Subject: [apps-review] Q on applicability of http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-montemurro-gsma-imei-urn-05.txt

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:35:24 -0400

Pardon me but I don't understand the use case for this:

   GSM, UMTS and LTE mobile devices will be interoperating with Internet
   devices for a variety of voice and data services.  To do this, they
   need to make use of Internet protocols that will operate end to end
   between devices in GSM/UMTS/LTE networks and those in the general
   internet.  Many of these protocols require the use of URN's as
   identifiers.  Within the GSM/UMTS/LTE networks, mobile devices are
   identified by their IMEI and IMEISV.  Internet users will need to be
   able to receive and include the GSMA URN in various Internet protocol
   elements to facilitate communication between pure internet based
   devices and GSM/UMTS/LTE mobile devices.  Thus the existence and
   syntax of these namespaces needs to be available to the general
   internet community and the namespace needs to be reserved with IANA
   in order to guarantee uniqueness and prevent potential namespace
   conflicts both within the internet and within GSM/UMTS/LTE networks.

First, this feels like a layering mixup.  When would -- or should -- a
communicating peer outside a mobile network need to know the IMEI or
IMEISV of a device inside a mobile network?  An IMEI is used for initial
identification on a mobile network or for SIM-less emergency calls.
Under what conditions would an Internet-based peer have an IMEI in hand
and want to use it in a gsma: URN?  If as you say an "Internet device"
is "interoperating" with a mobile device, it will do so using IP-based
protocols and will (should) never learn the mobile device's IMEI.  I can
see cases where an outsourced management entity might want to speak to a
mobile network's administration regarding records for a particular IMEI,
but it would do so in a very secure way, not using this particular URN.

If there is an assumption that we are going to start passing around
IMEIs as general identifiers, then I'm concerned that you are
engineering a world in which one must reveal permanent identifiers in
order to communicate.

Please enlighten me as to the intent.  Right now it feels to me like it
enables us to do the wrong thing with IMEIs.

Thanks ... Scott