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IETF RFC 8396
Managing, Ordering, Distributing, Exposing, and Registering Telephone Numbers (MODERN): Problem Statement, Use Cases, and Framework
Last modified on Friday, July 20th, 2018
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) J. Peterson
Request for Comments: 8396 NeuStar, Inc.
Category: Informational T. McGarry
ISSN: 2070-1721 July 2018
Managing, Ordering, Distributing, Exposing, and Registering Telephone
Numbers (MODERN): Problem Statement, Use Cases, and Framework
 Abstract
The functions of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) are
rapidly migrating to the Internet. This is generating new
requirements for many traditional elements of the PSTN, including
Telephone Numbers (TNs). TNs no longer serve simply as telephone
routing addresses: they are now identifiers that may be used by
Internet-based services for a variety of purposes including session
establishment, identity verification, and service enablement. This
problem statement examines how the existing tools for allocating and
managing telephone numbers do not align with the use cases of the
Internet environment and proposes a framework for Internet-based
services relying on TNs.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are candidates for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8396.
Peterson & McGarry Informational PAGE 1 
RFC 8396 MODERN Problems July 2018
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2018 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1. Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2. Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3. Data Management Architectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3. Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4. Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.1. Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.1.1. Acquiring TNs from Registrar . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.1.2. Acquiring TNs from CSPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2. Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2.1. Management of Administrative Data . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2.1.1. Managing Data at a Registrar . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2.1.2. Managing Data at a CSP . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.2.2. Management of Service Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.2.2.1. CSP to Other CSPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2.2.2. User to CSP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2.3. Managing Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2.3.1. Changing the CSP for an Existing Service . . . . 16
4.2.3.2. Terminating a Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.3. Retrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.3.1. Retrieval of Public Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.3.2. Retrieval of Semi-restricted Administrative Data . . 18
4.3.3. Retrieval of Semi-restricted Service Data . . . . . . 19
4.3.4. Retrieval of Restricted Data . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6. Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
8. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
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RFC 8396 MODERN Problems July 2018
1. Problem Statement
The challenges of utilizing Telephone Numbers (TNs) on the Internet
have been known for some time. Internet telephony provided the first
use case for routing telephone numbers on the Internet in a manner
similar to how calls are routed in the Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN). As the Internet had no service for discovering the
endpoints associated with telephone numbers, ENUM [RFC 6116] created a
DNS-based mechanism for translating TNs into URIs, as used by
protocols such as SIP [RFC 3261]. The resulting database was designed
to function in a manner similar to the systems that route calls in
the PSTN. Originally, it was envisioned that ENUM would be deployed
as a global hierarchical service; however, in practice, it has only
been deployed piecemeal by various parties. Most notably, ENUM is
used as an internal network function and is rarely used between
service provider networks. The original ENUM concept of a single
root, e164.arpa, proved to be politically and practically
challenging, and less centralized models have thus flourished.
Subsequently, the Data for Reachability of Inter-/Intra-NetworK SIP
(DRINKS) framework [RFC 6461] showed ways that service providers might
provision information about TNs at an ENUM service or similar
Internet-based directory. These technologies have also generally
tried to preserve the features and architecture familiar to the PSTN
numbering environment.
Over time, Internet telephony has encompassed functions that differ
substantially from traditional PSTN routing and management,
especially as non-traditional providers have begun to utilize
numbering resources. An increasing number of enterprises, over-the-
top Voice over IP (VoIP) providers, text messaging services, and
related non-carrier services have become heavy users of telephone
numbers. An enterprise, for example, can deploy an IP Private Branch
Exchange (PBX) that receives a block of telephone numbers from a
carrier and then, in turn, distributes those numbers to new IP
telephones when they associate with the PBX. Internet services offer
users portals where they can allocate new telephone numbers on the
fly, assign multiple "alias" telephone numbers to a single line
service, implement various mobility or find-me-follow-me
applications, and so on. Peer-to-peer telephone networks have
encouraged experiments with distributed databases for telephone
number routing and even allocation.
This dynamic control over telephone numbers has few precedents in the
traditional PSTN outside of number portability. Number portability
allows the capability of a user to choose and change their service
provider while retaining their TN; it has been implemented in many
countries either for all telephony services or for subsets (e.g.,
mobile). However, TN administration processes rooted in PSTN
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RFC 8396 MODERN Problems July 2018
technology and policies made number porting fraught with problems and
delays. Originally, processes were built to associate a specific TN
to a specific service provider and never change it. With number
portability, the industry had to build new infrastructure and new
administrative functions and processes to change the association of
the TN from one service provider to another. Thanks to the
increasing sophistication of consumer mobile devices as Internet
endpoints as well as telephones, users now associate TNs with many
Internet applications other than telephony. This has generated new
interest in models similar to those in place for administering
freephone (non-geographic, toll-free numbers) services in the United
States, where a user purchases a number through a sort of number
registrar and controls its administration (such as routing) on their
own, typically using Internet services to directly make changes to
the service associated with telephone numbers.
Most TNs today are assigned to specific geographies, at both an
international level and within national numbering plans. Numbering
practices today are tightly coupled with the manner that service
providers interconnect as well as with how TNs are routed and
administered: the PSTN was carefully designed to delegate switching
intelligence geographically. In interexchange carrier routing in
North America, for example, calls to a particular TN are often handed
off to the terminating service provider close to the geography where
that TN is assigned. But the overwhelming success of mobile
telephones has increasingly eroded the connection between numbers and
regions. Furthermore, the topology of IP networks is not anchored to
geography in the same way that the telephone network is. In an
Internet environment, establishing a network architecture for routing
TNs could depend little on geography, relying instead on network
topologies or other architectural features. Adapting TNs to the
Internet requires more security, richer datasets, and more complex
query and response capabilities than previous efforts have provided.
This document attempts to create a common understanding of the
problem statement related to allocating, managing, and resolving TNs
in an IP environment, which is the focus of the IETF Managing,
Ordering, Distributing, Exposing, and Registering telephone Numbers
(MODERN) Working Group. It outlines a framework and lists motivating
use cases for creating IP-based mechanisms for TNs. It is important
to acknowledge at the outset that there are various evolving
international and national policies and processes related to TNs, and
any solutions need to be flexible enough to account for variations in
policy and requirements.
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2. Definitions
This section provides definitions for actors, data types, and data
management architectures as they are discussed in this document.
Different numbering spaces may instantiate these roles and concepts
differently: practices that apply to non-geographic freephone
numbers, for example, may not apply to geographic numbers, and
practices that exist under one Numbering Authority may not be
permitted under another. The purpose of this framework is to
identify the characteristics of protocol tools that will satisfy the
diverse requirements for telephone number acquisition, management,
and retrieval on the Internet.
2.1. Actors
The following roles of actors are defined in this document.
Numbering Authority: A regulatory body within a region that manages
that region's TNs. The Numbering Authority decides national
numbering policy for the nation, region, or other domain for which
it has authority, including what TNs can be allocated, which are
reserved, and which entities may obtain TNs.
Registry: An entity that administers the allocation of TNs based on
a Numbering Authority's policies. Numbering Authorities can act
as the Registries themselves, or they can outsource the function
to other entities. Traditional registries are single entities
with sole authority and responsibility for specific numbering
resources, though distributed registries (see Section 2.3) are
also in the scope of this framework.
Credential Authority: An entity that distributes credentials, such
as certificates that attest the authority of assignees (defined
below) and delegates. This document assumes that one or more
Credential Authorities may be trusted by actors in any given
regulatory environment; policies for establishing such trust
anchors are outside the scope of this document.
Registrar: An entity that distributes the telephone numbers
administered by a Registry; typically, there are many Registrars
that can distribute numbers from a single Registry, though
Registrars may serve multiple Registries as well. A Registrar has
business relationships with number assignees and collects
administrative information from them.
Communication Service Provider (CSP): A provider of communication
service where those services can be identified by TNs. This
includes both traditional telephone carriers or enterprises as
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well as service providers with no presence on the PSTN who use
TNs. This framework does not assume that any single CSP provides
all the communication service related to a particular TN.
Service Enabler: An entity that works with CSPs to enable
communication service to a User: perhaps a vendor, a service
bureau, or a third-party integrator.
User: An individual reachable through a communication service:
usually a customer of a Communication Service Provider.
Government Entity: An entity that, due to legal powers deriving from
national policy, has privileged access to information about number
administration under certain conditions.
Note that an individual, organization, or other entity may act in one
or more of the roles above; for example, a company may be a CSP and
also a Registrar. Although Numbering Authorities are listed as
actors, they are unlikely to actually participate in the protocol
flows themselves; however, in some situations, a Numbering Authority
and Registry may be the same administrative entity.
All actors that are recipients of numbering resources, be they a CSP,
Service Enabler, or User, can also be said to have a relationship to
a Registry of either an assignee or delegate.
Assignee: An actor that is assigned a TN directly by a Registrar; an
assignee always has a direct relationship with a Registrar.
Delegate: An actor that is delegated a TN from an assignee or
another delegate who does not necessarily have a direct
relationship with a Registrar. Delegates may delegate one or more
of their TN assignment(s) to one or more subdelegates from further
downstream.
As an example, consider a case where a Numbering Authority also acts
as a Registry, and it issues blocks of 10,000 TNs to CSPs that, in
this case, also act as Registrars. CSP/Registrars would then be
responsible for distributing numbering resources to Users and other
CSPs. In this case, an enterprise deploying IP PBXs also acts as a
CSP, and it acquires number blocks for its enterprise seats in chunks
of 100 from a CSP acting as a Registrar with whom the enterprise has
a business relationship. The enterprise is, in this case, the
assignee, as it receives numbering resources directly from a
Registrar. As it doles out individual numbers to its Users, the
enterprise delegates its own numbering resources to those Users and
their communication endpoints. The overall ecosystem might look as
follows.
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RFC 8396 MODERN Problems July 2018
+---------+
|Numbering|
|Authority|Registry
+----+----+
|
V 10,000 TNs
+---------+
| CSP |Registrar
+----+----+
|
V 100 TNs
+---------+
| PBX |Assignee
+---------+
|
V 1 TN
+---------+
| User |Delegate
+---------+
Figure 1: Chain of Number Assignment
2.2. Data Types
The following data types are defined in this document.
Administrative Data: Assignment data related to the TN and the
relevant actors; it includes TN status (assigned, unassigned,
etc.), contact data for the assignee or delegate, and typically
does not require real-time access as this data is not required for
ordinary call or session establishment.
Service Data: Data necessary to enable service for the TN; it
includes addressing data and service features. Since this data is
necessary to complete calls, it must be obtained in real time.
Administrative and service data can fit into three access categories:
Public: Anyone can access public data. Such data might include a
list of which numbering resources (unallocated number ranges) are
available for acquisition from the Registry.
Semi-restricted: Only a subset of actors can access semi-restricted
data. For example, CSPs may be able to access other CSP's service
data in some closed environment.
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Restricted: Only a small subset of actors can access restricted
data. For example, a Government Entity may be able access contact
information for a User.
While it might appear there are really only two categories, public
and restricted (based on the requestor), the distinction between
semi-restricted and restricted is helpful for the use cases below.
2.3. Data Management Architectures
This framework generally assumes that administrative and service data
is maintained by CSPs, Registrars, and Registries. The terms
"registrar" and "registry" are familiar from DNS operations, and
indeed the DNS provides an obvious inspiration for the relationships
between those entities described here. Protocols for transferring
names between registries and registrars have been standardized in the
DNS space for some time (see [RFC 3375]). Similarly, the division
between service data acquired by resolving names with the DNS
protocol versus administrative data about names acquired through
WHOIS [RFC 3912] is directly analogous to the distinction between
service and administrative data described in Section 2.2. The major
difference between the data management architecture of the DNS and
this framework is that the distinction between the CSP and User, due
to historical policies of the telephone network, will often not
exactly correspond to the distinction between a name service and a
registrant in the DNS world -- a User in the telephone network is
today at least rarely in a direct relationship with a Registrar
comparable to that of a DNS registrant.
The role of a Registry described here is a "thin" one, where the
Registry manages basic allocation information for the numbering
space, such as information about whether or not the number is
assigned, and if assigned, by which Registrar. It is the Registrar
that, in turn, manages detailed administrative data about those
assignments, such as contact or billing information for the assignee.
In some models, CSPs and Registrars will be combined (the same
administrative entity), and in others the Registry and Registrar may
similarly be composed. Typically, service data resides largely at
the CSP itself, though in some models a "thicker" Registry may itself
contain a pointer to the servicing CSP for a number or number block.
In addition to traditional centralized Registries, this framework
also supports environments where the same data is being managed by
multiple administrative entities and stored in many locations. A
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RFC 8396 MODERN Problems July 2018
distributed registry system is discussed further in [DRIP]. To
support those use cases, it is important to distinguish the
following:
Data Store: A data store is a service that stores and enables access
to administrative and/or service data.
Reference Address: A reference address is a URL that dereferences to
the location of the data store.
Distributed Data Stores: In a distributed data store, administrative
or service data can be stored with multiple actors. For example,
CSPs could provision their service data to multiple other CSPs.
Distributed Registries: Multiple Registries can manage the same
numbering resource. In these architectures, actors could interact
with one or multiple Registries. The Registries would update each
other when change occurs. The Registries have to ensure that data
remains consistent, e.g., that the same TN is not assigned to two
different actors.
3. Framework
The framework outlined in this document requires three Internet-based
mechanisms for managing and resolving TNs in an IP environment.
These mechanisms will likely reuse existing protocols for sharing
structured data; it is unlikely that new protocol development work
will be required, though new information models specific to the data
itself will be a major focus of framework development. Likely
candidates for reuse here include work done in DRINKS [RFC 6461] and
Web Extensible Internet Registration Data Service (WEIRDS) [RFC 7482],
as well as the Telephone-Related Information (TeRI) framework
[TERI-INFO].
These protocol mechanisms are scoped in a way that makes them likely
to apply to a broad range of future policies for number
administration. It is not the purpose of this framework to dictate
number policy but instead to provide tools that will work with
policies as they evolve going forward. These mechanisms, therefore,
do not assume that number administration is centralized nor that
number allocations are restricted to any category of service
providers, though these tools must and will work in environments with
those properties.
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RFC 8396 MODERN Problems July 2018
The three mechanisms are:
Acquisition: A protocol mechanism for acquiring TNs, including an
enrollment process.
Management: A protocol mechanism for associating data with TNs.
Retrieval: A protocol mechanism for retrieving data about TNs.
The acquisition mechanism will enable actors to acquire TNs for use
with a communication service by requesting numbering resources from a
service operated by a Registrar, CSP, or similar actor. TNs may be
requested either on a number-by-number basis or as inventory blocks.
Any actor who grants numbering resources will retain metadata about
the assignment, including the responsible organization or individual
to whom numbers have been assigned.
The management mechanism will let actors provision data associated
with TNs. For example, if a User has been assigned a TN, they may
select a CSP to provide a particular service associated with the TN,
or a CSP may assign a TN to a User upon service activation. In
either case, a mechanism is needed to provision data associated with
the TN at that CSP and to extend those data sets as CSPs (and even
Users) require.
The retrieval mechanism will enable actors to learn information about
TNs. For real-time service data, this typically involves sending a
request to a CSP; for other information, an actor may need to send a
request to a Registry rather than a CSP. Different parties may be
authorized to receive different information about TNs.
As an example, a CSP might use the acquisition interface to acquire a
chunk of numbers from a Registrar. Users might then provision
administrative data associated with those numbers at the CSP through
the management interface and query for service data relating to those
numbers through the retrieval interface of the CSP.
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+--------+
|Registry|
+---+----+
|
V
+---------+
|Registrar|
+---------+
\
\\
Acquisition \\
\\+-------+
\ CSP |
+---+---+
A A
| |
Management | | Retrieval
| |
| |
+-------++ ++-------+
| User | | User |
+--------+ +--------+
(Delegate) (Caller)
Figure 2: Example of the Three Interfaces
4. Use Cases
The high-level use cases in this section will provide an overview of
the expected operation of the three interfaces in the MODERN problem
space.
4.1. Acquisition
There are various scenarios for how TNs can be acquired by the
relevant actors, that is, a CSP, Service Enabler, and a User. There
are three actors from which numbers can be acquired: a Registrar, a
CSP, and a User (presumably one who is delegating to another party).
It is assumed either that Registrars are the same entity as
Registries or that Registrars have established business relationships
with Registries that enable them to distribute the numbers that the
Registries administer. In these use cases, a User may acquire TNs
either from a CSP, a Registry, or an intermediate delegate.
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4.1.1. Acquiring TNs from Registrar
The most traditional number acquisition use case is one where a CSP,
such as a carrier, requests a block of numbers from a Registrar to
hold as inventory or assign to customers.
Through some out-of-band business process, a CSP develops a
relationship with a Registrar. The Registrar maintains a profile of
the CSP and assesses whether or not CSPs meet the policy restrictions
for acquiring TNs. The CSP may then request TNs from within a
specific pool of numbers in the authority of the Registry, such as
region, mobile, wireline, or freephone. The Registrar must
authenticate and authorize the CSP and then either grant or deny a
request. When an assignment occurs, the Registry creates and stores
administrative information related to the assignment, such as TN
status and Registrar contact information, and removes the specific
TN(s) from the pool of those that are available for assignment. As a
part of the acquisition and assignment process, the Registry provides
to the Registrar any tokens or other material needed by a Credential
Authority to issue credentials (for example, Secure Telephone
Identity Revisited (STIR) certificates [RFC 8226]) used to attest the
assignment for future transactions. Depending on the policies of the
Numbering Authorities, Registrars may be required to log these
operations.
Before it is eligible to receive TN assignments, per the policy of a
Numbering Authority, the CSP may need to have submitted (again,
through some out-of-band process) additional qualifying information
such as the current utilization rate or a demand forecast.
There are two scenarios under which a CSP requests resources: either
they are requesting inventory or they are requesting for a specific
User or delegate. For the purpose of status information, TNs
assigned to a User are always considered assigned, not inventory.
The CSP will associate service information for that TN (e.g., a
service address) and make it available to other CSPs to enable
interconnection. The CSP may need to update the Registrar regarding
this service activation; this is part of the "TN status" maintained
by the Registrar.
There are also use cases in which a User can acquire a TN directly
from a Registrar. Today, a User wishing to acquire a freephone
number may browse the existing inventory through one or more
Registrars, comparing their prices and services. Each such Registrar
either is a CSP or has a business relationship with one or more CSPs
to provide services for that freephone number. In this case, the
User must establish some business relationship directly with a
Registrar, similar to how such functions are conducted today when
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Users purchase domain names. In this use case, after receiving a
number assignment from the Registrar, a User will obtain
communication service from a CSP and provide to the CSP the TN to be
used for that service. The CSP will associate service information
for that TN (e.g., the service address) and make it available to
other CSPs to enable interconnection. The User will also need to
inform the Registrar about this relationship.
4.1.2. Acquiring TNs from CSPs
Today, a User typically acquires a TN from a CSP when signing up for
a communication service or turning on a new device. In this use
case, the User becomes the delegate of the CSP. A reseller or a
service bureau might also acquire a block of numbers from a CSP to be
issued to Users.
Consider a case where a User creates or has a relationship with the
CSP and subscribes to a communication service that includes the use
of a TN. The CSP collects and stores administrative data about the
User. The CSP then activates the User on their network and creates
any necessary service data to enable connectivity with other CSPs.
The CSP could also update public or privileged databases accessible
by other actors. The CSP provides any tokens or other material
needed by a Credential Authority to issue credentials to the User
(for example, a STIR certificate [RFC 8226]) to prove the assignment
for future transactions. Such credentials could be delegated from
the one provided by the Credential Authority to the CSP to continue
the chain of assignment. CSPs may be required to log such
transactions if required by the policy of the Numbering Authority.
Virtually, the same flow would work for a reseller: it would form a
business relationship with the CSP, at which point the CSP would
collect and store administrative data about the reseller and give the
reseller any material needed for the reseller to acquire credentials
for the numbers. A User might then, in turn, acquire numbers from
the reseller: in this case, the delegate redelegating the TNs would
be performing functions done by the CSP (e.g., providing any
credentials or collecting administrative data or creative service
data).
The CSP could assign a TN from its existing inventory or it could
acquire a new TN from the Registrar as part of the assignment
process. If it assigns it from its existing inventory, it would
remove the specific TN from the pool of those available for
assignment. It may also update the Registrar about the assignment so
the Registrar has current assignment data. If a reseller or delegate
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CSP is acquiring the numbers, it may have the same obligations to
provide utilization data to the Registry as the assignee, per
Section 4.1.1.
4.2. Management
The management protocol mechanism is needed to associate
administrative and service data with TNs and may be used to refresh
or rollover associated credentials.
4.2.1. Management of Administrative Data
Administrative data is primarily related to the status of the TN, its
administrative contacts, and the actors involved in providing service
to the TN. Protocol interactions for administrative data will
therefore predominantly occur between CSPs and Users to the Registrar
or between Users and delegate CSPs to the CSP.
Some administrative data may be private and would thus require
special handling in a distributed data store model. Access to it
does not require real-time performance; therefore, local caches are
not necessary, and the data will include sensitive information such
as User and contact data.
Some of the data could lend itself to being publicly available, such
as CSP and TN assignment status. In that case, it would be deemed
public information for the purposes of the retrieval interface.
4.2.1.1. Managing Data at a Registrar
After a CSP acquires a TN or block of TNs from the Registrar (per
Section 4.1.1), it then provides administrative data to the Registrar
as a step in the acquisition process. The Registrar will
authenticate the CSP and determine if the CSP is authorized to
provision the administrative data for the TNs in question. The
Registry will update the status of the TN, i.e., that it is
unavailable for assignment. The Registrar will also maintain
administrative data provided by the CSP.
Changes to this administrative data will not be frequent. Examples
of changes would be terminating service (see Section 4.2.3.2),
changing the name or address of a User or organization, or changing a
CSP or delegate. Changes should be authenticated by a credential to
prove administrative responsibility for the TN.
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In some cases, such as the freephone system in North America today,
the User has a direct relationship with the Registrar. Naturally,
these Users could provision administrative data associated with their
TNs directly to the Registrar just as a freephone provider today
maintains account and billing data. While delegates may not
ordinarily have a direct relationship to a Registrar, some
environments (as an optimization) might want to support a model where
the delegate updates the Registrar directly on changes, as opposed to
sending that data to the CSP or through the CSP to the Registrar. As
stated already, the protocol should enable Users to acquire TNs
directly from a Registrar, which may or may not also act as a CSP.
In these cases, the updates would be similar to those described in
Section 4.2.1.1.
In a distributed Registry model, TN status (e.g., allocated,
assigned, available, or unavailable) would need to be provided to
other Registries in real time. Other administrative data could be
sent to all Registries, or other Registries could get a reference
address to the host Registry's data store.
4.2.1.2. Managing Data at a CSP
After a User acquires a TN or block of TNs from a CSP, the User will
provide administrative data to the CSP. The CSP commonly acts as a
Registrar in this case by maintaining the administrative data and
only notifying the Registry of the change in TN status. In this
case, the Registry maintains a reference address (see Section 2.3) to
the CSP/Registrar's administrative data store so relevant actors have
the ability to access the data. Alternatively, a CSP could send the
administrative data to an external Registrar to store. If there is a
delegate between the CSP and User, they will have to ensure there is
a mechanism for the delegate to update the CSP as change occurs.
4.2.2. Management of Service Data
Service data is data required by an originating or intermediate CSP
to enable communication service to a User; a SIP URI is an example of
one service data element commonly used to route communication. CSPs
typically create and manage service data, however, it is possible
that delegates and Users could as well. For most use cases involving
individual Users, it is anticipated that lower-level service
information changes (such as an end-user device receiving a new IP
address) would be communicated to CSPs via existing protocols. For
example, the baseline SIP REGISTER [RFC 3261] method, even for bulk
operations [RFC 6140], would likely be used rather than through any
new interfaces defined by MODERN.
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4.2.2.1. CSP to Other CSPs
After a User enrolls for service with a CSP, in the case where the
CSP was assigned the TN by a Registrar, the CSP will then create a
service address such as a SIP URI and associate it with the TN. The
CSP needs to update this data to enable service interoperability.
There are multiple ways that this update can occur, though most
commonly service data is exposed through the retrieval interface (see
Section 4.3). For certain deployment architectures, like a
distributed data store model, CSPs may need to provision data
directly to other CSPs.
If the CSP is assigning a TN from its own inventory, it may not need
to perform service data updates as change occurs because the existing
service data associated with inventory may be sufficient once the TN
is put in service. They would, however, likely update the Registry
on the change in status.
4.2.2.2. User to CSP
Users could also associate service data to their TNs at the CSP. An
example would be a User acquiring a TN from the Registrar (as
described in Section 4.1.1) and wanting to provide that TN to the CSP
so the CSP can enable service. In this case, once the User provides
the number to the CSP, the CSP would update the Registry or other
actors as outlined in Section 4.2.2.1.
4.2.3. Managing Change
This section will address some special management use cases that were
not covered above.
4.2.3.1. Changing the CSP for an Existing Service
Consider the case where a User who subscribes to a communication
service (and who received their TN from that CSP) wishes to retain
the same TN but move their service to a different CSP.
In the simplest scenario, where there's an authoritative combined
Registry/Registrar that maintains service data, the User could
provide their credential to the new CSP and let the CSP initiate the
change in service. The new CSP could then provide the new service
data with the User's credential to the Registry/Registrar, which then
makes the change. The old credential is revoked and a new one is
provided. The new CSP or the Registrar would send a notification to
the old CSP so they can disable service. The old CSP will undo any
delegations to the User, including contacting the Credential
Authority to revoke any cryptographic credentials (e.g., STIR
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certificates [RFC 8226]) previously granted to the User. Any service
data maintained by the CSP must be removed, and, similarly, the CSP
must delete any such information it provisioned in the Registry.
In a model similar to common practice in environments today, the User
could alternatively provide their credential to the old CSP, and the
old CSP would initiate the change in service. Or, a User could go
directly to a Registrar to initiate a port. This framework should
support all of these potential flows.
Note that in cases with a distributed Registry that maintained
service data, the Registry would also have to update the other
Registries of the change.
4.2.3.2. Terminating a Service
Consider a case where a User who subscribes to a communication
service (and who received their TN from the CSP) wishes to terminate
their service. At this time, the CSP will undo any delegations to
the User, which may involve contacting the Credential Authority to
revoke any cryptographic credentials (e.g., STIR certificates
[RFC 8226]) previously granted to the User. Any service data
maintained by the CSP must be removed, and similarly, the CSP must
delete any such information it provisioned in the Registrar.
However, per the policy of the Numbering Authority, Registrars and
CSPs may be required to preserve historical data that will be
accessible to Government Entities or others through audits, even if
it is no longer retrievable through service interfaces.
The TN will change state from assigned to unassigned, and the CSP
will update the Registry. Depending on policies, the TN could go
back into the Registry, CSP, or delegate's pool of available TNs and
would likely enter an aging process.
In an alternative use case, a User who received their own TN
assignment directly from a Registrar terminates their service with a
CSP. At this time, the User might terminate their assignment from
the Registrar and return the TN to the Registry for reassignment.
Alternatively, they could retain the TN and elect to assign it to
some other service at a later time.
4.3. Retrieval
Retrieval of administrative or service data will be subject to access
restrictions based on the category of the specific data: public,
semi-restricted, or restricted. Both administrative and service data
can have data elements that fall into each of these categories. It
is expected that the majority of administrative data will fall into
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the semi-restricted category: access to this information may require
some form of authorization, though service data crucial to
reachability will need to be accessible. In some environments, it's
possible that none of the service data necessary to initiate
communication will be useful to an entity on the public Internet, or
that all that service data will have dependencies on the origination
point for calls.
The retrieval protocol mechanism for semi-restricted and restricted
data needs a way for the receiver of the request to identify the
originator of the request and what is being requested. The receiver
of the request will process that request based on this information.
4.3.1. Retrieval of Public Data
Either administrative or service data may be made publicly available
by the authority that generates and provisions it. Under most
circumstances, a CSP wants its communication service to be publicly
reachable through TNs, so the retrieval interface supports public
interfaces that permit clients to query for service data about a TN.
Some service data may, however, require that the client be authorized
to receive it, per the use case in Section 4.3.3.
Public data can simply be posted on websites or made available
through a publicly available API. Public data hosted by a CSP may
have a reference address at the Registry.
4.3.2. Retrieval of Semi-restricted Administrative Data
Consider a case in which a CSP is having service problems completing
calls to a specific TN, so it wants to contact the CSP serving that
TN. The Registry authorizes the originating CSP to access this
information. It initiates a query to the Registry, the Registry
verifies the requestor and the requested data, and the Registry
responds with the serving CSP and contact data. However, CSPs might
not want to make those administrative contact points public data:
they are willing to share them with other CSPs for troubleshooting
purposes, but not to make them available to general communication.
Alternatively, that information could be part of a distributed data
store and not stored at a monolithic Registry. In that case, the CSP
has the data in a local distributed data store, and it initiates the
query to the local data store. The local data store responds with
the CSP and contact data. No verification is necessary because it
was done when the CSP was authorized to receive the data store.
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4.3.3. Retrieval of Semi-restricted Service Data
Consider a case where a User on a CSP's network calls a TN. The CSP
initiates a query for service data associated with the TN to complete
the call and will receive special service data because the CSP
operates in a closed environment where different CSPs receive
different responses, and only participating CSPs can initiate
communication. This service data would be flagged as semi-
restricted. The query and response have real-time performance
requirements in that environment.
Semi-restricted service data also works in a distributed data store
model where each CSP distributes its updated service data to all
other CSPs. The originating CSP has the service data in its local
data store and queries it. The local data store responds with the
service data. The service data in the response can be a reference
address to a data store maintained by the serving CSP or it can be
the service address itself. In the case where the response gives a
reference address, a subsequent query would go to the serving CSP,
who would, in turn, authorize the requestor for the requested data
and respond appropriately. In the case, where the original response
contains the service address, the requestor would use that service
address as the destination for the call.
In some environments, aspects of the service data may reside at the
Registry itself (for example, the assigned CSP for a TN); thus, the
query may be sent to the Registry. The Registry verifies the
requestor and the requested data and responds with the service data,
such as a SIP URI containing the domain of the assigned CSP.
4.3.4. Retrieval of Restricted Data
A Government Entity wishes to access information about a particular
User who subscribes to a communication service. The entity that
operates the Registry on behalf of the Numbering Authority in this
case has some predefined relationship with the Government Entity.
When the CSP acquired TNs from the Numbering Authority, it was a
condition of that assignment that the CSP provide access for
Government Entities to telephone numbering data when certain
conditions apply. The required data may reside either in the CSP or
in the Registrar.
For a case where the CSP delegates a number to the User, the CSP
might provision the Registrar (or itself, if the CSP is composed with
a Registrar) with information relevant to the User. At such a time
as the Government Entity needs information about that User, the
Government Entity may contact the Registrar or CSP to acquire the
necessary data. The interfaces necessary for this will be the same
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as those described in Section 4.3; the Government Entity will be
authenticated and an authorization decision will be made by the
Registrar or CSP under the policy dictates established by the
Numbering Authority.
5. IANA Considerations
This document has no IANA actions.
6. Privacy Considerations
This framework defines two categories of information about telephone
numbers: service data and administrative data. Service data
describes how telephone numbers map to particular services and
devices that provide real-time communication for users. As such,
service data could potentially leak resource locations and even
lower-layer network addresses associated with these services, and in
rare cases, with end-user devices. Administrative data more broadly
characterizes who the administrative entities are behind telephone
numbers, which will often identify CSPs but some layers of the
architecture could include Personally Identifiable Information (PII),
even WHOIS-style information, about the end users behind identifiers.
This could conceivably encompass the sorts of data that carriers and
similar CSPs today keep about their customers for billing purposes,
like real names and postal addresses. The exact nature of
administrative data is not defined by this framework, and it is
anticipated that the protocols that will perform this function will
be extensible for different use cases, so at this point, it is
difficult to characterize exactly how much PII might end up being
housed by these services.
As such, if an attacker were to compromise the registrar services
that maintains administrative data in this architecture, and in some
cases even service data, this could leak PII about end users. These
interfaces, and the systems that host them, are a potentially
attractive target for hackers and need to be hardened accordingly.
Protocols that are selected to fulfill these functions must provide
the security features described in Section 7.
Finally, this framework recognizes that, in many jurisdictions,
certain government agencies have a legal right to access service and
administrative data maintained by CSPs. This access is typically
aimed at identifying the users behind the communication identifier in
order to enforce regulatory policy. Those legal entities already
have the power to access the existing data held by CSPs in many
jurisdictions, though, potentially, the administrative data
associated with this framework could be richer information.
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7. Security Considerations
The acquisition, management, and retrieval of administrative and
service data associated with telephone numbers raises a number of
security issues.
Any mechanism that allows an individual or organization to acquire
telephone numbers will require a means of mutual authentication, of
integrity protection, and of confidentiality. A Registry as defined
in this document will surely want to authenticate the source of an
acquisition request as a first step in the authorization process to
determine whether or not the resource will be granted. Integrity of
both the request and response is essential to ensuring that tampering
does not allow attackers to block acquisitions, or worse, to
commandeer resources. Confidentiality is essential to preventing
eavesdroppers from learning about allocations, including the
personally identifying information associated with the administrative
or technical contracts for allocations.
A management interface for telephone numbers has similar
requirements. Without proper authentication and authorization
mechanisms in place, an attack could use the management interface to
disrupt service data or administrative data, which could deny service
to users, enable new impersonation attacks, prevent billing systems
from operating properly, and cause similar system failures.
Finally, a retrieval interface has its own needs for mutual
authentication, integrity protection, and confidentiality. Any CSP
sending a request to retrieve service data associated with a number
will want to know that it is reaching the proper authority, that the
response from that authority has not been tampered with in transit,
and, in most cases, the CSP will not want to reveal to eavesdroppers
the number it is requesting or the response that it has received.
Similarly, any service answering such a query will want to have a
means of authenticating the source of the query and of protecting the
integrity and confidentiality of its responses.
8. Informative References
[DRIP] Wendt, C. and H. Bellur, "Distributed Registry Protocol
(DRiP)", Work in Progress, draft-wendt-modern-drip-02,
July 2017.
[RFC 3261] Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston,
A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E.
Schooler, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 3261, June 2002,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 3261>.
Peterson & McGarry Informational PAGE 21
RFC 8396 MODERN Problems July 2018
[RFC 3375] Hollenbeck, S., "Generic Registry-Registrar Protocol
Requirements", RFC 3375, DOI 10.17487/RFC 3375, September
2002, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 3375>.
[RFC 3912] Daigle, L., "WHOIS Protocol Specification", RFC 3912,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 3912, September 2004,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 3912>.
[RFC 6116] Bradner, S., Conroy, L., and K. Fujiwara, "The E.164 to
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) Dynamic Delegation
Discovery System (DDDS) Application (ENUM)", RFC 6116,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 6116, March 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6116>.
[RFC 6140] Roach, A., "Registration for Multiple Phone Numbers in the
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC 6140,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 6140, March 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6140>.
[RFC 6461] Channabasappa, S., Ed., "Data for Reachability of Inter-
/Intra-NetworK SIP (DRINKS) Use Cases and Protocol
Requirements", RFC 6461, DOI 10.17487/RFC 6461, January
2012, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6461>.
[RFC 7482] Newton, A. and S. Hollenbeck, "Registration Data Access
Protocol (RDAP) Query Format", RFC 7482,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 7482, March 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7482>.
[RFC 8226] Peterson, J. and S. Turner, "Secure Telephone Identity
Credentials: Certificates", RFC 8226,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 8226, February 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8226>.
[TERI-INFO]
Peterson, J., "An Architecture and Information Model for
Telephone-Related Information (TeRI)", Work in Progress,
draft-peterson-modern-teri-04, March 2018.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Henning Schulzrinne and Adam Roach for their
contributions to this problem statement and framework; we would also
like to thank Pierce Gorman for detailed comments.
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Authors' Addresses
Jon Peterson
Neustar, Inc.
1800 Sutter St Suite 570
Concord, CA 94520
United States of America
Email: jon.peterson@neustar.biz
Tom McGarry
Email: tmcgarry6@gmail.com
Peterson & McGarry Informational PAGE 23
Managing, Ordering, Distributing, Exposing, and Registering Telephone Numbers (MODERN): Problem Statement, Use Cases, and Framework
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 57355 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Friday, July 20th, 2018
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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