Hi, 

>>Now, the first issue is how we know that the receiver supports the 
>>Content-Type of the body sent in INFO. There are ways to 
>>solve that, and it is not an INFO specific problem.
>
> 
>beyond "does it understand the content type?", we have the question
"does it understand what you want it to do with the 
>content?"

Yes.

>>The second issue is regarding the "SIP protocol rules", and I guess 
>>that is one thing which causes confusion.
>>
>>For example, if someone wants to send a DTMF tone he sends an INFO 
>>with the DTMF tone. The receiver will determine whether it's needed 
>>for anything (e.g. a robot asking for your PIN code) or not (e.g.
>>if you're talking to a person and pressed a button by misstake).  
>>What "SIP protocol rules" do you need for that? The 
>>application will determine what/if it does with the received
information.
> 
> 
>"Spray and pray" is fun for kids in street gangs but 
>well-aimed fire is far more efficient and much safer for  
>innocent bystanders.

I don't think an application will trigger INFOs in a spray and pray
matter. You will only send media server control messages if you are
communicating with a media server control application that understands
them.

>Staying with the use of DTMF/INFO as an example (which, I'd 
>like to add, has been deprecated even if I did originally 
>endorse or maybe even coinvent it) . . .

It hasn't been deprecated outside out on the field.

>Before you send a DTMF/INFO, you really need to know that the 
>recipient understands DTMF/INFO in general and the specific 
>encoding of DTMF in INFO that you're using (there have been 
>multiple encodings proposed).

Yes, and you know that if you receive an indication from the other party
that he supports application/my-dtmf (or whatever value is used).

And, if we would have standardized one encoding, maybe there wouldn't be
multiple ones out there...

>Otherwise you wouldn't even bother sending it unless you're a hopeless
optimist, trying 
>to impress your homies with the size of your packet-slinger, or just
plain stoopid.

I totally agree.

>And beyond just understanding your encoding of DTMF/INFO, you 
>need to know that the recipient you are sending it to is 
>likely to do something useful with that INFO, and that this 
>"something useful" is what you intend it to do when you send it.

Yes, but you wouldn't send it unless you have a reason to think the
receiver is going to do something with it, e.g. if you have been asked
to give your PIN code. 

I don't understand why people think that applications would start
sending all kind of INFOs "just for fun", without any logic behind. I
have never seen that happen in real world deployments. I wouldn't start
sending UPDATEs and/or re-INVITEs just for fun either, eventhough there
is nothing preventing me from doing it.

Just because you CAN doesn't mean you WILL :)
 
>Now, for DTMF/INFO the "something useful" is pretty straightforward
>-- take the tone sequences and either use them as input to a 
>local application or mix them back into the media stream.
> 
>Other possible uses for INFO (and there have been many 
>proposed) are not generally so clear. For example, if I send 
>you an INFO containing a JPEG file, what are you supposed to 
>do with it? Project the image onto the wall? Use it is a 
>keyboard map? Use it as a voiceprint graph for spectral 
>comparison with my media stream as a means of performing a 
>MITM detection? (hey, I think I just invented something . . 
>.) Or something entirely different?

That depends on the application. For example, the application may tell
you that a JPEG file has arrived, and ask what you want to do with it.
You may choose to project it, use it as a keyboard map, or whatever.

But, again, I don't think anyone is going to send you the JPEG file
"just like that", without any reason.

>What is wrong with INFO as currently specified is that we 
>have no way of answering these questions. Content-disposition 
>and content-type just aren't rich enough for the range of 
>possibilities.

I don't think we need to answer those questions, because they are
application specific.

What we need to answer is the question how to indicate what
Content-Types the receiver supports, and is willing to receive for a
given session. 

What we also should care about is to make sure that the Content-Types
are standardized, so that we don't have multiple, uninteroperable,
mechanisms doing the same thing out there.

>So we either have to rigorously NOT use INFO for anything new 
>(and it is currently defined only for telephony tunneling), 
>or extend it to be able to differentiate usages.  My personal 
>feeling is that the wild INFO cat has leapt out of the bag 
>and run off to have kittens, so we're better off giving those 
>kittens names and vaccinations than we are trying to convince 
>people not to pet the cat.

I agree with you.

I think that INFO is an easy and useful tool, and the market seems to
think the same thing.

Regards,

Christer


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