Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) E. Ivov
Request for Comments: 8838 8x8 / Jitsi
Category: Standards Track J. Uberti
ISSN: 2070-1721 Google
P. Saint-Andre
Mozilla
January 2021
Trickle ICE: Incremental Provisioning of Candidates for the Interactive
Connectivity Establishment (ICE) Protocol
Abstract
This document describes "Trickle ICE", an extension to the
Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) protocol that enables
ICE agents to begin connectivity checks while they are still
gathering candidates, by incrementally exchanging candidates over
time instead of all at once. This method can considerably accelerate
the process of establishing a communication session.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
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). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in 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/rfc8838.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2021 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. Introduction
2. Terminology
3. Determining Support for Trickle ICE
4. Generating the Initial ICE Description
5. Handling the Initial ICE Description and Generating the Initial
ICE Response
6. Handling the Initial ICE Response
7. Forming Checklists
8. Performing Connectivity Checks
9. Gathering and Conveying Newly Gathered Local Candidates
10. Pairing Newly Gathered Local Candidates
11. Receiving Trickled Candidates
12. Inserting Trickled Candidate Pairs into a Checklist
13. Generating an End-of-Candidates Indication
14. Receiving an End-of-Candidates Indication
15. Subsequent Exchanges and ICE Restarts
16. Half Trickle
17. Preserving Candidate Order While Trickling
18. Requirements for Using Protocols
19. IANA Considerations
20. Security Considerations
21. References
21.1. Normative References
21.2. Informative References
Appendix A. Interaction with Regular ICE
Appendix B. Interaction with ICE-Lite
Acknowledgements
Authors' Addresses
1. Introduction
The Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) protocol [RFC8445]
describes how an ICE agent gathers candidates, exchanges candidates
with a peer ICE agent, and creates candidate pairs. Once the pairs
have been gathered, the ICE agent will perform connectivity checks
and eventually nominate and select pairs that will be used for
sending and receiving data within a communication session.
Following the procedures in [RFC8445] can lead to somewhat lengthy
establishment times for communication sessions, because candidate
gathering often involves querying Session Traversal Utilities for NAT
(STUN) servers [RFC5389] and allocating relayed candidates on
Traversal Using Relay NAT (TURN) servers [RFC5766]. Although many
ICE procedures can be completed in parallel, the pacing requirements
from [RFC8445] still need to be followed.
This document defines "Trickle ICE", a supplementary mode of ICE
operation in which candidates can be exchanged incrementally as soon
as they become available (and simultaneously with the gathering of
other candidates). Connectivity checks can also start as soon as
candidate pairs have been created. Because Trickle ICE enables
candidate gathering and connectivity checks to be done in parallel,
the method can considerably accelerate the process of establishing a
communication session.
This document also defines how to discover support for Trickle ICE,
how the procedures in [RFC8445] are modified or supplemented when
using Trickle ICE, and how a Trickle ICE agent can interoperate with
an ICE agent compliant to [RFC8445].
This document does not define any protocol-specific usage of Trickle
ICE. Instead, protocol-specific details for Trickle ICE are defined
in separate usage documents. Examples of such documents are
[RFC8840] (which defines usage with the Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP) [RFC3261] and the Session Description Protocol (SDP) [RFC4566])
and [XEP-0176] (which defines usage with the Extensible Messaging and
Presence Protocol (XMPP) [RFC6120]). However, some of the examples
in the document use SDP and the Offer/Answer model [RFC3264] to
explain the underlying concepts.
The following diagram illustrates a successful Trickle ICE exchange
with a using protocol that follows the Offer/Answer model:
Alice Bob
| Offer |
|---------------------------------------------->|
| Additional Candidates |
|---------------------------------------------->|
| Answer |
|<----------------------------------------------|
| Additional Candidates |
|<----------------------------------------------|
| Additional Candidates and Connectivity Checks |
|<--------------------------------------------->|
|<========== CONNECTION ESTABLISHED ===========>|
Figure 1: Flow
The main body of this document is structured to describe the behavior
of Trickle ICE agents in roughly the order of operations and
interactions during an ICE session:
1. Determining support for Trickle ICE
2. Generating the initial ICE description
3. Handling the initial ICE description and generating the initial
ICE response
4. Handling the initial ICE response
5. Forming checklists, pruning candidates, performing connectivity
checks, etc.
6. Gathering and conveying candidates after the initial ICE
description and response
7. Handling inbound trickled candidates
8. Generating and handling the end-of-candidates indication
9. Handling ICE restarts
There is quite a bit of operational experience with the technique
behind Trickle ICE, going back as far as 2005 (when the XMPP Jingle
extension defined a "dribble mode" as specified in [XEP-0176]); this
document incorporates feedback from those who have implemented and
deployed the technique over the years.
2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
This specification makes use of all terminology defined for
Interactive Connectivity Establishment in [RFC8445]. In addition, it
defines the following terms:
Empty Checklist: A checklist that initially does not contain any
candidate pairs because they will be incrementally added as they
are trickled. (This scenario does not arise with a regular ICE
agent, because all candidate pairs are known when the agent
creates the checklist set.)
Full Trickle: The typical mode of operation for Trickle ICE agents,
in which the initial ICE description can include any number of
candidates (even zero candidates) and does not need to include a
full generation of candidates as in half trickle.
Generation: All of the candidates conveyed within an ICE session
(correlated with a particular Username Fragment and Password
combination).
Half Trickle: A Trickle ICE mode of operation in which the initiator
gathers a full generation of candidates strictly before creating
and conveying the initial ICE description. Once conveyed, this
candidate information can be processed by regular ICE agents,
which do not require support for Trickle ICE. It also allows
Trickle-ICE-capable responders to still gather candidates and
perform connectivity checks in a non-blocking way, thus providing
roughly "half" the advantages of Trickle ICE. The half-trickle
mechanism is mostly meant for use when the responder's support for
Trickle ICE cannot be confirmed prior to conveying the initial ICE
description.
ICE Description: Any attributes related to the ICE session (other
than candidates) required to configure an ICE agent. These
include but are not limited to the Username Fragment, the
Password, and other attributes.
Trickled Candidates: Candidates that a Trickle ICE agent conveys
after conveying or responding to the initial ICE description, but
within the same ICE session. Trickled candidates can be conveyed
in parallel with candidate gathering and connectivity checks.
Trickling: The act of incrementally conveying trickled candidates.
3. Determining Support for Trickle ICE
To fully support Trickle ICE, using protocols SHOULD incorporate one
of the following mechanisms so that implementations can determine
whether Trickle ICE is supported:
1. Provide a capabilities discovery method so that agents can verify
support of Trickle ICE prior to initiating a session (XMPP's
Service Discovery [XEP-0030] is one such mechanism).
2. Make support for Trickle ICE mandatory so that user agents can
assume support.
If a using protocol does not provide a method of determining ahead of
time whether Trickle ICE is supported, agents can make use of the
half-trickle procedure described in Section 16.
Prior to conveying the initial ICE description, agents that implement
using protocols that support capabilities discovery can attempt to
verify whether or not the remote party supports Trickle ICE. If an
agent determines that the remote party does not support Trickle ICE,
it MUST fall back to using regular ICE or abandon the entire session.
Even if a using protocol does not include a capabilities discovery
method, a user agent can provide an indication within the ICE
description that it supports Trickle ICE by communicating an ICE
option of 'trickle'. This token MUST be provided either at the
session level or, if at the data stream level, for every data stream
(an agent MUST NOT specify Trickle ICE support for some data streams
but not others). Note: The encoding of the 'trickle' ICE option, and
the message(s) used to carry it to the peer, are protocol specific;
for instance, the encoding for SDP [RFC4566] is defined in [RFC8840].
Dedicated discovery semantics and half trickle are needed only prior
to initiation of an ICE session. After an ICE session is established
and Trickle ICE support is confirmed for both parties, either agent
can use full trickle for subsequent exchanges (see also Section 15).
4. Generating the Initial ICE Description
An ICE agent can start gathering candidates as soon as it has an
indication that communication is imminent (e.g., a user-interface cue
or an explicit request to initiate a communication session). Unlike
in regular ICE, in Trickle ICE implementations do not need to gather
candidates in a blocking manner. Therefore, unless half trickle is
being used, the user experience is improved if the initiating agent
generates and transmits its initial ICE description as early as
possible (thus enabling the remote party to start gathering and
trickling candidates).
An initiator MAY include any mix of candidates when conveying the
initial ICE description. This includes the possibility of conveying
all the candidates the initiator plans to use (as in half trickle),
conveying only a publicly reachable IP address (e.g., a candidate at
a data relay that is known to not be behind a firewall), or conveying
no candidates at all (in which case the initiator can obtain the
responder's initial candidate list sooner, and the responder can
begin candidate gathering more quickly).
For candidates included in the initial ICE description, the methods
for calculating priorities and foundations, determining redundancy of
candidates, and the like work just as in regular ICE [RFC8445].
5. Handling the Initial ICE Description and Generating the Initial ICE
Response
When a responder receives the initial ICE description, it will first
check if the ICE description or initiator indicates support for
Trickle ICE as explained in Section 3. If not, the responder MUST
process the initial ICE description according to regular ICE
procedures [RFC8445] (or, if no ICE support is detected at all,
according to relevant processing rules for the using protocol, such
as Offer/Answer processing rules [RFC3264]). However, if support for
Trickle ICE is confirmed, a responder will automatically assume
support for regular ICE as well.
If the initial ICE description indicates support for Trickle ICE, the
responder will determine its role and start gathering and
prioritizing candidates; while doing so, it will also respond by
conveying an initial ICE response, so that both the initiator and the
responder can form checklists and begin connectivity checks.
A responder can respond to the initial ICE description at any point
while gathering candidates. The initial ICE response MAY contain any
set of candidates, including all candidates or no candidates. (The
benefit of including no candidates is to convey the initial ICE
response as quickly as possible, so that both parties can consider
the ICE session to be under active negotiation as soon as possible.)
As noted in Section 3, in using protocols that use SDP, the initial
ICE response can indicate support for Trickle ICE by including a
token of 'trickle' in the ice-options attribute.
6. Handling the Initial ICE Response
When processing the initial ICE response, the initiator follows
regular ICE procedures to determine its role, after which it forms
checklists (Section 7) and performs connectivity checks (Section 8).
7. Forming Checklists
According to regular ICE procedures [RFC8445], in order for candidate
pairing to be possible and for redundant candidates to be pruned, the
candidates would need to be provided in the initial ICE description
and initial ICE response. By contrast, under Trickle ICE, checklists
can be empty until candidates are conveyed or received. Therefore, a
Trickle ICE agent handles checklist formation and candidate pairing
in a slightly different way than a regular ICE agent: the agent still
forms the checklists, but it populates a given checklist only after
it actually has candidate pairs for that checklist. Every checklist
is initially placed in the Running state, even if the checklist is
empty (this is consistent with Section 6.1.2.1 of [RFC8445]).
8. Performing Connectivity Checks
As specified in [RFC8445], whenever timer Ta fires, only checklists
in the Running state will be picked when scheduling connectivity
checks for candidate pairs. Therefore, a Trickle ICE agent MUST keep
each checklist in the Running state as long as it expects candidate
pairs to be incrementally added to the checklist. After that, the
checklist state is set according to the procedures in [RFC8445].
Whenever timer Ta fires and an empty checklist is picked, no action
is performed for the list. Without waiting for timer Ta to expire
again, the agent selects the next checklist in the Running state, in
accordance with Section 6.1.4.2 of [RFC8445].
Section 7.2.5.4 of [RFC8445] requires that agents update checklists
and timer states upon completing a connectivity check transaction.
During such an update, regular ICE agents would set the state of a
checklist to Failed if both of the following two conditions are
satisfied:
* all of the pairs in the checklist are in either the Failed state
or the Succeeded state; and
* there is not a pair in the valid list for each component of the
data stream.
With Trickle ICE, the above situation would often occur when
candidate gathering and trickling are still in progress, even though
it is quite possible that future checks will succeed. For this
reason, Trickle ICE agents add the following conditions to the above
list:
* all candidate gathering has completed, and the agent is not
expecting to discover any new local candidates; and
* the remote agent has conveyed an end-of-candidates indication for
that checklist as described in Section 13.
9. Gathering and Conveying Newly Gathered Local Candidates
After Trickle ICE agents have conveyed initial ICE descriptions and
initial ICE responses, they will most likely continue gathering new
local candidates as STUN, TURN, and other non-host candidate
gathering mechanisms begin to yield results. Whenever an agent
discovers such a new candidate, it will compute its priority, type,
foundation, and component ID according to regular ICE procedures.
The new candidate is then checked for redundancy against the existing
list of local candidates. If its transport address and base match
those of an existing candidate, it will be considered redundant and
will be ignored. This would often happen for server-reflexive
candidates that match the host addresses they were obtained from
(e.g., when the latter are public IPv4 addresses). Contrary to
regular ICE, Trickle ICE agents will consider the new candidate
redundant regardless of its priority.
Next, the agent "trickles" the newly discovered candidate(s) to the
remote agent. The actual delivery of the new candidates is handled
by a using protocol such as SIP or XMPP. Trickle ICE imposes no
restrictions on the way this is done (e.g., some using protocols
might choose not to trickle updates for server-reflexive candidates
and instead rely on the discovery of peer-reflexive ones).
When candidates are trickled, the using protocol MUST deliver each
candidate (and any end-of-candidates indication as described in
Section 13) to the receiving Trickle ICE implementation exactly once
and in the same order it was conveyed. If the using protocol
provides any candidate retransmissions, they need to be hidden from
the ICE implementation.
Also, candidate trickling needs to be correlated to a specific ICE
session, so that if there is an ICE restart, any delayed updates for
a previous session can be recognized as such and ignored by the
receiving party. For example, using protocols that signal candidates
via SDP might include a Username Fragment value in the corresponding
a=candidate line, such as:
a=candidate:1 1 UDP 2130706431 2001:db8::1 5000 typ host ufrag 8hhY
Or, as another example, WebRTC implementations might include a
Username Fragment in the JavaScript objects that represent
candidates.
Note: The using protocol needs to provide a mechanism for both
parties to indicate and agree on the ICE session in force (as
identified by the Username Fragment and Password combination), so
that they have a consistent view of which candidates are to be
paired. This is especially important in the case of ICE restarts
(see Section 15).
Note: A using protocol might prefer not to trickle server-reflexive
candidates to entities that are known to be publicly accessible and
where sending a direct STUN binding request is likely to reach the
destination faster than the trickle update that travels through the
signaling path.
10. Pairing Newly Gathered Local Candidates
As a Trickle ICE agent gathers local candidates, it needs to form
candidate pairs; this works as described in the ICE specification
[RFC8445], with the following provisos:
1. A Trickle ICE agent MUST NOT pair a local candidate until it has
been trickled to the remote party.
2. Once the agent has conveyed the local candidate to the remote
party, the agent checks if any remote candidates are currently
known for this same stream and component. If not, the agent
merely adds the new candidate to the list of local candidates
(without pairing it).
3. Otherwise, if the agent has already learned of one or more remote
candidates for this stream and component, it attempts to pair the
new local candidate as described in the ICE specification
[RFC8445].
4. If a newly formed pair has a local candidate whose type is
server-reflexive, the agent MUST replace the local candidate with
its base before completing the relevant redundancy tests.
5. The agent prunes redundant pairs by following the rules in
Section 6.1.2.4 of [RFC8445] but checks existing pairs only if
they have a state of Waiting or Frozen; this avoids removal of
pairs for which connectivity checks are in flight (a state of
In-Progress) or for which connectivity checks have already
yielded a definitive result (a state of Succeeded or Failed).
6. If, after completing the relevant redundancy tests, the checklist
where the pair is to be added already contains the maximum number
of candidate pairs (100 by default as per [RFC8445]), the agent
SHOULD discard any pairs in the Failed state to make room for the
new pair. If there are no such pairs, the agent SHOULD discard a
pair with a lower priority than the new pair in order to make
room for the new pair, until the number of pairs is equal to the
maximum number of pairs. This processing is consistent with
Section 6.1.2.5 of [RFC8445].
11. Receiving Trickled Candidates
At any time during an ICE session, a Trickle ICE agent might receive
new candidates from the remote agent, from which it will attempt to
form a candidate pair; this works as described in the ICE
specification [RFC8445], with the following provisos:
1. The agent checks if any local candidates are currently known for
this same stream and component. If not, the agent merely adds
the new candidate to the list of remote candidates (without
pairing it).
2. Otherwise, if the agent has already gathered one or more local
candidates for this stream and component, it attempts to pair the
new remote candidate as described in the ICE specification
[RFC8445].
3. If a newly formed pair has a local candidate whose type is
server-reflexive, the agent MUST replace the local candidate with
its base before completing the redundancy check in the next step.
4. The agent prunes redundant pairs as described below but checks
existing pairs only if they have a state of Waiting or Frozen;
this avoids removal of pairs for which connectivity checks are in
flight (a state of In-Progress) or for which connectivity checks
have already yielded a definitive result (a state of Succeeded or
Failed).
A. If the agent finds a redundancy between two pairs and one of
those pairs contains a newly received remote candidate whose
type is peer-reflexive, the agent SHOULD discard the pair
containing that candidate, set the priority of the existing
pair to the priority of the discarded pair, and re-sort the
checklist. (This policy helps to eliminate problems with
remote peer-reflexive candidates for which a STUN Binding
request is received before signaling of the candidate is
trickled to the receiving agent, such as a different view of
pair priorities between the local agent and the remote agent,
because the same candidate could be perceived as peer-
reflexive by one agent and as server-reflexive by the other
agent.)
B. The agent then applies the rules defined in Section 6.1.2.4
of [RFC8445].
5. If, after completing the relevant redundancy tests, the checklist
where the pair is to be added already contains the maximum number
of candidate pairs (100 by default as per [RFC8445]), the agent
SHOULD discard any pairs in the Failed state to make room for the
new pair. If there are no such pairs, the agent SHOULD discard a
pair with a lower priority than the new pair in order to make
room for the new pair, until the number of pairs is equal to the
maximum number of pairs. This processing is consistent with
Section 6.1.2.5 of [RFC8445].
12. Inserting Trickled Candidate Pairs into a Checklist
After a local agent has trickled a candidate and formed a candidate
pair from that local candidate (Section 9), or after a remote agent
has received a trickled candidate and formed a candidate pair from
that remote candidate (Section 11), a Trickle ICE agent adds the new
candidate pair to a checklist as defined in this section.
As an aid to understanding the procedures defined in this section,
consider the following tabular representation of all checklists in an
agent (note that initially for one of the foundations, i.e., f5,
there are no candidate pairs):
+=================+====+====+====+====+====+
| | f1 | f2 | f3 | f4 | f5 |
+=================+====+====+====+====+====+
| s1 (Audio.RTP) | F | F | F | | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+----+
| s2 (Audio.RTCP) | F | F | F | F | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+----+
| s3 (Video.RTP) | F | | | | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+----+
| s4 (Video.RTCP) | F | | | | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+----+
Table 1: Example of Checklist State
Each row in the table represents a component for a given data stream
(e.g., s1 and s2 might be the RTP and RTP Control Protocol (RTCP)
components for audio) and thus a single checklist in the checklist
set. Each column represents one foundation. Each cell represents
one candidate pair. In the tables shown in this section, "F" stands
for "frozen", "W" stands for "waiting", and "S" stands for
"succeeded"; in addition, "^^" is used to notate newly added
candidate pairs.
When an agent commences ICE processing, in accordance with
Section 6.1.2.6 of [RFC8445], for each foundation it will unfreeze
the pair with the lowest component ID and, if the component IDs are
equal, with the highest priority (this is the topmost candidate pair
in every column). This initial state is shown in the following
table.
+=================+====+====+====+====+====+
| | f1 | f2 | f3 | f4 | f5 |
+=================+====+====+====+====+====+
| s1 (Audio.RTP) | W | W | W | | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+----+
| s2 (Audio.RTCP) | F | F | F | W | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+----+
| s3 (Video.RTP) | F | | | | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+----+
| s4 (Video.RTCP) | F | | | | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+----+
Table 2: Initial Checklist State
Then, as the checks proceed (see Section 7.2.5.4 of [RFC8445]), for
each pair that enters the Succeeded state (denoted here by "S"), the
agent will unfreeze all pairs for all data streams with the same
foundation (e.g., if the pair in column 1, row 1 succeeds then the
agent will unfreeze the pairs in column 1, rows 2, 3, and 4).
+=================+====+====+====+====+====+
| | f1 | f2 | f3 | f4 | f5 |
+=================+====+====+====+====+====+
| s1 (Audio.RTP) | S | W | W | | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+----+
| s2 (Audio.RTCP) | W | F | F | W | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+----+
| s3 (Video.RTP) | W | | | | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+----+
| s4 (Video.RTCP) | W | | | | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+----+
Table 3: Checklist State with Succeeded
Candidate Pair
Trickle ICE preserves all of these rules as they apply to "static"
checklist sets. This implies that if a Trickle ICE agent were to
begin connectivity checks with all of its pairs already present, the
way that pair states change is indistinguishable from that of a
regular ICE agent.
Of course, the major difference with Trickle ICE is that checklist
sets can be dynamically updated because candidates can arrive after
connectivity checks have started. When this happens, an agent sets
the state of the newly formed pair as described below.
Rule 1: If the newly formed pair has the lowest component ID and, if
the component IDs are equal, the highest priority of any candidate
pair for this foundation (i.e., if it is the topmost pair in the
column), set the state to Waiting. For example, this would be the
case if the newly formed pair were placed in column 5, row 1. This
rule is consistent with Section 6.1.2.6 of [RFC8445].
+=================+====+====+====+====+=====+
| | f1 | f2 | f3 | f4 | f5 |
+=================+====+====+====+====+=====+
| s1 (Audio.RTP) | S | W | W | | ^W^ |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+-----+
| s2 (Audio.RTCP) | W | F | F | W | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+-----+
| s3 (Video.RTP) | W | | | | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+-----+
| s4 (Video.RTCP) | W | | | | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+-----+
Table 4: Checklist State with Newly
Formed Pair, Rule 1
Rule 2: If there is at least one pair in the Succeeded state for this
foundation, set the state to Waiting. For example, this would be the
case if the pair in column 5, row 1 succeeded and the newly formed
pair were placed in column 5, row 2. This rule is consistent with
Section 7.2.5.3.3 of [RFC8445].
+=================+====+====+====+====+=====+
| | f1 | f2 | f3 | f4 | f5 |
+=================+====+====+====+====+=====+
| s1 (Audio.RTP) | S | W | W | | S |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+-----+
| s2 (Audio.RTCP) | W | F | F | W | ^W^ |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+-----+
| s3 (Video.RTP) | W | | | | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+-----+
| s4 (Video.RTCP) | W | | | | |
+-----------------+----+----+----+----+-----+
Table 5: Checklist State with Newly
Formed Pair, Rule 2
Rule 3: In all other cases, set the state to Frozen. For example,
this would be the case if the newly formed pair were placed in column
3, row 3.
+=================+====+====+=====+====+====+
| | f1 | f2 | f3 | f4 | f5 |
+=================+====+====+=====+====+====+
| s1 (Audio.RTP) | S | W | W | | S |
+-----------------+----+----+-----+----+----+
| s2 (Audio.RTCP) | W | F | F | W | W |
+-----------------+----+----+-----+----+----+
| s3 (Video.RTP) | W | | ^F^ | | |
+-----------------+----+----+-----+----+----+
| s4 (Video.RTCP) | W | | | | |
+-----------------+----+----+-----+----+----+
Table 6: Checklist State with Newly
Formed Pair, Rule 3
13. Generating an End-of-Candidates Indication
Once all candidate gathering is completed or expires for an ICE
session associated with a specific data stream, the agent will
generate an "end-of-candidates" indication for that session and
convey it to the remote agent via the signaling channel. Although
the exact form of the indication depends on the using protocol, the
indication MUST specify the generation (Username Fragment and
Password combination), so that an agent can correlate the end-of-
candidates indication with a particular ICE session. The indication
can be conveyed in the following ways:
* As part of an initiation request (which would typically be the
case with the initial ICE description for half trickle)
* Along with the last candidate an agent can send for a stream
* As a standalone notification (e.g., after STUN Binding requests or
TURN Allocate requests to a server time out and the agent is no
longer actively gathering candidates)
Conveying an end-of-candidates indication in a timely manner is
important in order to avoid ambiguities and speed up the conclusion
of ICE processing. In particular:
* A controlled Trickle ICE agent SHOULD convey an end-of-candidates
indication after it has completed gathering for a data stream,
unless ICE processing terminates before the agent has had a chance
to complete gathering.
* A controlling agent MAY conclude ICE processing prior to conveying
end-of-candidates indications for all streams. However, it is
RECOMMENDED for a controlling agent to convey end-of-candidates
indications whenever possible for the sake of consistency and to
keep middleboxes and controlled agents up-to-date on the state of
ICE processing.
When conveying an end-of-candidates indication during trickling
(rather than as a part of the initial ICE description or a response
thereto), it is the responsibility of the using protocol to define
methods for associating the indication with one or more specific data
streams.
An agent MAY also choose to generate an end-of-candidates indication
before candidate gathering has actually completed, if the agent
determines that gathering has continued for more than an acceptable
period of time. However, an agent MUST NOT convey any more
candidates after it has conveyed an end-of-candidates indication.
When performing half trickle, an agent SHOULD convey an end-of-
candidates indication together with its initial ICE description
unless it is planning to potentially trickle additional candidates
(e.g., in case the remote party turns out to support Trickle ICE).
After an agent conveys the end-of-candidates indication, it will
update the state of the corresponding checklist as explained in
Section 8. Past that point, an agent MUST NOT trickle any new
candidates within this ICE session. Therefore, adding new candidates
to the negotiation is possible only through an ICE restart (see
Section 15).
This specification does not override regular ICE semantics for
concluding ICE processing. Therefore, even if end-of-candidates
indications are conveyed, an agent will still need to go through pair
nomination. Also, if pairs have been nominated for components and
data streams, ICE processing MAY still conclude even if end-of-
candidates indications have not been received for all streams. In
all cases, an agent MUST NOT trickle any new candidates within an ICE
session after nomination of a candidate pair as described in
Section 8.1.1 of [RFC8445].
14. Receiving an End-of-Candidates Indication
Receiving an end-of-candidates indication enables an agent to update
checklist states and, in case valid pairs do not exist for every
component in every data stream, determine that ICE processing has
failed. It also enables an agent to speed up the conclusion of ICE
processing when a candidate pair has been validated but uses a lower-
preference transport such as TURN. In such situations, an
implementation MAY choose to wait and see if higher-priority
candidates are received; in this case, the end-of-candidates
indication provides a notification that such candidates are not
forthcoming.
When an agent receives an end-of-candidates indication for a specific
data stream, it will update the state of the relevant checklist as
per Section 8 (which might lead to some checklists being marked as
Failed). If the checklist is still in the Running state after the
update, the agent will note that an end-of-candidates indication has
been received and take it into account in future updates to the
checklist.
After an agent has received an end-of-candidates indication, it MUST
ignore any newly received candidates for that data stream or data
session.
15. Subsequent Exchanges and ICE Restarts
Before conveying an end-of-candidates indication, either agent MAY
convey subsequent candidate information at any time allowed by the
using protocol. When this happens, agents will use semantics from
[RFC8445] (e.g., checking of the Username Fragment and Password
combination) to determine whether or not the new candidate
information requires an ICE restart.
If an ICE restart occurs, the agents can assume that Trickle ICE is
still supported if support was determined previously; thus, they can
engage in Trickle ICE behavior as they would in an initial exchange
of ICE descriptions where support was determined through a
capabilities discovery method.
16. Half Trickle
In half trickle, the initiator conveys the initial ICE description
with a usable but not necessarily full generation of candidates.
This ensures that the ICE description can be processed by a regular
ICE responder and is mostly meant for use in cases where support for
Trickle ICE cannot be confirmed prior to conveying the initial ICE
description. The initial ICE description indicates support for
Trickle ICE, so that the responder can respond with something less
than a full generation of candidates and then trickle the rest. The
initial ICE description for half trickle can contain an end-of-
candidates indication, although this is not mandatory because if
trickle support is confirmed, then the initiator can choose to
trickle additional candidates before it conveys an end-of-candidates
indication.
The half-trickle mechanism can be used in cases where there is no way
for an agent to verify in advance whether a remote party supports
Trickle ICE. Because the initial ICE description contains a full
generation of candidates, it can thus be handled by a regular ICE
agent, while still allowing a Trickle ICE agent to use the
optimization defined in this specification. This prevents
negotiation from failing in the former case while still giving
roughly half the Trickle ICE benefits in the latter.
Use of half trickle is only necessary during an initial exchange of
ICE descriptions. After both parties have received an ICE
description from their peer, they can each reliably determine Trickle
ICE support and use it for all subsequent exchanges (see Section 15).
In some instances, using half trickle might bring more than just half
the improvement in terms of user experience. This can happen when an
agent starts gathering candidates upon user-interface cues that the
user will soon be initiating an interaction, such as activity on a
keypad or the phone going off hook. This would mean that some or all
of the candidate gathering could be completed before the agent
actually needs to convey the candidate information. Because the
responder will be able to trickle candidates, both agents will be
able to start connectivity checks and complete ICE processing earlier
than with regular ICE and potentially even as early as with full
trickle.
However, such anticipation is not always possible. For example, a
multipurpose user agent or a WebRTC web page where communication is a
non-central feature (e.g., calling a support line in case of a
problem with the main features) would not necessarily have a way of
distinguishing between call intentions and other user activity. In
such cases, using full trickle is most likely to result in an ideal
user experience. Even so, using half trickle would be an improvement
over regular ICE because it would result in a better experience for
responders.
17. Preserving Candidate Order While Trickling
One important aspect of regular ICE is that connectivity checks for a
specific foundation and component are attempted simultaneously by
both agents, so that any firewalls or NATs fronting the agents would
whitelist both endpoints and allow all except for the first
("suicide") packets to go through. This is also important to
unfreezing candidates at the right time. While not crucial,
preserving this behavior in Trickle ICE is likely to improve ICE
performance.
To achieve this, when trickling candidates, agents SHOULD respect the
order of components as reflected by their component IDs; that is,
candidates for a given component SHOULD NOT be conveyed prior to
candidates for a component with a lower ID number within the same
foundation. In addition, candidates SHOULD be paired, following the
procedures in Section 12, in the same order they are conveyed.
For example, the following SDP description contains two components
(RTP and RTCP) and two foundations (host and server-reflexive):
v=0
o=jdoe 2890844526 2890842807 IN IP4 10.0.1.1
s=
c=IN IP4 10.0.1.1
t=0 0
a=ice-pwd:asd88fgpdd777uzjYhagZg
a=ice-ufrag:8hhY
m=audio 5000 RTP/AVP 0
a=rtpmap:0 PCMU/8000
a=candidate:1 1 UDP 2130706431 10.0.1.1 5000 typ host
a=candidate:1 2 UDP 2130706431 10.0.1.1 5001 typ host
a=candidate:2 1 UDP 1694498815 192.0.2.3 5000 typ srflx
raddr 10.0.1.1 rport 8998
a=candidate:2 2 UDP 1694498815 192.0.2.3 5001 typ srflx
raddr 10.0.1.1 rport 8998
For this candidate information, the RTCP host candidate would not be
conveyed prior to the RTP host candidate. Similarly, the RTP server-
reflexive candidate would be conveyed together with or prior to the
RTCP server-reflexive candidate.
18. Requirements for Using Protocols
In order to fully enable the use of Trickle ICE, this specification
defines the following requirements for using protocols.
* A using protocol SHOULD provide a way for parties to advertise and
discover support for Trickle ICE before an ICE session begins (see
Section 3).
* A using protocol MUST provide methods for incrementally conveying
(i.e., "trickling") additional candidates after conveying the
initial ICE description (see Section 9).
* A using protocol MUST deliver each trickled candidate or end-of-
candidates indication exactly once and in the same order it was
conveyed (see Section 9).
* A using protocol MUST provide a mechanism for both parties to
indicate and agree on the ICE session in force (see Section 9).
* A using protocol MUST provide a way for parties to communicate the
end-of-candidates indication, which MUST specify the particular
ICE session to which the indication applies (see Section 13).
19. IANA Considerations
IANA has registered the following ICE option in the "ICE Options"
subregistry of the "Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE)
registry", following the procedures defined in [RFC6336].
ICE Option: trickle
Contact: IESG <iesg@ietf.org>
Change controller: IESG
Description: An ICE option of 'trickle' indicates support for
incremental communication of ICE candidates.
Reference: RFC 8838
20. Security Considerations
This specification inherits most of its semantics from [RFC8445], and
as a result, all security considerations described there apply to
Trickle ICE.
If the privacy implications of revealing host addresses on an
endpoint device are a concern (see, for example, the discussion in
[RFC8828] and in Section 19 of [RFC8445]), agents can generate ICE
descriptions that contain no candidates and then only trickle
candidates that do not reveal host addresses (e.g., relayed
candidates).
21. References
21.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8445] Keranen, A., Holmberg, C., and J. Rosenberg, "Interactive
Connectivity Establishment (ICE): A Protocol for Network
Address Translator (NAT) Traversal", RFC 8445,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8445, July 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8445>.
21.2. Informative References
[RFC1918] Rekhter, Y., Moskowitz, B., Karrenberg, D., de Groot, G.
J., and E. Lear, "Address Allocation for Private
Internets", BCP 5, RFC 1918, DOI 10.17487/RFC1918,
February 1996, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1918>.
[RFC3261] 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/RFC3261, June 2002,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3261>.
[RFC3264] Rosenberg, J. and H. Schulzrinne, "An Offer/Answer Model
with Session Description Protocol (SDP)", RFC 3264,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3264, June 2002,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3264>.
[RFC4566] Handley, M., Jacobson, V., and C. Perkins, "SDP: Session
Description Protocol", RFC 4566, DOI 10.17487/RFC4566,
July 2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4566>.
[RFC4787] Audet, F., Ed. and C. Jennings, "Network Address
Translation (NAT) Behavioral Requirements for Unicast
UDP", BCP 127, RFC 4787, DOI 10.17487/RFC4787, January
2007, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4787>.
[RFC5389] Rosenberg, J., Mahy, R., Matthews, P., and D. Wing,
"Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN)", RFC 5389,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5389, October 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5389>.
[RFC5766] Mahy, R., Matthews, P., and J. Rosenberg, "Traversal Using
Relays around NAT (TURN): Relay Extensions to Session
Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN)", RFC 5766,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5766, April 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5766>.
[RFC6120] Saint-Andre, P., "Extensible Messaging and Presence
Protocol (XMPP): Core", RFC 6120, DOI 10.17487/RFC6120,
March 2011, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6120>.
[RFC6336] Westerlund, M. and C. Perkins, "IANA Registry for
Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) Options",
RFC 6336, DOI 10.17487/RFC6336, July 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6336>.
[RFC8828] Uberti, J. and G. Shieh, "WebRTC IP Address Handling
Requirements", RFC 8828, DOI 10.17487/RFC8828, January
2021, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8828>.
[RFC8840] Ivov, E., Stach, T., Marocco, E., and C. Holmberg, "A
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Usage for Incremental
Provisioning of Candidates for the Interactive
Connectivity Establishment (Trickle ICE)", RFC 8840,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8840, January 2021,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8840>.
[XEP-0030] Hildebrand, J., Millard, P., Eatmon, R., and P. Saint-
Andre, "XEP-0030: Service Discovery", XMPP Standards
Foundation, XEP-0030, June 2008.
[XEP-0176] Beda, J., Ludwig, S., Saint-Andre, P., Hildebrand, J.,
Egan, S., and R. McQueen, "XEP-0176: Jingle ICE-UDP
Transport Method", XMPP Standards Foundation, XEP-0176,
June 2009.
Appendix A. Interaction with Regular ICE
The ICE protocol was designed to be flexible enough to work in and
adapt to as many network environments as possible. Despite that
flexibility, ICE as specified in [RFC8445] does not by itself support
Trickle ICE. This section describes how trickling of candidates
interacts with ICE.
[RFC8445] describes the conditions required to update checklists and
timer states while an ICE agent is in the Running state. These
conditions are verified upon transaction completion, and one of them
stipulates that:
| if there is not a valid pair in the valid list for each component
| of the data stream associated with the checklist, the state of the
| checklist is set to Failed.
This could be a problem and cause ICE processing to fail prematurely
in a number of scenarios. Consider the following case:
1. Alice and Bob are both located in different networks with Network
Address Translation (NAT). Alice and Bob themselves have
different addresses, but both networks use the same private
internet block (e.g., the "20-bit block" 172.16/12 specified in
[RFC1918]).
2. Alice conveys to Bob the candidate 172.16.0.1, which also happens
to correspond to an existing host on Bob's network.
3. Bob creates a candidate pair from his host candidate and
172.16.0.1, puts this one pair into a checklist, and starts
checks.
4. These checks reach the host at 172.16.0.1 in Bob's network, which
responds with an ICMP "port unreachable" error; per [RFC8445],
Bob marks the transaction as Failed.
At this point, the checklist only contains a Failed pair, and the
valid list is empty. This causes the data stream and potentially all
ICE processing to fail, even though Trickle ICE agents can
subsequently convey candidates that could succeed.
A similar race condition would occur if the initial ICE description
from Alice contains only candidates that can be determined as
unreachable from any of the candidates that Bob has gathered (e.g.,
this would be the case if Bob's candidates only contain IPv4
addresses and the first candidate that he receives from Alice is an
IPv6 one).
Another potential problem could arise when a non-Trickle ICE
implementation initiates an interaction with a Trickle ICE
implementation. Consider the following case:
1. Alice's client has a non-Trickle ICE implementation.
2. Bob's client has support for Trickle ICE.
3. Alice and Bob are behind NATs with address-dependent filtering
[RFC4787].
4. Bob has two STUN servers, but one of them is currently
unreachable.
After Bob's agent receives Alice's initial ICE description, it would
immediately start connectivity checks. It would also start gathering
candidates, which would take a long time because of the unreachable
STUN server. By the time Bob's answer is ready and conveyed to
Alice, Bob's connectivity checks might have failed: until Alice gets
Bob's answer, she won't be able to start connectivity checks and
punch holes in her NAT. The NAT would hence be filtering Bob's
checks as originating from an unknown endpoint.
Appendix B. Interaction with ICE-Lite
The behavior of ICE-lite agents that are capable of Trickle ICE does
not require any particular rules other than those already defined in
this specification and [RFC8445]. This section is hence provided
only for informational purposes.
An ICE-lite agent would generate candidate information as per
[RFC8445] and would indicate support for Trickle ICE. Given that the
candidate information will contain a full generation of candidates,
it would also be accompanied by an end-of-candidates indication.
When performing full trickle, a full ICE implementation could convey
the initial ICE description or response thereto with no candidates.
After receiving a response that identifies the remote agent as an
ICE-lite implementation, the initiator can choose to not trickle any
additional candidates. The same is also true in the case when the
ICE-lite agent initiates the interaction and the full ICE agent is
the responder. In these cases, the connectivity checks would be
enough for the ICE-lite implementation to discover all potentially
useful candidates as peer-reflexive. The following example
illustrates one such ICE session using SDP syntax:
ICE-Lite Bob
Agent
| Offer (a=ice-lite a=ice-options:trickle) |
|---------------------------------------------->|
| |no cand
| Answer (a=ice-options:trickle) |trickling
|<----------------------------------------------|
| Connectivity Checks |
|<--------------------------------------------->|
peer rflx| |
cand disco| |
|<========== CONNECTION ESTABLISHED ===========>|
Figure 2: Example
In addition to reducing signaling traffic, this approach also removes
the need to discover STUN Bindings or make TURN allocations, which
can considerably lighten ICE processing.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Bernard Aboba, Flemming Andreasen,
Rajmohan Banavi, Taylor Brandstetter, Philipp Hancke, Christer
Holmberg, Ari Keränen, Paul Kyzivat, Jonathan Lennox, Enrico Marocco,
Pal Martinsen, Nils Ohlmeier, Thomas Stach, Peter Thatcher, Martin
Thomson, Brandon Williams, and Dale Worley for their reviews and
suggestions on improving this document. Sarah Banks, Roni Even, and
David Mandelberg completed OPSDIR, GenART, and security reviews,
respectively. Thanks also to Ari Keränen and Peter Thatcher in their
role as chairs and Ben Campbell in his role as responsible Area
Director.
Authors' Addresses
Emil Ivov
8x8, Inc. / Jitsi
675 Creekside Way
Campbell, CA 95008
United States of America
Phone: +1 512 420 6968
Email: emcho@jitsi.org
Justin Uberti
Google
747 6th Street S
Kirkland, WA 98033
United States of America
Phone: +1 857 288 8888
Email: justin@uberti.name
Peter Saint-Andre
Mozilla
P.O. Box 787
Parker, CO 80134
United States of America