Subject: [Notifications] Notifications Pictures

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 09:17:26 -0700

A few of us met this afternoon and drew these pictures, which are 
attached.  The one called "notifications.pdf" attempts to show how 
IMAP out-of-band notifications fits into a generic notifications 
model.  In this model, notifications are pushed from various 
application servers, including IMAP, to a notifications server, using 
a standardized server-to-server notifications protocol such as XMPP 
or SIP.  As an optional prior step, application clients can configure 
event generation criteria.  In order to allow the notifications 
server to be in a different administrative domain from the 
application servers (such as being in a mobile carrier's network), 
the client obtains a token from the notification server, passes it to 
the application server, which includes it in (or uses it to sign) 
notifications.  This allows the notification server to not accept 
notifications that aren't sent on behalf of its users, and possibly 
to associate a notification with the user's device.

A more short-term solution to IMAP out-of-band notifications is to 
deploy an extra box in front of the IMAP server which uses IMAP 
NOTIFY to aggregate notifications, and sends those to a notification 
server, which further filters.  This is shown in the picture called 
"notifications-short-term.pdf".
-- 
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
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From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:47:16 -0600

Randall Gellens wrote:
> In order to allow the notifications server to be in a 
> different administrative domain from the application servers (such as 
> being in a mobile carrier's network), the client obtains a token from 
> the notification server, passes it to the application server, which 
> includes it in (or uses it to sign) notifications.  This allows the 
> notification server to not accept notifications that aren't sent on 
> behalf of its users, and possibly to associate a notification with the 
> user's device.

I don't see why the token is necessary -- couldn't the notification 
server require prior registration before allowing the client to publish 
notifications? If you have stable identities, then registration seems 
sufficient.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
XMPP Standards Foundation
http://www.xmpp.org/xsf/people/stpeter.shtml

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From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2007 16:36:39 -0700

At 10:47 AM -0600 3/26/07, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:

>  Randall Gellens wrote:
>>  In order to allow the notifications server to be in a different 
>> administrative domain from the application servers (such as being 
>> in a mobile carrier's network), the client obtains a token from 
>> the notification server, passes it to the application server, 
>> which includes it in (or uses it to sign) notifications.  This 
>> allows the notification server to not accept notifications that 
>> aren't sent on behalf of its users, and possibly to associate a 
>> notification with the user's device.
>
> server require prior registration before allowing the client to 
> publish notifications? If you have stable identities, then 
> registration seems sufficient.

The idea is to now require a lot of advance 
configuration/registration between independent administrative 
domains, yet at the same time not require the notification server to 
accept all notifications sent from all sources.  The token isn't the 
only solution, and a WG may well choose a different solution, but the 
proposal allows for pre-existing relationships between the IMAP 
server and the client, and between the notification server and the 
client, and uses that to allow the notification server to verify 
notifications sent to it by the IMAP server on behalf of the user, 
even without any relationship between the IMAP server and the 
notification server.  This way the IMAP server, for example, can be 
operated by the user's employer, while the notification server is 
operated by the carrier.
-- 
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
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