Subject: [rtcweb] URI Scheme for TURN Configuration

From: snandaku <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:50:31 -0800

Hello All

        We have submitted a proposal to IETF BEHAVE WG on URI scheme
representing TURN configuration. Draft can be retrieved at :(
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-petithuguenin-behave-turn-uris-00)
       
 We presented the idea at the BEHAVE interim today and it was positively
received. The BEHAVE chairs were interested in obtaining a signoff on
choosing  URI scheme against proposals based on string representation or
JSON for the matter. We would like to get opinions and thoughts around this
approach from RTCWeb/WebRTC chairs and the members.

    Below we have summarized the motivation and some samples from the draft
for a quick reference.

    Motivation for the TURN URI Scheme in the context of RTCWeb
        -TURN protocol is  used to establish candidates to perform ICE
connectivity checks.
        - Current proposal in the spec based on string representation has
inherent shortcomings and is not future proof (say ipv6:port scenarios)
        - An URI scheme with well defined grammar SHALL help in the
following ways
                    Provide UNIVERSAL way to configure TURN Server
configuration to myriad of RTCWeb Clients/Web Applications
                    Enhance INTEROPERABILITY between implementations by
standardizing on the URI Scheme across
                                Different Browser Vendors, Different Web
Application Services, Gateways and alike.
                    Define STANDARD data representation format as enforced
by the URI scheme
                    Enable EVOLUTION and FUTURE PROOFING defined by the
encoding URI syntax grammar
                   Immediate  BENEFITS can be realized from current
proposals for things like IPv6 support, Unicode user/password,
                    resolution mechanism, etc.

        Sample URI 
                turn:example.org
                turns:example.org:8189
                turn:example.org?transport=udp

     We did think about JSON as one possible approach but didn¹t pursue
further for few reasons mentioned below
            JSON is nice for web browser (theory), but it¹s useful to keep
in mind that:
>> ·         Just doing an eval on a JSON object is a bad idea, so it has to
>> be parsed with parsing logic  no benefit in terms of processing
>> ·         It¹s harder for a human to compose a JSON object, but URIs are
>> more widely understood
>> ·         JavaScript is the popular language today, but Google and others
>> will come along with new programming languages (witness: DART) and then
>> what?  Will JSON be as attractive? I suspect URIs will be.
>> ·         We want this to be useful in places outside the browser, so JSON
>> should not be the first thought

  Apart from the above reasons, going with URI scheme will permit to
simplify the text in the W3C document by referencin RFC 5928 and the future
TURN URI RFC.  That cannot be a bad thing.  A third motivation is that as
the TURN URI is done in a different WG, this permits to do this work in
parallel to RTCWEB (that probably does not need more distractions).

 RTCWeb impacts millions of end-points and we strongly believe providing
standard way to provision and configure TURN/STUN information would be
really effective.

Please let us know your thoughts and support in this approach

Regards
Suhas Nandakumar
Marc Petit Huhuenin
Gonzalo Salgueiro
Paul E Jones

---

From: snandaku <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 22:47:34 -0800

Hello All

> received. The BEHAVE chairs were interested in obtaining a signoff on choosing
> URI scheme against proposals based on string representation or JSON for the
> matter. We would like to get opinions and thoughts around this approach from
> RTCWeb/WebRTC chairs and the members.
> 
> 
>         - An URI scheme with well defined grammar SHALL help in the following
> ways
>                     Define STANDARD data representation format as enforced by
> the URI scheme
>                    Immediate  BENEFITS can be realized from current proposals
> for things like IPv6 support, Unicode user/password,
>             JSON is nice for web browser (theory), but it¹s useful to keep in
> mind that:
>   Apart from the above reasons, going with URI scheme will permit to simplify
> the text in the W3C document by referencin RFC 5928 and the future TURN URI
> RFC.  That cannot be a bad thing.  A third motivation is that as the TURN URI
> is done in a different WG, this permits to do this work in parallel to RTCWEB
> (that probably does not need more distractions).
> 
> standard way to provision and configure TURN/STUN information would be really
> effective.
> 
> 
>

---

From: Iñaki Baz Castillo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 20:54:27 +0100

2012/2/17 snandaku <[email-masked]>:
>         We want this to be useful in places outside the browser, so JSON

Right. I expect that future applications running in smartphones could
make usage of WebRTC capabilities out of the context of the WWW.

-- 
Iñaki Baz Castillo
<[email-masked]>