Protocol Action: DHCP Option for SIP Servers to Proposed Standard

[The IESG <iesg-secretary@ietf.org>]

The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft 'DHCP Option for SIP Servers'
<draft-ietf-sip-dhcp-06.txt> as a Proposed Standard.  This document
is the product of the Session Initiation Protocol Working Group.
The IESG contact persons are Allison Mankin and Scott Bradner.


Technical Summary

 The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an application-layer control
 protocol that can establish, modify and terminate multimedia sessions or
 calls. The SIP WG is developing its particular use for signaling of
 Internet telephony calls.  A SIP system has two components: user agents
 and servers.  The user agent is the SIP end system that acts on behalf of
 someone who wants to participate in a SIP call.

 SIP-DHCP specifies a DHCP option that allows SIP user agents (clients)
 to locate a local SIP server that is to be used for outbound SIP
 requests, the outbound proxy server.

 The SIP client obtains a DNS string via a DHCP option.  This
 string is then used by the mechanism specified by the recently
 published Proposed Standard, Locating SIP Servers, to locate
 the outbound proxy server.

 This is one of many possible solutions for locating the outbound
 SIP server.


Working Group Summary

 The SIP working group supported this proposal.  The proposal was also
 given working group last call and very carefully reviewed by the DHC
 Working Group.  Originally the DHCP and server location specifications
 were in one draft.  The IESG requested the two be separated and the
 server location draft was advanced to Proposed Standard recently.


Protocol Quality

 This document was reviewed for the IESG by Allison Mankin.  The
 DHCP usage was reviewed in tremendous detail by Thomas Narten and
 Ralph Droms, and corrections were made and Last Called to bring
 the work in line with other DHCP usage of DNS names.