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Copyright Notice

Copyright © The Internet Society (2006).

Abstract

In some network configurations, it is desirable for the end system to be able to obtain its geodetic or civic location using an application-layer protocol. This document describes RELO; a simple, HTTP-based stateless protocol that fulfills this need.

Table of Contents

1.  Introduction
2.  Terminology
3.  Overview
    3.1  Discovery
    3.2  Query
    3.3  Response
4.  XML Schema Definition
5.  IANA Considerations
6.  Security Considerations
7.  Acknowledgments
8.  References
    8.1  Normative References
    8.2  Informative References
§  Author's Address
§  Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements

1. Introduction

The RELO protocol allows end systems (devices) to obtain information about their current geodetic (longitude, latitude) or civic (jurisdictional or postal street address) location, based on their Internet Protocol address or possibly other identifiers. The protocol uses HTTP (Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, “Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1,” June 1999.)[3] to retrieve the information. The location information can be returned by value or by reference, either for retrieval or for event notification by subscription.

The protocol is motivated by the requirement that end user network-layer equipment, such as DSL modems, routers, NATs and wireless access points, cannot be modified. Hence, a DHCP or PPP based solution cannot be reused. A more detailed problem statement is provided in [11] (Tschofenig, H. and H. Schulzrinne, “Problem Statement, Requirements and Framework for a Geopriv Layer 7 Protocol,” May 2006.). To reduce privacy risks, RELO is designed for "first-party" retrieval, i.e., the device obtains its own location or a reference thereto. It is not designed for a third party to retrieve location information about a device. However, RELO may retrieve a reference to location information that can be passed to third parties.

2. Terminology

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT","RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [1] (Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels,” March 1997.).

This document reuses terminology introduced by RFC 3693 [6] (Cuellar, J., Morris, J., Mulligan, D., Peterson, J., and J. Polk, “Geopriv Requirements,” February 2004.) and [11] (Tschofenig, H. and H. Schulzrinne, “Problem Statement, Requirements and Framework for a Geopriv Layer 7 Protocol,” May 2006.).

3. Overview

This section describes the Location Information Server (LIS) discovery procedure (see Section 3.1 (Discovery)), the query message (see Section 3.2 (Query)) and the response message (see Section 3.3 (Response)).

3.1 Discovery

The URI for the location server is conveyed via DNS (S-NAPTR) (Daigle, L. and A. Newton, “Domain-Based Application Service Location Using SRV RRs and the Dynamic Delegation Discovery Service (DDDS),” January 2005.)[8]. The domain is determined from the domain name of the end host, typically conveyed as part of the configuration information or obtainable from the public IP address via DNS PTR records.

   dhcp-17.example.com.
   ;      order pref flags service      regexp
   IN NAPTR 50   50  "a"  "Location.relo"     ""
   ;  replacement
      relo.example.org

3.2 Query

The query is transmitted to the server in an HTTP GET request, using the media type application/relo+xml. The use of TLS (Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, “The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.1,” April 2006.)[10] is RECOMMENDED.

The end system is identified by default by its IP address, contained in the IP packets carrying the HTTP request. If the querier is behind a NAT or firewall, the server will see the querier's public IP address and use that address to identify the end system. In those cases, the location of the network termination equipment, such as the DSL modem or 802.11 access point, will be returned, not the actual location of the querier since the LIS generally has no way to estimate that location. Other identifiers, such as switch and port information, are for further study.

The format of the location information is contained in the <by> element of the query and can indicate that either civic or geo(spatial) information is desired and whether the client wishes to obtain the value ("value"), a reference to the current value ("reference") or a subscription to change notifications for the value ("events"). A query example is shown below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<get-location by="value" type="civic"
  xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:relo1"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" />

This protocol does not provide the ability for the end host to transmit a location estimate as, for example, obtained from a local GPS receiver, to the LIS.

3.3 Response

A successful response contains the civic and or geospatial location information related to the identifier of the querier. Note that this proposal does not return a PIDF-LO [12] (Peterson, J., “A Presence-based GEOPRIV Location Object Format,” December 2005.) since most of the values carried by the PIDF-LO cannot be meaningfully instantiated by the network without the help of the end host. This proposal allows the end host to instantiate the values byself without introducing security challenges and privacy risks. If the querier indicated a preference for location-by-reference, the answer simply contains a URI-list, i.e., media type text/uri-list (Mealling, M. and R. Daniel, “URI Resolution Services Necessary for URN Resolution,” January 1999.)[2].

Normal HTTP status responses are used to indicate failure conditions, e.g., when the information is unavailable.

The server indicates the validity period of the information using the HTTP Expires header field. If a reference is returned, the reference URL itself is not guaranteed to be valid beyond the expiration time.

The server MAY provide one or more URLs in a new HTTP header field, Subscribe, that the client can subscribe to if it wants to receive updates for the object retrieved via HTTP. At least one of the URLs MUST be a SIP URL. For SIP, the event name to be used in the subscription can be encoded in the URL. (An HTTP header field was chosen since the subscription mechanism does not depend on the media type and also applies to media types that would make it difficult to embed such subscription URLs, such as a JPEG image.) The server makes no guarantees that the client has the appropriate credentials to subscribe to the object. Clients MAY support this mechanism; all clients that do support subscriptions MUST support the SIP SUBSCRIBE and NOTIFY methods.

The field value consists of one or more absolute URIs:

  Subcribe = "Subscribe" ":" 1#absoluteURI

An example is:

  Subscribe: sip:data@example.com?Event=location

[TBD: Since this mechanism is not limited to location delivery, this might be better separated into a stand-alone draft.]

The response containing the location information is not signed.

Response message examples are shown below starting with a response providing geospatial location information and followed by civic location information. Finally, we show an example with location-by-referency.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<returnlocation xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:relo1"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml">
    <gml:location>
        <gml:Point gml:id="point1" srsName="epsg:4326">
            <gml:coordinates>37:46:30N 122:25:10W</gml:coordinates>
        </gml:Point>
    </gml:location>
</returnlocation>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<returnlocation xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:relo1"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:p2="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:pidf:geopriv10:civilLoc">
    <civilAddress>
        <p2:country>Deutschland</p2:country>
        <p2:A1>Bayern</p2:A1>
        <p2:A3>Muenchen</p2:A3>
        <p2:A6>Neu Perlach</p2:A6>
        <p2:HNO>96</p2:HNO>
        <p2:PC>81675</p2:PC>
    </civilAddress>
</returnlocation>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<returnURI xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:relo1"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <URI>sip:15555551002adfkafjyonqoijoyukjglky@example.com</URI>
</returnURI>

4. XML Schema Definition

This section provides the XML schema.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<schema xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
    targetNamespace="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:relo1"
    xmlns:relo="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:relo1"
    xmlns:civilLoc="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:pidf:geopriv10:civilLoc"
    xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml"
    xmlns:gp="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:pidf:geopriv10"
    elementFormDefault="qualified"
    attributeFormDefault="unqualified">

    <!--  get-location            -->
    <element name="get-location" type="relo:get-locationType"/>
    <complexType name="get-locationType">
        <complexContent>
            <restriction base="anyType">
                <attribute name="by" type="relo:byType"
                           default="value"/>
                <attribute name="type" type="token" use="required"/>
            </restriction>
        </complexContent>
    </complexType>
    <simpleType name="byType">
        <restriction base="string">
            <enumeration value="value"/>
            <enumeration value="reference"/>
        </restriction>
    </simpleType>

    <!-- Responses    -->
    <element name="result" abstract="true"/>

    <element name="returnlocation" type="relo:returnlocationType"
             substitutionGroup="relo:result"/>
    <complexType name="returnlocationType">
        <complexContent>
            <restriction base="anyType">
                <sequence>
                    <element ref="gml:location" minOccurs="0"
                             maxOccurs="1"/>
                    <element name="civilAddress"
                             type="civilLoc:civilAddress"
                             minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1"/>
                </sequence>
            </restriction>
        </complexContent>
    </complexType>

    <element name="returnURI" type="relo:returnURIType"
             substitutionGroup="relo:result"/>
    <complexType name="returnURIType">
        <sequence>
            <element name="URI" type="anyURI" minOccurs="1"
                     maxOccurs="1"/>
        </sequence>
    </complexType>
</schema>

5. IANA Considerations

This document registers the label "RELO" as the S-NAPTR application service tag according to [8] (Daigle, L. and A. Newton, “Domain-Based Application Service Location Using SRV RRs and the Dynamic Delegation Discovery Service (DDDS),” January 2005.) for location lookup services and defines the intended usage, interoperability considerations and security considerations (Security Considerations).

This document requests the registration of a new message header field, 'Subscribe', according to RFC 3864 (Klyne, G., Nottingham, M., and J. Mogul, “Registration Procedures for Message Header Fields,” September 2004.)[7].

Header field name:

Subscribe

This specification also requests the registration of a new MIME type according to the procedures of RFC 4288 [9] (Freed, N. and J. Klensin, “Media Type Specifications and Registration Procedures,” December 2005.) and guidelines in RFC 3023 [4] (Murata, M., St. Laurent, S., and D. Kohn, “XML Media Types,” January 2001.).

MIME media type name:

application

MIME subtype name:

relo+xml

Mandatory parameters:

none

Optional parameters:

charset
Indicates the character encoding of enclosed XML.

Encoding considerations:

Uses XML, which can employ 8-bit characters, depending on the character encoding used. See RFC 3023 [4] (Murata, M., St. Laurent, S., and D. Kohn, “XML Media Types,” January 2001.), Section 3.2.

Security considerations:

This content type is designed to carry authorization policies. Appropriate precautions should be adopted to limit disclosure of this information. Please refer to Section 6 (Security Considerations) of RFCXXXX [NOTE TO IANA/RFC-EDITOR: Please replace XXXX with the RFC number of this specification.] and to the security considerations described in Section 10 of RFC 3023 [4] (Murata, M., St. Laurent, S., and D. Kohn, “XML Media Types,” January 2001.) for more information.

Interoperability considerations:

None

Published specification:

RFCXXXX [NOTE TO IANA/RFC-EDITOR: Please replace XXXX with the RFC number of this specification.] this document

Applications which use this media type:

Presence- and location-based systems

Additional information:

Magic Number:

None

File Extension:

.reloxml

Macintosh file type code:

'TEXT'

Personal and email address for further information:

Henning Schulzrinne, hgs@cs.columbia.edu

Intended usage:

LIMITED USE

Author/Change controller:

This specification is a work item of the IETF GEOPRIV working group, with mailing list address <geopriv@ietf.org>.

6. Security Considerations

If IP addresses are used as identifiers, RELO relies on return routability to ensure that only the current owner of an IP address can obtain location information for that host, and assumes that an attacker cannot generate and intercept packets for a spoofed IP address. Note that TLS itself does not prevent client address spoofing if the attacker can intercept and generate IP packets with the victim's IP address.

The victim can be protected against this privacy breach if the client and LIS share a secret, such as a username/password combination, and the LIS can associate an IP address with a particular user, e.g., based on PPP authentication. In that case, HTTP digest authentication can be used to prevent a third party from using a spoofed IP address to fraudulently obtain location information. Unfortunately, such authentication information is not generally available to wireless nodes in residential networks, for example.

To prevent others from accessing location information for a particular host, the reference to a Location Object MUST NOT be guessable. For example, it may contain a random component. It is RECOMMENDED to use TLS with confidentiality protection to prevent eavesdroppers to observe the protocol exchange between the end host and the LIS.

Signing of location information is beyond the scope of this document [TBD; if desired, reference to other document, since this is not specific to obtaining location information]. Thus, colluding attackers may be able to obtain and replay location information that does not correspond to their true location.

7. Acknowledgments

This document is based on discussions with Hannes Tschofenig and inspired by protocols such as HELD.

8. References

8.1 Normative References

8.2 Informative References

Author's Address

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