Session Description Protocol (SDP) Offer/Answer procedures for Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE)Impedance Mismatchmarc@petit-huguenin.orgCisco Systems707 Tasman DrMilpitasCA95035USAsnandaku@cisco.comEricssonHirsalantie 11Jorvas02420Finlandchrister.holmberg@ericsson.comEricssonJorvas02420Finlandari.keranen@ericsson.comTurboBridge4905 Del Ray Avenue, Suite 300BethesdaMD20814USA+1 (240) 292-6632rshpount@turbobridge.com
RAI
MMUSICexample
This document describes Session Description Protocol (SDP) Offer/Answer procedures
for carrying out Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) between the agents.
This document obsoletes RFCs 5245 and 6336.
Introduction
This document describes how Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) is used
with Session Description Protocol (SDP) offer/answer . The ICE specification
describes procedures that are common to all usages of ICE and this document
gives the additional details needed to use ICE with SDP offer/answer.
This document obsoletes RFCs 5245 and 6336.
NOTE: Previously both the common ICE procedures, and the SDP offer/answer specific details, were described in. obsoleted , and the SDP offer/answer specific details were removed from the document. describes the changes to the SDP offer/answer specific details specified in this document.
Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL
NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED",
"MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as
described in BCP 14
when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.
Terminology
Readers should be familiar with the terminology defined in ,
in and the following:
Default Destination/Candidate:
The default destination for a component of a data stream is the transport
address that would be used by an agent that is not ICE aware. A default
candidate for a component is one whose transport address matches the default
destination for that component. For the RTP component, the default connection address
is in the "c=" line of the SDP, and the port and transport protocol are in
the "m=" line. For the RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) component, the address and port are indicated
using the "a=rtcp" attribute defined in , if present; otherwise,
the RTCP component address is the same as the address of the RTP component, and
its port is one greater than the port of the RTP component.
SDP Offer/Answer ProceduresIntroduction defines ICE candidate exchange as the process for ICE
agents (Initiator and Responder) to exchange their candidate information
required for ICE processing at the agents. For the purposes of this
specification, the candidate exchange process corresponds to the
offer/answer model , and the terms "offerer" and "answerer" correspond
to the initiator and responder roles from respectively.
Once the initiating agent has gathered, pruned, and prioritized its
set of candidates , the candidate exchange with the peer agent begins.
Generic ProceduresEncoding provides detailed rules for constructing various SDP
attributes defined in this specification.
Data Streams
Each data stream is represented by an SDP media description ("m=" section).
Candidates
Within an "m=" section, each candidate (including the default candidate) associated
with the data stream is represented by an SDP candidate attribute.
Prior to nomination, the "c=" line associated with an "m=" section contains
the connection address of the default candidate, while the "m=" line contains the port
and transport protocol of the default candidate for that "m=" section.
After nomination, the "c=" line for a given "m=" section contains the
connection address of the nominated candidate (the local candidate of the
nominated candidate pair) and the "m=" line contains the port and
transport protocol corresponding to the nominated candidate for that
"m=" section.
Username and Password
The ICE username is represented by an SDP ice-ufrag attribute and the ICE
password is represented by an SDP ice-pwd attribute.
Lite Implementations
An ICE lite implementation MUST include an SDP ice-lite attribute.
A full implementation MUST NOT include that attribute.
ICE Extensions
An agent uses the SDP ice-options attribute to indicate support of ICE
extensions.
An agent compliant to this specification MUST include an SDP ice-options
attribute with an "ice2" attribute value . If an agent receives an SDP offer
or answer that indicates ICE support, but that does not contain an SDP ice-options attribute with an "ice2" attribute value,
the agent can assume that the peer is compliant to .
Inactive and Disabled Data Streams
If an "m=" section is marked as inactive , or has a bandwidth
value of zero , the agent MUST still include ICE-related SDP
attributes.
If the port value associated with an "m=" section is set to zero (implying a
disabled stream) as defined in , the agent SHOULD NOT
include ICE-related SDP candidate attributes in that "m=" section, unless an
SDP extension specifying otherwise is used.
RTP/RTCP Considerations
If an agent utilizes both RTP and RTCP, and separate ports
are used for RTP and RTCP, the agent MUST include SDP candidate
attributes for both the RTP and RTCP components.
The agent includes an SDP rtcp attribute following the procedures
in . Hence, in the cases where the RTCP
port value is one higher than the RTP port value and the RTCP component
address the same as the address of the RTP component, the SDP rtcp attribute
might be omitted.
NOTE: required that an agent always includes the
SDP rtcp attribute, even if the RTCP port value was one higher than the
RTP port value. This specification aligns the rtcp attribute procedures
with .
If the agent does not utilize RTCP, it indicates that by including b=RS:0
and b=RR:0 SDP attributes, as described in .
Determining Role
The offerer acts as the Initiating agent. The answerer acts as the
Responding agent. The ICE roles (controlling and controlled) are determined
using the procedures in .
STUN Considerations
Once an agent has provided its local candidates to its peer in an SDP
offer or answer, the agent MUST be prepared to receive STUN
connectivity
check Binding requests on those candidates.
Verifying ICE Support Procedures
An ICE agent is considered to indicate support of ICE by including
at least the SDP ice-pwd and ice-ufrag attributes in an offer or answer.
An ICE agent compliant with this specification MUST also include an
SDP ice-options attribute with an "ice2" attribute value.
The agents will proceed with the ICE procedures defined in and
this specification if, for each data stream in the SDP it received, the
default destination for each component of that data stream appears in
a candidate attribute. For example, in the case of RTP, the
connection address, port, and transport protocol in the
"c=" and "m=" lines, respectively, appear in a candidate
attribute and the value in the rtcp attribute appears in a candidate
attribute.
This specification provides no guidance on how an agent should proceed
in the cases where the above condition is not met with the few
exceptions noted below:
The presence of certain application layer gateways might modify
the transport address information as described in .
The behavior of the responding agent in such a situation is
implementation dependent. Informally, the responding agent might
consider the mismatched transport address information as a
plausible new candidate learnt from the peer and continue its
ICE processing with that transport address included.
Alternatively, the responding agent MAY include an "a=ice-mismatch"
attribute in its answer for such data streams. If an agent chooses to
include an "a=ice-mismatch" attribute in its answer for a data stream,
then it MUST also omit "a=candidate" attributes, MUST terminate
the usage of ICE procedures and procedures MUST be used
instead for this data stream.
The transport address from the peer for the default destination
is set to IPv4/IPv6 address values "0.0.0.0"/"::" and port value of "9".
This MUST NOT be considered as a ICE failure by the peer agent and
the ICE processing MUST continue as usual.
In some cases, the controlling/initiator agent may receive the SDP answer
that may omit "a=candidate" attributes for the data stream, and instead
include a media level "a=ice-mismatch" attribute. This signals to the
offerer that the answerer supports ICE, but that ICE processing was not
used for this data stream. In this case, ICE processing MUST be terminated
for this data stream and procedures MUST be followed instead.
The transport address from the peer for the default destination is
an FQDN. Regardless of the procedures used to resolve FQDN or the
resolution result, this MUST NOT be considered as a ICE failure by
the peer agent and the ICE processing MUST continue as usual.
SDP Example
The following is an example SDP message that includes ICE attributes
(lines folded for readability):
Initial Offer/Answer ExchangeSending the Initial Offer
When an offerer generates the initial offer, in each "m=" section it MUST
include SDP candidate attributes for each available candidate associated
with the "m=" section. In addition, the offerer MUST include an SDP ice-ufrag
attribute, an SDP ice-pwd attribute and an SDP ice-options attribute with
an "ice2" attribute value in the offer. If the offerer is a full ICE implementation,
it SHOULD include an ice-pacing attribute in the offer (if not included, the
default value will apply). A lite ICE implementation MUST NOT included the ice-pacing
attribute in the offer (as it will not perform connectivity checks).
It is valid for an offer "m=" line to include no SDP candidate attributes
and with default destination set to the IP address values
"0.0.0.0"/"::" and port value of "9". This implies that the offering agent
is only going to use peer reflexive candidates or that additional candidates
would be provided in subsequent signaling messages.
Note:
Within the scope of this document, "Initial Offer" refers to the first
SDP offer that is sent in order to negotiate usage of ICE. It might, or
might not, be the initial SDP offer of the SDP session.
Note:
The procedures in this document only consider "m=" sections associated
with data streams where ICE is used.
Sending the Initial Answer
When an answerer receives an initial offer that indicates
that the offerer supports ICE, and if the answerer accepts
the offer and the usage of ICE, in each "m=" section within
the answer, it MUST include SDP candidate attributes for
each available candidate associated with the "m=" section.
In addition, the answerer MUST include an SDP ice-ufrag
attribute, an SDP ice-pwd attribute and an SDP ice-options
attribute with an "ice2" attribute value in the answer. If the
answerer is a full ICE implementation, it SHOULD include an
ice-pacing attribute in the answerer (if not included, the
default value will apply). A lite ICE implementation MUST NOT
included the ice-pacing attribute in the answer (as it will
not perform connectivity checks).
In each "m=" line, the answerer MUST use the same transport
protocol as was used in the offer "m=" line. If none of
the candidates in the "m=" line in the answer use the same
transport protocol as indicated in the offer "m=" line,
then, in order to avoid ICE mismatch, the default destination
MUST be set to IP address values "0.0.0.0"/"::" and
port value of "9".
It is also valid for an answer "m=" line to include no SDP
candidate attributes and with default destination set
to the IP address values "0.0.0.0"/"::" and port value of "9".
This implies that the answering agent is only going to use peer
reflexive candidates or that additional candidates would be
provided in subsequent signaling messages.
Once the answerer has sent the answer, it can start performing
connectivity checks towards the peer candidates that were provided
in the offer.
If the offer does not indicate support of ICE , the answerer
MUST NOT accept the usage of ICE. If the answerer still accepts
the offer, the answerer MUST NOT include any ICE-related SDP
attributes in the answer. Instead the answerer will generate
the answer according to normal offer/answer procedures .
If the answerer detects a possibility of an ICE mismatch,
procedures described in are followed.
Receiving the Initial Answer
When an offerer receives an initial answer that indicates
that the answerer supports ICE, it can start performing
connectivity checks towards the peer candidates that were
provided in the answer.
If the answer does not indicate that the answerer
supports ICE, or if the answerer included "a=ice-mismatch"
attributes for all the active data streams in
the answer, the offerer MUST terminate the usage of ICE
for the entire session and procedures MUST be
followed instead.
On the other hand, if the answer indicates support for
ICE but includes "a=ice-mismatch" in certain active data
streams, then the offerer MUST terminate the usage of ICE
procedures and procedures
MUST be used instead for only these data streams. Also, ICE
procedures MUST be used for data streams where an "a=ice-mismatch"
attribute was not included.
If the offerer detects an ICE mismatch for one or more
data streams in the answer, as described in ,
the offerer MUST terminate the usage of ICE for the entire session.
The subsequent actions taken by the offerer are implementation
dependent and are out of the scope of this specification.
Concluding ICE
Once the agent has successfully nominated a pair , the state of the
checklist associated with the pair is set to Completed. Once the state of each checklist is
set to either Completed or Failed, for each Completed checklist the agent checks whether the
nominated pair matches the default candidate pair. If there are one or more pairs that do not
match, and the peer did not indicate support for the 'ice2' ice-option, the controlling agent
MUST generate a subsequent offer, in which the connection address, port and transport protocol
in the "c=" and "m=" lines associated with each data stream match the corresponding
local information of the nominated pair for that data stream ().
If the peer did indicate support for the 'ice2' ice-option, the controlling agent does not
immediately need to generate an updated offer in order to align a connection address, port
and protocol with a nominated pair. However, later in the session, whenever the controlling agent
does sent a subsequent offer, it MUST do the alignment as described above.
If there are one or more checklists with the state set to Failed, the controlling
agent MUST generate a subsequent offer in order to remove the associated data streams by setting
the port value of the data streams to zero (),
even if the peer did indicate support for the 'ice2' ice-option. If needed, such offer is used to align the connection address, port and transport protocol, as described above.
As described in , once the controlling agent has nominated
a candidate pair for a checklist, the agent MUST NOT nominate another pair
for that checklist during the lifetime of the ICE session (i.e. until
ICE is restarted).
provides a mechanism for
allowing the ICE process to run long enough in order to find working candidate pairs,
by waiting for potential peer-reflexive candidates, even though no candidate pairs were
received from the peer or all current candidate pairs associated with a checklist have
either failed or been discarded. It is OPTIONAL for an ICE agent to support the mechanism.
Subsequent Offer/Answer Exchanges
Either agent MAY generate a subsequent offer at any time allowed by
. This section defines rules for construction of subsequent
offers and answers.
Should a subsequent offer fail, ICE processing continues as if the
subsequent offer had never been made.
Sending Subsequent OfferProcedures for All ImplementationsICE Restart
An agent MAY restart ICE processing for an existing data stream .
The rules governing the ICE restart imply that setting the connection address
in the "c=" line to "0.0.0.0" (for IPv4)/ "::" (for IPv6) will cause an ICE restart.
Consequently, ICE implementations MUST NOT utilize this mechanism for call hold,
and instead MUST use "a=inactive" and "a=sendonly" as described in .
To restart ICE, an agent MUST change both the ice-pwd and the ice-ufrag for
the data stream in an offer. However, it is permissible to use a session-level
attribute in one offer, but to provide the same ice-pwd or ice-ufrag as a
media-level attribute in a subsequent offer. This MUST NOT be considered
as ICE restart.
An agent sets the rest of the ICE-related fields in the SDP for this data stream as it
would in an initial offer of this data stream ().
Consequently, the set of candidates MAY include some, none, or all of the
previous candidates for that data stream and MAY include a totally new set of
candidates. The agent MAY modify the attribute values of the SDP ice-options and
SDP ice-pacing attributes, and it MAY change its role using the SDP ice-lite attribute.
The agent MUST NOT modify the SDP ice-options, ice-pacing and ice-lite attributes in a
subsequent offer unless the offer is sent in order to request an ICE restart.
Removing a Data Stream
If an agent removes a data stream by setting its port to zero, it MUST NOT
include any candidate attributes for that data stream and SHOULD NOT include
any other ICE-related attributes defined in for that data stream.
Adding a Data Stream
If an agent wishes to add a new data stream, it sets the fields in the SDP for
this data stream as if this were an initial offer for that data stream
(). This will cause ICE processing to begin for this data stream.
Procedures for Full Implementations
This section describes additional procedures for full implementations,
covering existing data streams.
Before Nomination
When an offerer sends a subsequent offer; in each "m=" section for which a
candidate pair has not yet been nominated, the offer MUST include the
same set of ICE-related information that the offerer included in the
previous offer or answer. The agent MAY include additional candidates
it did not offer previously, but which it has gathered since the last
offer/answer exchange, including peer reflexive candidates.
The agent MAY change the default destination for media. As with initial
offers, there MUST be a set of candidate attributes in the offer matching
this default destination.
After Nomination
Once a candidate pair has been nominated for a data stream, the connection address,
port and transport protocol in each "c=" and "m=" line associated with that data
stream MUST match the data associated with the nominated pair for that
data stream. In addition, the offerer only includes SDP candidates
(one per component) representing the local candidates of the nominated candidate pair. The offerer MUST NOT include any other SDP candidate attributes in the
subsequent offer.
In addition, if the agent is controlling, it MUST include the
"a=remote-candidates" attribute for each data stream whose checklist
is in the Completed state. The attribute contains the remote candidates
corresponding to the nominated pair in the valid list for each
component of that data stream. It is needed to avoid a race condition
whereby the controlling agent chooses its pairs, but the updated offer
beats the connectivity checks to the controlled agent, which doesn't
even know these pairs are valid, let alone selected. See
for elaboration on this race condition.
Procedures for Lite Implementations
If the ICE state is Running, a lite implementation MUST include all of
its candidates for each component of each data stream in "a=candidate"
attributes in any subsequent offer. The candidates are formed identically
to the procedures for initial offers.
A lite implementation MUST NOT add additional host candidates in a
subsequent offer, and MUST NOT modify the username fragments and
passwords. If an agent needs to offer additional candidates, or
modify the username fragments and passwords, it MUST request an
ICE restart () for that data stream.
If ICE has completed for a data stream and if the agent is controlled,
the default destination for that data stream MUST be set to the
remote candidate of the candidate pair for that component in the valid list.
For a lite implementation, there is always just a single candidate pair in
the valid list for each component of a data stream. Additionally, the agent
MUST include a candidate attribute for each default destination.
If the ICE state is Completed and if the agent is controlling (which only
happens when both agents are lite), the agent MUST include the
"a=remote-candidates" attribute for each data stream. The attribute
contains the remote candidates from the candidate pairs in the
valid list (one pair for each component of each data stream).
Sending Subsequent Answer
If ICE is Completed for a data stream, and the offer for that data
stream lacked the "a=remote-candidates" attribute, the rules for
construction of the answer are identical to those for the offerer,
except that the answerer MUST NOT include the "a=remote-candidates"
attribute in the answer.
A controlled agent will receive an offer with the "a=remote-candidates"
attribute for a data stream when its peer has concluded ICE processing
for that data stream. This attribute is present in the
offer to deal with a race condition between the receipt of the offer,
and the receipt of the Binding Response that tells the answerer the
candidate that will be selected by ICE. See for an
explanation of this race condition. Consequently, processing of an
offer with this attribute depends on the winner of the race.
The agent forms a candidate pair for each component of the data stream by:
Setting the remote candidate equal to the offerer's default
destination for that component (i.e. the contents of the "m=" and
"c=" lines for RTP, and the "a=rtcp" attribute for RTCP)
Setting the local candidate equal to the transport address for
that same component in the "a=remote-candidates" attribute in the
offer.
The agent then sees if each of these candidate pairs is present
in the valid list. If a particular pair is not in the valid list,
the check has "lost" the race. Call such a pair a "losing pair".
The agent finds all the pairs in the checklist whose remote
candidates equal the remote candidate in the losing pair:
If none of the pairs are In-Progress, and at least one is Failed,
it is most likely that a network failure, such as a network
partition or serious packet loss, has occurred. The agent SHOULD
generate an answer for this data stream as if the remote-
candidates attribute had not been present, and then restart ICE
for this stream.
If at least one of the pairs is In-Progress, the agent SHOULD wait
for those checks to complete, and as each completes, redo the
processing in this section until there are no losing pairs.
Once there are no losing pairs, the agent can generate the answer.
It MUST set the default destination for media to the candidates in
the remote-candidates attribute from the offer (each of which will
now be the local candidate of a candidate pair in the valid list).
It MUST include a candidate attribute in the answer for each
candidate in the remote-candidates attribute in the offer.
ICE Restart
If the offerer in a subsequent offer requested an ICE restart ()
for a data stream, and if the answerer accepts the offer, the
answerer follows the procedures for generating an initial answer.
For a given data stream, the answerer MAY include the same
candidates that were used in the previous ICE session, but
it MUST change the SDP ice-pwd and ice-ufrag attribute
values.
The answerer MAY modify the attribute values of the SDP ice-options and
SDP ice-pacing attributes, and it MAY change its role using the SDP ice-lite attribute.
The answerer MUST NOT modify the SDP ice-options, ice-pacing and ice-lite attributes in a
subsequent answer unless the answer is sent for an offer that was used to request an ICE restart
(). If any of the SDP attributes have been modified in
a subsequent offer that is not used to request an ICE restart, the answerer MUST reject the
offer.
Lite Implementation specific procedures
If the received offer contains the remote-candidates attribute for a
data stream, the agent forms a candidate pair for each component of the
data stream by:
Setting the remote candidate equal to the offerer's default destination
for that component (i.e., the contents of the "m=" and "c=" lines for RTP,
and the "a=rtcp" attribute for RTCP).
Setting the local candidate equal to the transport address for that same
component in the "a=remote-candidates" attribute in the offer.
The state of the checklist associated with that data stream is set to Completed.
Furthermore, if the agent believed it was controlling, but the offer contained
the "a=remote-candidates" attribute, both agents believe they are controlling.
In this case, both would have sent updated offers around the same time.
However, the signaling protocol carrying the offer/answer exchanges
will have resolved this glare condition, so that one agent is always
the 'winner' by having its offer received before its peer has sent
an offer. The winner takes the role of controlling, so that the
loser (the answerer under consideration in this section) MUST
change its role to controlled.
Consequently, if the agent was going to send an updated offer since,
based on the rules in , it was controlling,
it no longer needs to.
Besides the potential role change, change in the Valid list, and
state changes, the construction of the answer is performed identically
to the construction of an offer.
Receiving Answer for a Subsequent OfferProcedures for Full Implementations
There may be certain situations where the offerer receives
an SDP answer that lacks ICE candidates although the initial answer
included them. One example of such an "unexpected" answer might be
happen when an ICE-unaware Back-to-Back User Agent (B2BUA)
introduces a media server during call hold using 3rd party
call-control procedures . Omitting further details how this
is done, this could result in an answer being received at the holding
UA that was constructed by the B2BUA. With the B2BUA being
ICE-unaware, that answer would not include ICE candidates.
Receiving an answer without ICE attributes in this situation might be
unexpected, but would not necessarily impair the user experience.
When the offerer receives an answer indicating support for ICE, the
offer performs one of the following actions:
If the offer was a restart, the agent MUST perform ICE restart
procedures as specified in
If the offer/answer exchange removed a data stream, or an
answer rejected an offered data stream, an agent MUST flush the
Valid list for that data stream. It MUST also terminate any
STUN transactions in progress for that data stream.
If the offer/answer exchange added a new data stream, the agent
MUST create a new checklist for it (and an empty Valid list to
start of course) which in turn triggers the candidate
processing procedures .
If the checklist state associated with a data stream is Running, the agent
recomputes the checklist. If a pair on the new checklist was
also on the previous checklist, its candidate pair state is copied over.
Otherwise, its candidate pair state is set to Frozen. If none of the checklists
are active (meaning that the candidate pair states in each checklist
are Frozen), appropriate procedures in
are performed to move candidate pair(s) to the Waiting state to
further continue ICE processing.
If the ICE state is Completed and the SDP answer conforms to
, the agent MUST remain in the
Completed ICE state.
However, if the ICE support is no longer indicated in the SDP answer,
the agent MUST fall-back to procedures and SHOULD NOT
drop the dialog because of the missing ICE support or unexpected answer.
Once the agent sends a new offer later on, it MUST perform an ICE restart.
ICE Restarts
The agent MUST remember the nominated pair in the Valid list for each
component of the data stream, called the "previous selected pair", prior
to the restart. The agent will continue to send media using this pair,
as described in . Once these destinations are
noted, the agent MUST flush the Valid lists and checklists, and then recompute
the checklist and its states, thus triggering the candidate processing
procedures Procedures for Lite Implementations
If ICE is restarting for a data stream, the agent MUST create a new
Valid list for that data stream. It MUST remember the nominated pair in the
previous Valid list for each component of the data stream, called
the "previous selected pairs", and continue to send media there as
described in . The state of each
checklist for each data stream MUST change to Running, and the ICE state
MUST be set to Running.
Grammar
This specification defines eight new SDP attributes -- the "candidate",
"remote-candidates", "ice-lite", "ice-mismatch", "ice-ufrag", "ice-pwd", "ice-pacing",
and "ice-options" attributes.
This section also provides non-normative examples of the attributes defined.
The syntax for the attributes follow Augmented BNF as defined in .
"candidate" Attribute
The candidate attribute is a media-level attribute only.
It contains a transport address for a candidate that can be used for connectivity checks.
This grammar encodes the primary information about a candidate: its IP address,
port and transport protocol, and its properties: the foundation, component ID, priority,
type, and related transport address:
<connection-address>:
is taken from RFC 4566 .
It is the IP address of the candidate, allowing for
IPv4 addresses, IPv6 addresses, and fully qualified domain names (FQDNs).
When parsing this field, an agent can differentiate an IPv4 address
and an IPv6 address by presence of a colon in its value -
the presence of a colon indicates IPv6. An agent generating
local candidates MUST NOT use FQDN addresses. An agent processing remote
candidates MUST ignore candidate lines that include candidates with
FQDN or IP address versions that are not supported or recognized.
The procedures for generation and handling of FQDN candidates, as well as,
how agents indicate support for such procedures, need to be specified in an
extension specification.
<port>:
is also taken from RFC 4566 .
It is the port of the candidate.
<transport>:
indicates the transport protocol for the candidate.
This specification only defines UDP. However, extensibility is provided to allow for
future transport protocols to be used with ICE by extending the sub-registry
"ICE Transport Protocols" under "Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE)" registry.
<foundation>:
is composed of 1 to 32 <ice-char>s.
It is an identifier that is equivalent for two candidates that are of the same type,
share the same base, and come from the same STUN server.
The foundation is used to optimize ICE performance in the Frozen algorithm as
described in
<component-id>:
is a positive integer between 1 and 256 (inclusive) that
identifies the specific component of the data stream for which this is a candidate.
It MUST start at 1 and MUST increment by 1 for each component of a particular candidate.
For data streams based on RTP, candidates for the actual RTP media MUST have a component
ID of 1, and candidates for RTCP MUST have a component ID of 2.
See for additional discussion on extending ICE to new data streams.
<priority>:
is a positive integer between 1 and (2**31 - 1) inclusive. The procedures
for computing candidate's priority is described in .
<cand-type>:
encodes the type of candidate.
This specification defines the values "host", "srflx", "prflx", and "relay" for host,
server reflexive, peer reflexive, and relayed candidates, respectively.
Specifications for new candidate types MUST define how, if at all, various steps in the ICE
processing differ from the ones defined by this specification.
<rel-addr> and <rel-port>:
convey transport addresses related to the candidate,
useful for diagnostics and other purposes.
<rel-addr> and <rel-port> MUST be present for server reflexive, peer reflexive,
and relayed candidates. If a candidate is server or peer reflexive, <rel-addr> and
<rel-port> are equal to the base for that server or peer reflexive candidate. If the
candidate is relayed, <rel-addr> and <rel-port> are equal to the mapped address in the
Allocate response that provided the client with that relayed candidate (see
for a discussion of its purpose).
If the candidate is a host candidate, <rel-addr> and <rel-port> MUST be omitted.
In some cases, e.g., for privacy reasons, an agent may not want to reveal the related
address and port. In this case the address MUST be set to "0.0.0.0" (for IPv4 candidates)
or "::" (for IPv6 candidates) and the port to '9'.
The candidate attribute can itself be extended. The grammar allows for new name/value pairs
to be added at the end of the attribute. Such extensions MUST be made through IETF Review or
IESG Approval and the assignments MUST contain the specific extension and a
reference to the document defining the usage of the extension.
An implementation MUST ignore any name/value pairs it doesn't understand.
"remote-candidates" Attribute
The syntax of the "remote-candidates" attribute is defined using Augmented BNF
as defined in .
The remote-candidates attribute is a media-level attribute only.
The attribute contains a connection-address and port for each component. The ordering
of components is irrelevant. However, a value MUST be present for each component of a
data stream. This attribute MUST be included in an offer by a controlling agent for
a data stream that is Completed, and MUST NOT be included in any other case.
"ice-lite" and "ice-mismatch" Attributes
The syntax of the "ice-lite" and "ice-mismatch" attributes, both of which are flags, is:
"ice-lite" is a session-level attribute only, and indicates that an agent is a
lite implementation. "ice-mismatch" is a media-level attribute and only
reported in the answer. It indicates that the offer arrived with a default
destination for a media component that didn't have a corresponding candidate
attribute. Inclusion of "a=ice-mismatch" attribute for a given data stream implies
that even though both agents support ICE, ICE procedures MUST NOT be used for this data
stream and procedures MUST be used instead.
"ice-ufrag" and "ice-pwd" Attributes
The "ice-ufrag" and "ice-pwd" attributes convey the username fragment and password used by ICE for message integrity.
Their syntax is:
The "ice-pwd" and "ice-ufrag" attributes can appear at either the session-level
or media-level. When present in both, the value in the media-level takes precedence.
Thus, the value at the session-level is effectively a default that applies to all
data streams, unless overridden by a media-level value. Whether present at the session
or media-level, there MUST be an ice-pwd and ice-ufrag attribute for each data stream.
If two data streams have identical ice-ufrag's, they MUST have identical ice-pwd's.
The ice-ufrag and ice-pwd attributes MUST be chosen randomly at the beginning of
a session (the same applies when ICE is restarting for an agent).
requires the ice-ufrag attribute to contain at least 24 bits of
randomness, and the ice-pwd attribute to contain at least 128 bits of
randomness. This means that the ice-ufrag
attribute will be at least 4 characters long, and the ice-pwd at least 22 characters long,
since the grammar for these attributes allows for 6 bits of information per character.
The attributes MAY be longer than 4 and 22 characters, respectively, of course, up to
256 characters. The upper limit allows for buffer sizing in implementations.
Its large upper limit allows for increased amounts of randomness to be added over time.
For compatibility with the 512 character limitation for the STUN username attribute value
and for bandwidth conservation considerations, the ice-ufrag attribute MUST NOT be longer
than 32 characters when sending, but an implementation MUST accept up to 256 characters
when receiving.
"ice-pacing" Attribute
The "ice-pacing" is a session level attribute that indicates the desired connectivity
check pacing (Ta interval), in milliseconds, that the sender wishes to use. See
for more information regarding selecting a pacing value.
The syntax is:
If absent in an offer or answer the default value of the attribute is 50 ms,
which is the recommended value specified in .
Once both agents have indicated the pacing value they with to use, both
agents MUST use the larger of the indicated values.
"ice-options" Attribute
The "ice-options" attribute is a session- and media-level attribute.
It contains a series of tokens that identify the options supported by the agent.
Its grammar is:
The existence of an ice-option in an offer indicates that a certain extension
is supported by the agent and it is willing to use it, if the peer agent also includes
the same extension in the answer. There might be further extension specific
negotiation needed between the agents that determine how the extension gets used
in a given session. The details of the negotiation procedures, if present, MUST be
defined by the specification defining the extension ().
The following example shows an ice-options SDP line with 'ice2' and
'rtp+ecn' values.Keepalives
All the ICE agents MUST follow the procedures defined in
for sending keepalives. The keepalives MUST be sent regardless of whether the
data stream is currently inactive, sendonly, recvonly, or sendrecv, and regardless
of the presence or value of the bandwidth attribute. An agent can determine that its
peer supports ICE by the presence of "a=candidate" attributes for each media session.
SIP Considerations
Note that ICE is not intended for NAT traversal for SIP signaling, which is assumed to be
provided via another mechanism .
When ICE is used with SIP, forking may result in a single offer generating a
multiplicity of answers. In that case, ICE proceeds completely in parallel and
independently for each answer, treating the combination of its offer and
each answer as an independent offer/answer exchange, with its own set of local
candidates, pairs, checklists, states, and so on.
Latency Guidelines
ICE requires a series of STUN-based connectivity checks to take place between
endpoints. These checks start from the answerer on generation of its answer,
and start from the offerer when it receives the answer.
These checks can take time to complete, and as such, the selection of
messages to use with offers and answers can affect perceived user latency.
Two latency figures are of particular interest. These are the post-pickup delay
and the post-dial delay. The post-pickup delay refers to the time between when
a user "answers the phone" and when any speech they utter can be delivered to
the caller. The post-dial delay refers to the time between when a user enters
the destination address for the user and ringback begins as a consequence of
having successfully started alerting the called user agent.
Two cases can be considered -- one where the offer is present in the initial
INVITE and one where it is in a response.
Offer in INVITE
To reduce post-dial delays, it is RECOMMENDED that the caller begin gathering
candidates prior to actually sending its initial INVITE, so that the candidates
can be provided in the INVITE. This can be started upon
user interface cues that a call is pending, such as activity on a keypad or
the phone going off-hook.
On the receipt of the offer, the answerer SHOULD generate an answer in a
provisional response as soon as it has completed gathering
the candidates. ICE requires that a provisional response with an SDP be
transmitted reliably. This can be done through the existing
Provisional Response Acknowledgment (PRACK)
mechanism or through an ICE specific optimization, wherein,
the agent retransmits the provisional response with the exponential backoff
timers described in . Such retransmissions MUST cease on receipt
of a STUN Binding request with the transport address matching the candidate address
for one of the data streams signaled in that SDP or on transmission of the answer
in a 2xx response. If no Binding request is received prior to the last retransmit,
the agent does not consider the session terminated. For the ICE lite peers, the agent MUST cease retransmitting the 18x after
sending it four times since there will be no Binding request sent and
the number four is arbitrarily chosen to limit the number of 18x retransmits.
Once the answer has been sent, the agent SHOULD begin its connectivity checks.
Once candidate pairs for each component of a data stream enter the valid list,
the answerer can begin sending media on that data stream.
However, prior to this point, any media that needs to be sent towards the
caller (such as SIP early media ) MUST NOT be transmitted. For this
reason, implementations SHOULD delay alerting the called party until candidates
for each component of each data stream have entered the valid list.
In the case of a PSTN gateway, this would mean that the setup message into the
PSTN is delayed until this point. Doing this increases the post-dial delay, but
has the effect of eliminating 'ghost rings'.
Ghost rings are cases where the called party hears the phone ring, picks up, but
hears nothing and cannot be heard. This technique works without requiring support
for, or usage of, preconditions . It also has the benefit of guaranteeing
that not a single packet of media will get clipped, so that post-pickup delay is zero.
If an agent chooses to delay local alerting in this way, it SHOULD generate a 180
response once alerting begins.
Offer in Response
In addition to uses where the offer is in an INVITE, and the answer is in the
provisional and/or 200 OK response, ICE works with cases where the offer appears
in the response.
In such cases, which are common in third party call control , ICE
agents SHOULD generate their offers in a reliable provisional response
(which MUST utilize ), and not alert the user on receipt of the INVITE.
The answer will arrive in a PRACK.
This allows for ICE processing to take place prior to alerting, so that there is no
post-pickup delay, at the expense of increased call setup delays.
Once ICE completes, the callee can alert the user and then generate a 200 OK
when they answer.
The 200 OK would contain no SDP, since the offer/answer exchange has completed.
Alternatively, agents MAY place the offer in a 2xx instead (in which case the
answer comes in the ACK).
When this happens, the callee will alert the user on receipt of the INVITE,
and the ICE exchanges will take place only after the user answers.
This has the effect of reducing call setup delay, but can cause substantial
post-pickup delays and media clipping.
SIP Option Tags and Media Feature Tags specifies a SIP option tag and media feature tag for usage with ICE.
ICE implementations using SIP SHOULD support this specification, which uses a
feature tag in registrations to facilitate interoperability through signaling
intermediaries.
Interactions with Forking
ICE interacts very well with forking.
Indeed, ICE fixes some of the problems associated with forking.
Without ICE, when a call forks and the caller receives multiple incoming
data streams, it cannot determine which data stream corresponds to
which callee.
With ICE, this problem is resolved.
The connectivity checks which occur prior to transmission of media carry
username fragments, which in turn are correlated to a specific callee.
Subsequent media packets that arrive on the same candidate pair as the
connectivity check will be associated with that same callee.
Thus, the caller can perform this correlation as long as it has received an answer.
Interactions with Preconditions
Quality of Service (QoS) preconditions, which are defined in
and , apply only to the transport addresses listed as the default
targets for media in an offer/answer.
If ICE changes the transport address where media is received, this change
is reflected in an updated offer that changes the default destination for
media to match ICE's selection. As such, it appears like any other re-INVITE would,
and is fully treated in RFCs 3312 and 4032, which apply without regard to the fact
that the destination for media is changing due to ICE negotiations occurring
"in the background".
Indeed, an agent SHOULD NOT indicate that QoS preconditions have been met
until the checks have completed and selected the candidate pairs to be used for media.
ICE also has (purposeful) interactions with connectivity preconditions .
Those interactions are described there.
Note that the procedures described in describe their own type of "preconditions", albeit with less functionality than those provided by the explicit preconditions in .
Interactions with Third Party Call Control
ICE works with Flows I, III, and IV as described in .
Flow I works without the controller supporting or being aware of ICE.
Flow IV will work as long as the controller passes along the ICE attributes without alteration.
Flow II is fundamentally incompatible with ICE; each agent will believe itself to be the answerer and thus never generate a re-INVITE.
The flows for continued operation, as described in ,
require additional behavior of ICE implementations to support.
In particular, if an agent receives a mid-dialog re-INVITE that contains no offer, it MUST restart ICE for each data stream and go through the process of gathering new candidates.
Furthermore, that list of candidates SHOULD include the ones currently being used for media.
Interactions with Application Layer Gateways and SIP
Application Layer Gateways (ALGs) are functions present in a Network Address Translation (NAT)
device that inspect the contents of packets and modify them, in order to facilitate NAT traversal
for application protocols. Session Border Controllers (SBCs) are close cousins of ALGs, but are
less transparent since they actually exist as application-layer SIP intermediaries. ICE has
interactions with SBCs and ALGs.
If an ALG is SIP aware but not ICE aware, ICE will work through it as long as the ALG correctly
modifies the SDP. A correct ALG implementation behaves as follows:
The ALG does not modify the "m=" and "c=" lines or the rtcp attribute if they contain
external addresses.
If the "m=" and "c=" lines contain internal addresses, the modification depends on the state of the ALG:
If the ALG already has a binding established that maps an external port to an internal connection
address and port matching the values in the "m=" and "c=" lines or rtcp attribute, the ALG uses that
binding instead of creating a new one.
If the ALG does not already have a binding, it creates a new one and modifies the SDP, rewriting
the "m=" and "c=" lines and rtcp attribute.
Unfortunately, many ALGs are known to work poorly in these corner cases.
ICE does not try to work around broken ALGs, as this is outside the scope of its functionality.
ICE can help diagnose these conditions, which often show up as a mismatch between the set of candidates and
the "m=" and "c=" lines and rtcp attributes. The ice-mismatch attribute is used for this purpose.
ICE works best through ALGs when the signaling is run over TLS.
This prevents the ALG from manipulating the SDP messages and interfering with ICE operation.
Implementations that are expected to be deployed behind ALGs SHOULD provide for TLS transport of the SDP.
If an SBC is SIP aware but not ICE aware, the result depends on the behavior of the SBC.
If it is acting as a proper Back-to-Back User Agent (B2BUA), the SBC will remove any SDP attributes
it doesn't understand, including the ICE attributes. Consequently, the call will appear to both
endpoints as if the other side doesn't support ICE. This will result in ICE being disabled, and
media flowing through the SBC, if the SBC has requested it. If, however, the SBC passes the ICE attributes
without modification, yet modifies the default destination for media (contained in the "m=" and "c=" lines
and rtcp attribute), this will be detected as an ICE mismatch, and ICE processing is aborted for the call.
It is outside of the scope of ICE for it to act as a tool for "working around" SBCs.
If one is present, ICE will not be used and the SBC techniques take precedence.
Security Considerations
The generic ICE security considerations are defined in , and the
generic SDP offer/answer security considerations are defined in . These
security considerations also apply to implementations of this document.
IP Address Privacy
In some cases, e.g., for privacy reasons, an agent may not want to reveal the related
address and port. In this case the address MUST be set to "0.0.0.0" (for IPv4 candidates)
or "::" (for IPv6 candidates) and the port to '9'.
Attacks on the Offer/Answer Exchanges
An attacker that can modify or disrupt the offer/answer exchanges themselves can readily
launch a variety of attacks with ICE. They could direct media to a target of a DoS attack,
they could insert themselves into the data stream, and so on. These are similar to the general
security considerations for offer/answer exchanges, and the security considerations in
apply. These require techniques for message integrity and encryption
for offers and answers, which are satisfied by the TLS mechanism when
SIP is used. As such, the usage of TLS with ICE is RECOMMENDED.
The Voice Hammer Attack
The voice hammer attack is an amplification attack, and can be triggered even if the attacker
is an authenticated and valid participant in a session.
In this attack, the attacker initiates sessions to other agents, and maliciously includes
the connection address and port of a DoS target as the destination for media traffic
signaled in the SDP. This causes substantial amplification; a single offer/answer exchange
can create a continuing flood of media packets, possibly at high rates (consider video sources).
The use of ICE can help to prevent against this attack.
Specifically, if ICE is used, the agent receiving the malicious SDP will first perform connectivity
checks to the target of media before sending media there. If this target is a third-party host, the
checks will not succeed, and media is never sent.
Unfortunately, ICE doesn't help if it's not used, in which case an attacker could simply
send the offer without the ICE parameters. However, in environments where the set of clients is known,
and is limited to ones that support ICE, the server can reject any offers or answers that don't
indicate ICE support.
SIP User Agents (UA) that are not willing to receive non-ICE answers MUST include
an "ice" Option Tag in the SIP Require Header Field in their offer. UAs that
reject non-ICE offers will generally use a 421 response code, together with an Option Tag "ice" in the
Require Header Field in the response.
IANA ConsiderationsSDP Attributes
The original ICE specification defined seven new SDP attributes per the procedures of
.
The registration information from the original specification
is included here with modifications to include Mux Category and also defines
a new SDP attribute 'ice-pacing'.
candidate Attribute
Attribute Name:
candidate
Type of Attribute:
media-level
Subject to charset:
No
Purpose:
This attribute is used with Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE),
and provides one of many possible candidate addresses for communication.
These addresses are validated with an end-to-end connectivity check using Session
Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN).
Appropriate Values:
See of RFC XXXX.
Contact Name:
IESG
Contact Email:
iesg@ietf.org
Reference:
RFCXXXX
Mux Category:
TRANSPORT
remote-candidates Attribute
Attribute Name:
remote-candidates
Type of Attribute:
media-level
Subject to charset:
No
Purpose:
This attribute is used with Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE),
and provides the identity of the remote candidates that the offerer wishes the answerer
to use in its answer.
Appropriate Values:
See of RFC XXXX.
Contact Name:
IESG
Contact Email:
iesg@ietf.org
Reference:
RFCXXXX
Mux Category:
TRANSPORT
ice-lite Attribute
Attribute Name:
ice-lite
Type of Attribute:
session-level
Subject to charset:
No
Purpose:
This attribute is used with Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE),
and indicates that an agent has the minimum functionality required to support ICE
inter-operation with a peer that has a full implementation.
Appropriate Values:
See of RFC XXXX.
Contact Name:
IESG
Contact Email:
iesg@ietf.org
Reference:
RFCXXXX
Mux Category:
NORMAL
ice-mismatch Attribute
Attribute Name:
ice-mismatch
Type of Attribute:
media-level
Subject to charset:
No
Purpose:
This attribute is used with Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE), and indicates that an agent is ICE capable, but did not proceed with ICE due to a mismatch of candidates with the default destination for media signaled in the SDP.
Appropriate Values:
See of RFC XXXX.
Contact Name:
IESG
Contact e-mail:
iesg@ietf.org
Reference:
RFCXXXX
Mux Category:
NORMAL
ice-pwd Attribute
Attribute Name:
ice-pwd
Type of Attribute:
session- or media-level
Subject to charset:
No
Purpose:
This attribute is used with Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE),
and provides the password used to protect STUN connectivity checks.
Appropriate Values:
See of RFC XXXX.
Contact Name:
IESG
Contact e-mail:
iesg@ietf.org
Reference:
RFCXXXX
Mux Category:
TRANSPORT
ice-ufrag Attribute
Attribute Name:
ice-ufrag
Type of Attribute:
session- or media-level
Subject to charset:
No
Purpose:
This attribute is used with Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE),
and provides the fragments used to construct the username in STUN connectivity checks.
Appropriate Values:
See of RFC XXXX.
Contact Name:
IESG
Contact e-mail:
iesg@ietf.org
Reference:
RFCXXXX
Mux Category:
TRANSPORT
ice-options Attribute
Attribute Name:
ice-options
Long Form:
ice-options
Type of Attribute:
session-level
Subject to charset:
No
Purpose:
This attribute is used with Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE),
and indicates the ICE options or extensions used by the agent.
Appropriate Values:
See of RFC XXXX.
Contact Name:
IESG
Contact e-mail:
iesg@ietf.org
Reference:
RFCXXXX
Mux Category:
NORMAL
ice-pacing Attribute
This specification also defines a new SDP attribute, "ice-pacing" according
to the following data:
Attribute Name:
ice-pacing
Type of Attribute:
session-level
Subject to charset:
No
Purpose:
This attribute is used with Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE)
to indicate desired connectivity check pacing values.
Appropriate Values:
See of RFC XXXX.
Contact Name:
IESG
Contact e-mail:
iesg@ietf.org
Reference:
RFCXXXX
Mux Category:
NORMAL
Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) Options Registry
IANA maintains a registry for ice-options identifiers under the Specification
Required policy as defined in "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations
Section in RFCs" .
ICE options are of unlimited length according to the syntax in
; however, they are RECOMMENDED to be no longer
than 20 characters. This is to reduce message sizes and allow for
efficient parsing. ICE options are defined at the session level.
A registration request MUST include the following information:
The ICE option identifier to be registered
Name and email address of organization or individuals having change control
Short description of the ICE extension to which the option relates
Reference(s) to the specification defining the ICE option and the related extensions
Candidate Attribute Extension Subregistry Establishment
This section creates a new sub-registry, "Candidate Attribute Extensions", under the sdp-parameters
registry: .
The purpose of the sub-registry is to register SDP candidate attribute extensions.
When a candidate extension is registered in the sub-registry, it needs to meet the "Specification Required"
policies defined in .
Candidate attribute extensions MUST follow the 'cand-extension' syntax. The attribute extension
name MUST follow the 'extension-att-name' syntax, and the attribute extension value MUST follow the
'extension-att-value' syntax.
A registration request MUST include the following information:
The name of the attribute extension.
Name and email address of organization or individuals having change control
A short description of the attribute extension.
A reference to a specification that describes the semantics, usage and possible
values of the attribute extension.
Changes from RFC 5245 describes the changes that were done to the
common SIP procedures, including removal of aggressive nomination,
modifying the procedures for calculating candidate pair states and
scheduling connectivity checks and the calculation of timer values.
This document defines the following SDP offer/answer specific changes:
SDP offer/answer realization and usage of 'ice2' option.
Definition and usage of SDP 'ice-pacing' attribute.
Explicit text that an ICE agent must not generate candidates with FQDNs, and
must discard such candidates if received from the peer agent.
Relax requirement to include SDP 'rtcp' attribute.
Generic clarifications of SDP offer/answer procedures.
ReferencesNormative ReferencesInformative ReferencesExamples
For the example shown in ,
the resulting offer (message 5) encoded in SDP looks like:
The offer, with the variables replaced with their values, will look like (lines folded for clarity):
The resulting answer looks like:
With the variables filled in:
The remote-candidates Attribute
The "a=remote-candidates" attribute exists to eliminate a race condition between the updated offer and the response to the STUN Binding request that moved a candidate into the Valid list.
This race condition is shown in .
On receipt of message 4, agent L adds a candidate pair to the valid list.
If there was only a single data stream with a single component, agent L could now send an updated offer.
However, the check from agent R has not yet generated a response, and agent R receives the updated offer (message 7) before getting the response (message 9).
Thus, it does not yet know that this particular pair is valid.
To eliminate this condition, the actual candidates at R that were selected by the offerer (the remote candidates) are included in the offer itself, and the answerer delays its answer until those pairs validate.
Why Is the Conflict Resolution Mechanism Needed?
When ICE runs between two peers, one agent acts as controlled, and the other as controlling.
Rules are defined as a function of implementation type and offerer/answerer to determine who is controlling and who is controlled.
However, the specification mentions that, in some cases, both sides might believe they are controlling, or both sides might believe they are controlled.
How can this happen?
The condition when both agents believe they are controlled shows up in third party call control cases.
Consider the following flow:
This flow is a variation on flow III of RFC 3725 .
In fact, it works better than flow III since it produces fewer messages.
In this flow, the controller sends an offerless INVITE to agent A, which responds with its offer, SDP1.
The agent then sends an offerless INVITE to agent B, which it responds to with its offer, SDP2.
The controller then uses the offer from each agent to generate the answers.
When this flow is used, ICE will run between agents A and B, but both will believe they are in the controlling role.
With the role conflict resolution procedures, this flow will function properly when ICE is used.
At this time, there are no documented flows that can result in the case where both agents believe they are controlled.
However, the conflict resolution procedures allow for this case, should a flow arise that would fit into this category.
Why Send an Updated Offer?
Section 11.1 describes rules for sending media.
Both agents can send media once ICE checks complete, without waiting for an updated offer.
Indeed, the only purpose of the updated offer is to "correct" the SDP so that the default destination for media matches where media is being sent based on ICE procedures (which will be the highest-priority nominated candidate pair).
This raises the question -- why is the updated offer/answer exchange needed at all?
Indeed, in a pure offer/answer environment, it would not be.
The offerer and answerer will agree on the candidates to use through ICE, and then can begin using them.
As far as the agents themselves are concerned, the updated offer/answer provides no new information.
However, in practice, numerous components along the signaling path look at the SDP information.
These include entities performing off-path QoS reservations, NAT traversal components such as ALGs and Session Border Controllers (SBCs), and diagnostic tools that passively monitor the network.
For these tools to continue to function without change, the core property of SDP -- that the existing, pre-ICE definitions of the addresses used for media -- the "m=" and "c=" lines and the rtcp attribute -- must be retained.
For this reason, an updated offer must be sent.
Acknowledgments
A large part of the text in this document was taken from , authored by
Jonathan Rosenberg.
Some of the text in this document was taken from , authored by Magnus Westerlund
and Colin Perkins.
Many thanks to Flemming Andreasen for shepherd review feedback.
Thanks to following experts for their reviews and constructive feedback: Thomas Stach,
Adam Roach, Peter Saint-Andre, Roman Danyliw, Alissa Cooper, Benjamin Kaduk, Mirja Kuhlewind, Alexey Melnikov, Eric Vyncke for their detailed reviews.
Contributors
Following experts have contributed textual and structural improvements for this work