Subject: [p2p-sip] Questions on draft-marocco-p2psip-interwork-00

From: spencer at mcsr-labs.org (Spencer Dawkins)
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 23:07:46 -0500

Hi, Enrico and David,

It's probably premature to discuss this draft in detail, but I did have some 
questions as I read it, and asking now might help you prepare for the next 
version...

The draft calls out I-D.willis-p2psip-concepts specifically, but the 
Introduction says

   This document describes how user agents registered in P2PSIP overlay
   networks [I-D.willis-p2psip-concepts] can interwork with those in
   conventional SIP networks [RFC3261].  In particular, no assumption is
   made about the overlay but that it allows clients to insert and
   retrieve routing information, possibly bound to URIs [RFC3986].

Does "clients" mean "clients" in the I-D.willis-p2psip-concepts sense, or in 
some other sense?

I really like the "P2PSIP Proxy Peers" term and description. You may have 
noticed some musing in my notes on I-D.willis-p2psip-concepts about a P2PSIP 
Overlay Server - I think this is pretty close to what I was thinking of. The 
direction of "proxying" is reversed, I think, but this might be 
symmetrical... Is it possible that the same concept might also work for the 
P2PSIP clients described in I-D.willis-p2psip-concepts?

The Security Considerations section correctly describes the tension between 
"too easy to insert into DNS" and "too difficult to insert into DNS" - but 
that's awfully late in the draft to bring this up. Although 
security-related, it's pretty fundamental to what we're trying to do, I 
think.

I'll stop here for now - but thanks for starting this work.

Spencer

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From: enrico.marocco at telecomitalia.it (Enrico Marocco)
Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 17:57:26 +0200

> questions as I read it, and asking now might help you prepare for the next 

It will certainly do :-)

> Does "clients" mean "clients" in the I-D.willis-p2psip-concepts sense, or in 

Here "clients" mean "clients" in the concepts draft sense.  Perhaps it
would be more appropriate to say "clients and peers" instead of just
"clients", since also peers perform store/retrieve operations.

> P2PSIP clients described in I-D.willis-p2psip-concepts?

In my view a "P2PSIP Proxy Peer" is a node which acts as a gateway for
SIP messages between the overlay and the Internet.  I'm not sure I've
understood well what you mean by "P2PSIP Overlay Server", but your
question makes me think that perhaps our teminology is misleading.  In
fact a "P2PSIP Proxy Peer" does not need to be a "P2PSIP Overlay Peer";
it is sufficient that it is registered in the overlay.  If it routes
messages (across overlay's bounds obviously it does because it's a gw,
but also inside the overlay), stores data and performs join/leave
operations, we can say it's also a "P2PSIP Overlay Peer"; if it only
registers itself in the overlay, we can say it is a "P2PSIP Overlay
Client".  If someone else registers it in the overlay, we can't say it
is a "P2PSIP Overlay Client" nor a "P2PSIP Overlay Peer", but it still
is a "P2PSIP Proxy Peer".

I'd like to further investigate on this.

> security-related, it's pretty fundamental to what we're trying to do, I 

That's true:  that's exactly what open issue #5 means :-)

--
Ciao,
Enrico

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