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Re: WebRTC and emergency communications (Was: Re: IETF Meeting in South America)

2013-05-27 11:19:41
The most difficult part for any emergency calling system is location delivery. 
WebRTC probably doesn't have much impact on emergency calls if all the calls 
traverse a server of some kind and if the caller location can be looked up 
based on caller IP addresses, but once you have the end system involved in 
location determination (e.g., for mobile devices or for DHCP-delivered 
location), it has to know when a call is an emergency call as you otherwise end 
up providing location for every call, which is non-ideal from a privacy and 
battery perspective.

At least in the US, many of the WebRTC services would be considered 
"interconnected VoIP", so they are indeed subject to 911 obligations.

Henning

On May 26, 2013, at 3:57 PM, Richard Barnes <rlb(_at_)ipv(_dot_)sx> wrote:

Indeed, there has already been some coordination between the groups, going 
back about a year:
<http://tools.ietf.org/agenda/84/slides/slides-84-ecrit-0.pdf>
<http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-aboba-rtcweb-ecrit-00.txt>

So my read of the situation is much less dire than James's.  As I understand 
it, the upshot of the initial coordination discussions is that there's not a 
single, clear "RTCWEB+ECRIT" story.  Instead, there are a few ways you can 
put them together.  In the short run, without upgrading PSAPs, RTCWEB VoIP 
services can bridge RTCWEB signaling to ECRIT-compliant SIP, either at the 
server, or at the client using something like SIP-over-WebSockets.  In the 
long run, PSAPs can just advertise an RTCWEB service like they would 
advertise a SIP service today (in LoST).  Neither of these is incompatible 
with RTCWEB or ECRIT as they're being specified today.

I expect there are probably some ECRIT considerations that aren't naturally 
supported in RTCWEB.  Things like real-time text come to mind.  However, it 
doesn't seem to me that there's gross incompatibility.

--Richard




On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 10:18 AM, John C Klensin 
<john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com> wrote:


--On Saturday, May 25, 2013 10:10 +0300 Jari Arkko
<jari(_dot_)arkko(_at_)piuha(_dot_)net> wrote:

...
I didn't know about the details of the emergency
communications situation. But it is always difficult to
balance getting something out early vs. complete. I know how
much pressure there is on the working groups to keep up with
things actually happening in the browsers and organisations
setting up to use this technology. Do you think the retrofit
will be problematic, and do you have a specific suggestion
about what should be included today?

Jari,

James will probably have a different answer and perspective, but
I suggest that retrofits of security-sensitive features are so
often problematic to make "always" not much of an exaggeration.

I don't think there is any general solution to the "early vs.
complete" tradeoff [1], nor, as long as we keep trying to deal
with things as collections of disconnected pieces rather than
systems, to the issues created by WGs with significant overlaps
in either scope or technology.  What I think we can do is to be
particularly vigilant to be sure that the two WGs are tracking
and frequently reviewing each other's work.   At least RTCWEB
and ECRIT are in the same area, which should make that
coordination easier than it might be otherwise.

   john


[1] Watch for a note about this that I've been trying to
organize for about two weeks and hope to finish and post this
weekend.





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