Interop Labs UC Resources

The links below represent output of the Unified Communications (UC) Labs team as well as some resources that we felt might be of interest to UC users and UC testers.

UC: Unified Communications

UC Overview, Topology and Presentations

UC Lab Overview

Unified Communications (UC) is a commonly used term for the integration of disparate communications systems, media, devices and applications. This potentially includes the integration of fixed and mobile voice, e-mail, instant messaging, presence, Internet Protocol (IP)-PBX, Voice over IP (VoIP), Voice over Wireless LAN (VoWLAN), voice mail, fax, audio, video and web conferencing, unified messaging, unified voicemail into a single environment.

Various parts of the industry and various vendors tend to define the concept of UC in slightly different ways, but it can really involve any means of presenting availability information, collaborating and communicating. The applications range from calendar and email, via desktop-sharing, instant messaging and PDAs, to voice applications with handsets, softphones and mobile phones, voicemail and video conferencing, all of these with a central system that keeps track of the presence information for the different users and different applications, devices and protocols.

UC is currently more of a loosely defined concept and less of a framework with a defined set of protocols. There are numerous proprietary protocols and a few more or less standardized ones. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) with its extensions in SIMPLE, is a likely candidate to unite many of the UC applications, but SIP currently only fills the basic need and most vendors have written their own extensions to the protocol, making interoperability challenging and often limited.

Implementing a complete UC system is not trivial, however, with an increasingly mobile workforce, and de-centralized businesses, the need for a wider range of, and a more accessible layer to the different communications options available to the end user is increasing. The InteropLabs Unified Communications Initiative will investigate the areas most commonly included in the concept of UC, how they integrate and the protocols involved. We will look at both single-vendor and multi-vendor solutions and endeavor to address some of the challenges involved in implementing a seamlessly integrated system of different communication mechanisms as a system of Unified Communications.

UC Lab Topology

UC Lab Presentation

The UC Lab Presentation and Demonstration Scenarios will be available online after Friday May 2nd 2008 at The UC Lab Presentation

Interop Labs Team White Papers

Here are the white papers from the 2008 InteropLabs UC project. All are PDF files. You may reproduce and distribute these files unchanged.

UC Lab Background and Design Concepts

Additional whatepapers will be available after Friday May 10th 2008 at UC Lab Whitepapers

IETF Specifications

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)

The base specifications of the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) formalize the core protocols developed within the Jabber open-source community in 1999. They were produced by the IETF's XMPP Working Group and published as RFCs in October 2004. Note: Updated versions of RFC3920 and RFC 3921 are currently being worked on in the IETF.

RFC 3920 XMPP Core Specification

RFC 3921 XMPP IM Specification

RFC 3922 XMPP CPIM Specification

RFC 3923 XMPP E2E Specification

RFC 4854 XMPP URN Specification

RFC 4979 XMPP ENUM Specification

RFC 5122 XMPP URI Specification

SIP for Instant Messaging and leveraging Extensions (simple)

The IETF SIP/simple working group focuses on the application of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP, RFC 3261) to the suite of services collectively known as instant messaging and presence (IMP). The IETF has committed to producing an interoperable standard for these services compliant to the requirements for IM outlined in RFC 2779 (including the security and privacy requirements there) and in the Common Presence and Instant Messaging (CPIM) specification, developed within the IMPP working group. As the most common services for which SIP is used share quite a bit in common with IMP, the adaptation of SIP to IMP seems a natural choice given the widespread support for (and relative maturity of) the SIP standard.

RFC 3856 A Presence Event Package for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)

RFC 3857 A Watcher Information Event Template-Package for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)

RFC 3858 An Extensible Markup Language (XML) Based Format for Watcher Information

RFC 3944 Indication of Message Composition for Instant Messaging

RFC 4479 A Data Model for Presence

RFC 4482 CIPID: Contact Information for the Presence Information Data Format

RFC 4480 RPID: Rich Presence Extensions to the Presence Information Data Format (PIDF)

RFC 4481 Timed Presence Extensions to the Presence Information Data Format (PIDF) to Indicate Status Information for Past and Future Time Intervals

RFC 4662 A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Event Notification Extension for Resource Lists

RFC 4661 An Extensible Markup Language (XML) Based Format for Event Notification Filtering

RFC 4660 Functional Description of Event Notification Filtering

RFC 4827 An Extensible Markup Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP) Usage for Manipulating Presence Document Contents