Subject: [p2p-sip] P2P and 911

From: ppatrick at pacwest.com (Philip Patrick)
Date: Tue Aug 16 14:32:30 2005

I agree with Dale, I couldn't disagree more with Dean.  Emergency services are one of the best things telecommunications has to offer society.  Take emergency services away and you suffer in the realm of public opinion and ultimately serious deployment.

Service providers and equipment suppliers are already investigating P2P SIP as a replacement technology, so it is important to distinguish P2P from P2P SIP which more and more centralized service providers will definitely closely consider deploying.  Many PSAPs will remain in the PSTN world for years and existing contracts and trunking to ILECS and PSAPs will remain.   Specialized P2P SIP end devices deployed by a service provider will need to be able to operate in both worlds and technical feasibility is there.  Network equipment designed to send multiple RTP streams to support CALEA can be expected as well.

Phil 

-----Original Message-----
From: Dean Willis [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 9:46 AM
To: Dale Worley
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [p2p-sip] P2P and 911

On Aug 16, 2005, at 9:35 AM, Dale Worley wrote:

> It's rather tempting to suggest that P2P SIP doesn't need to have any 
> sort
> of emergency facilities, but I suspect that is counterproductive.  The
> ability of a device to summon emergency assistance is a benefit to the
> public, not just the person who owns the device.  Certainly, if we 
> want to
> get P2P SIP widely adopted, being able to say "It provides full 
> support for
> 911" will be a significant aid.
>
> SIP is starting to play in the big leagues, and public impacts are 
> starting
> to be important features.
>

Regulation is all about liability, and answering the question "Who gets 
fined or imprisoned for failure to meet regulatory requirements?"

The problem is that E911 regulatory requirements don't say useful 
things like "you must be able to make an emergency call" -- they say 
things like "the network service provided by an operator must allow end 
users to place emergency calls to existing PSAPs under contractual 
relationships between the PSAPs and the operator". The regulations are 
written under the assumption of operators providing centralized control 
of a service infrastructure and having localized relationships with 
PSAP providers.

SIP, as deployed by a centralized service provider, will clearly have 
to meet E911 regulatory requirements in nation-states having those 
requirements, and the centralized service provider will face the 
liability of meeting those requirements.

But P2P, by definition, lacks the concept of a centralized service 
provider who can be controlled by regulation and who can maintain 
contracts with PSAPs and nation-states.

Similar conditions apply to CALEA, which requires that a minimum set of 
supervisory personnel at a service provider implement a surveillance 
order. How can a P2P system, which lacks both supervisory personnel and 
centralized access to the media path (remember, we use shortest-path 
end-to-end crypto) be consistent with CALEA? It can't -- and a 
surveillance order would therefore have to be served against the ISPs 
providing internet service to the end-points, not against the P2P 
system.

So I think it's a very good idea to exclude consideration of emergency 
services and lawful intercept, in general, from the discussion of SIP 
P2P.

--
Dean

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