load-filtering action is usually limited to call
  gapping.  The action field in SIP load-filtering policy allows more
  flexible possibilities such as rate throttle and others.

  Thirdly, the duration field in PSTN load filtering specifies a value
  in seconds for the load-filtering duration only, and the allowed
  values are mapped into a value set.  The time field in SIP load-
  filtering policy may specify not only a duration, but also a future
  activation time that could be especially useful for automating load
  filtering for predictable overloads.

  PSTN load filtering can be performed in both edge switches and
  transit switches; the SIP load filtering can also be applied in both
  edge proxy servers and core proxy servers, and even in capable user
  agents.

  PSTN load filtering also has special accommodation for High
  Probability of Completion (HPC) calls, which would be similar to
  calls designated by the SIP Resource Priority Headers [RFC4412].  The
  SIP load-filtering mechanism also allows prioritizing the treatment
  of these calls by specifying favorable actions for them.

  PSTN load filtering also provides an administrative option for
  routing failed call attempts to either a reorder tone [E.300SerSup3]
  indicating overload conditions or a special recorded announcement.  A
  similar capability can be provided in the SIP load-filtering
  mechanism by specifying appropriate "alt-action" attribute in the SIP
  load-filtering action field.

E.2.  Relationship with Other IETF SIP Overload Control Efforts

  The load-filtering policies in this specification consist of
  identity, action, and time.  The identity can range from a single
  specific user to an arbitrary user aggregate, domains, or areas.  The
  user can be identified by either the source or the destination.  When
  the user is identified by the source and a favorable action is
  specified, the result is, to some extent, similar to identifying a
  priority user based on authorized Resource Priority Headers [RFC4412]
  in the requests.  Specifying a source user identity with an
  unfavorable action would cause an effect to some extent similar to an
  inverse SIP resource priority mechanism.




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  The load-filtering policy defined in this specification is generic
  and expected to be applicable not only to the load-filtering
  mechanism but also to the feedback overload control mechanism in
  [SIP-OVERLOAD].  In particular, both mechanisms could use specific or
  wildcard identities for load control and could share well-known load-
  control actions.  The time duration field in the load-filtering
  policy could also be used in both mechanisms.  As mentioned in
  Section 1, the load-filtering policy distribution mechanism and the
  feedback overload control mechanism address complementary areas in
  the overload control problem space.  Load filtering is more proactive
  and focuses on distributing filtering policies towards the source of
  the traffic; the hop-by-hop feedback-based approach is reactive and
  reduces traffic already accepted by the network.  Therefore, they
  could also make different use of the generic load-filtering policy
  components.  For example, the load-filtering mechanism may use the
  time field in the filtering policy to specify not only a control
  duration but also a future activation time to accommodate a
  predicable overload such as the one caused by Mother's Day greetings
  or a viewer-voting program; the feedback-based control might not need
  to use the time field or might use the time field to specify an
  immediate load-control duration.






























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Authors' Addresses

  Charles Shen
  Columbia University
  Department of Computer Science
  1214 Amsterdam Avenue, MC 0401
  New York, NY   10027
  USA

  Phone: +1 212 854 3109
  EMail: [email protected]


  Henning Schulzrinne
  Columbia University
  Department of Computer Science
  1214 Amsterdam Avenue, MC 0401
  New York, NY   10027
  USA

  Phone: +1 212 939 7004
  EMail: [email protected]


  Arata Koike
  NTT Network Technology Labs
  3-9-11 Midori-cho Musashino-shi
  Tokyo  180-8585
  Japan

  Phone: +81 422 59 6099
  EMail: [email protected]



















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