RFC3510
Network Working Group R. Herriot Request for Comments: 3510 I. McDonald Updates: 2910 High North Inc. Category: Standards Track April 2003
Internet Printing Protocol/1.1:
IPP URL Scheme
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This memo defines the "ipp" URL (Uniform Resource Locator) scheme. This memo updates IPP/1.1: Encoding and Transport (RFC 2910), by expanding and clarifying Section 5, "IPP URL Scheme", of RFC 2910. An "ipp" URL is used to specify the network location of a print service that supports the IPP Protocol (RFC 2910), or of a network resource (for example, a print job) managed by such a print service.
Contents
Introduction
This memo conforms to all of the requirements in Registration Procedures for URL Scheme Names RFC2717. This memo also follows all of the recommendations in Guidelines for new URL Schemes RFC2718.
See section 1, "Introduction", of RFC2911 and section 1, "Introduction", of RFC3196 for overview information about IPP. See section 10, "Description of the Base IPP Documents", of RFC3196 for a full description of the IPP document set.
This memo updates IPP/1.1: Encoding and Transport (RFC 2910), by expanding and clarifying Section 5, "IPP URL Scheme", of RFC 2910, but does not define any new parameters or other new extensions to the syntax of IPP URLs.
The IPP URL scheme defined in this document is based on the ABNF for the HTTP URL scheme defined in HTTP RFC2616, which in turn is derived from the URI Generic Syntax RFC2396 and further updated for IPv6 by RFC2732. An IPP URL is transformed into an HTTP URL according to the rules specified in section 5 of IPP Protocol RFC2910.
This document defines IPP URL scheme applicability, associated port (631), associated MIME type ("application/ipp"), character encoding, and syntax.
This document is laid out as follows:
- Section 2 defines the terminology used throughout the document.
- Section 3 supplies references to the IPP Printer and IPP Job
object model defined in IPP Model RFC2911.
- Section 4 specifies the IPP URL scheme.
- Section 5 specifies the conformance requirements for IPP Clients
and IPP Printers that claim conformance to this document.
- Sections 6, 7, and 8 specify IANA, internationalization, and
security considerations.
- Sections 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 specify normative references,
informative references, acknowledgements, authors' addresses, and full IETF copyright statement.
- Section 14 (Appendix A) is a completed registration template for
the IPP URL Scheme (see section 6.0 of RFC2717).
Terminology
This specification document uses the terminology defined in this section.
Conformance Terminology
The uppercase terms "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT" "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC2119. These terms are used to specify conformance requirements for all implementations (both print clients and print services) of this specification.
Model Terminology
See section 12.2, "Model Terminology", in IPP Model RFC2911.
IPP Model for Printers and Jobs
See section 2, "IPP Objects", section 2.1, "Printer Object", and section 2.2, "Job Object", in RFC2911 for a full description of the IPP object model and terminology.
In this document, "IPP Client" means the software (on some hardware platform) that submits, monitors, and/or manages print jobs via the IPP Protocol RFC2910 to a print spooler, print gateway, or physical printing device.
In this document, "IPP Printer object" means the software (on some hardware platform) that receives print jobs and/or printer/job operations via the IPP Protocol RFC2910 from an "IPP Client".
In this document, "IPP Printer" is a synonym for "IPP Printer object".
In this document, "IPP Job object" means the set of attributes and documents for one print job instantiated on an "IPP Printer".
In this document, "IPP Job" is a synonym for "IPP Job object".
In this document, "IPP URL" means a URL with the "ipp" scheme.
Note: In this document, "IPP URL" is a synonym for "ipp-URL" (in section 4, "IPP URL Scheme", of this document) and "ipp-URL" (in section 5, "IPP URL Scheme", of RFC2910).
IPP URL Scheme
IPP URL Scheme Applicability
The "ipp" URL scheme MUST only be used to specify absolute URLs (relative IPP URLs are not allowed) for IPP print services and their associated network resources. The "ipp" URL scheme MUST only be used to specify the use of the abstract protocol defined in IPP Model RFC2911 over an HTTP RFC2616 transport, as defined in IPP Protocol RFC2910. Any other transport binding for the abstract protocol defined in IPP Model RFC2911 would require a different URL scheme.
The "ipp" URL scheme allows an IPP client to choose an appropriate IPP print service (for example, from a directory). The IPP client can establish an HTTP connection to the specified IPP print service. The IPP client can send IPP protocol requests (for example, a "Print-Job" request) and receive IPP protocol responses over that HTTP connection.
IPP URL Scheme Associated Port
All IPP URLs which do NOT explicitly specify a port MUST be resolved to IANA-assigned well-known port 631, as registered in [IANA-PORTREG].
See: IANA Port Numbers Registry [IANA-PORTREG]. See: IPP Protocol RFC2910.
IPP URL Scheme Associated MIME Type
All IPP URLs MUST be used to specify network print services which support the "application/ipp" MIME media type as registered in [IANA-MIMEREG] for IPP protocol requests and responses.
See: IANA MIME Media Types Registry [IANA-MIMEREG]. See: IPP Protocol RFC2910.
IPP URL Scheme Character Encoding
IPP URLs MUST use RFC2396 encoding, as do their equivalent HTTP URLs. Characters other than those in the "reserved" and "unsafe" sets RFC2396 are equivalent to their ""%" HEX HEX" encoding.
IPP URL Scheme Syntax
The abstract protocol defined in IPP Model RFC2911 places a limit of 1023 octets (NOT characters) on the length of a URI (see section 4.1.5, "uri", in RFC2911).
Note: IPP Printers ought to be cautious about depending on URI lengths above 255 bytes, because some older client implementations might not properly support these lengths.
IPP URLs MUST be represented in absolute form. Absolute URLs MUST always begin with a scheme name followed by a colon. For definitive information on URL syntax and semantics, see "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax and Semantics" RFC2396. This specification adopts the definitions of "host", "port", "abs_path", and "query" from RFC2396, as updated for IPv6 by RFC2732.
The IPP URL scheme syntax in ABNF is as follows:
ipp-URL = "ipp:" "//" host [ ":" port ] [ abs_path [ "?" query ]]
If the port is empty or not given, port 631 is assumed. The semantics are that the identified resource (see section 5.1.2 of RFC2616) is located at the IPP print service listening for HTTP connections on that port of that host, and the Request-URI for the identified resource is 'abs_path'.
If the 'abs_path' is not present in the URL, it MUST be given as "/" when used as a Request-URI for a resource (see section 5.1.2 of RFC2616).
IPP URL Examples
Note: Literal IPv4 or IPv6 addresses SHOULD NOT be used in IPP URLs.
IPP Printer URL Examples
The following are examples of well-formed IPP URLs for IPP Printers (for example, to be used as protocol elements in 'printer-uri' operation attributes of 'Print-Job' request messages):
ipp://example.com ipp://example.com/printer ipp://example.com/printer/tiger ipp://example.com/printer/fox ipp://example.com/printer/tiger/bob ipp://example.com/printer/tiger/ira
Each of the above URLs are well-formed URLs for IPP Printers and each would reference a logically different IPP Printer, even though some of those IPP Printers might share the same host system. The 'bob' or 'ira' last path components might represent two different physical printer devices, while 'tiger' might represent some grouping of IPP Printers (for example, a load-balancing spooler). Or the 'bob' and 'ira' last path components might represent separate human recipients on the same physical printer device (for example, a physical printer supporting two job queues). In either case, both 'bob' and 'ira' would behave as different and independent IPP Printers.
The following are examples of well-formed IPP URLs for IPP Printers with (optional) ports and paths:
ipp://example.com ipp://example.com/~smith/printer ipp://example.com:631/~smith/printer
The first and second IPP URLs above MUST be resolved to port 631 (IANA assigned well-known port for IPP). The second and third IPP URLs above are equivalent (see section 4.7 below).
IPP Job URL Examples
The following are examples of well-formed IPP URLs for IPP Jobs (for example, to be used as protocol elements in 'job-uri' attributes of 'Print-Job' response messages):
ipp://example.com/printer/123 ipp://example.com/printer/tiger/job123
IPP Job URLs are valid and meaningful only until Job completion and possibly an implementation defined optional period of persistence after Job completion (see IPP Model RFC2911).
Ambiguously, section 4.3.1 'job-uri' of IPP Model RFC2911 states that:
"the precise format of a Job URI is implementation dependent."
Thus, the relationship between the value of the "printer-uri" operation attribute used in a 'Print-Job' request and the value of the "job-uri" attribute returned in the corresponding 'Print-Job' response is implementation dependent. Also, section 4.3.3 'job- printer-uri' of IPP Model RFC2911 states that the 'job-printer-uri' attribute of a Job object:
"permits a client to identify the Printer object that created this Job object when only the Job object's URI is available to the client."
However, the above statement is false, because the transform from an IPP Job URL to the corresponding IPP Printer URL is unspecified in either IPP Model RFC2911 or IPP Protocol RFC2910.
IPP Printers that conform to this specification SHOULD only generate IPP Job URLs (for example, in the "job-uri" attribute in a 'Print- Job' response) by appending exactly one path component to the corresponding IPP Printer URL (for interoperability).
IPP URL Comparisons
When comparing two IPP URLs to decide if they match or not, an IPP Client MUST use the same rules as those defined for HTTP URI comparisons in RFC2616, with the sole following exception:
- A port that is empty or not given MUST be treated as equivalent to
the well-known port for that IPP URL (port 631);
See: Section 3.2.3, "URI Comparison", in RFC2616.
Conformance Requirements
IPP Client Conformance Requirements
IPP Clients that conform to this specification:
a) MUST only send IPP protocol connections to the port specified in
each given IPP URL (if present) or otherwise to IANA assigned well-known port 631;
b) MUST only send IPP URLs used as protocol elements in outgoing IPP
protocol request messages (for example, in the "printer-uri" operation attribute in a 'Print-Job' request) that conform to the ABNF specified in section 4.5, "IPP URL Scheme Syntax, of this document;
c) MUST only convert IPP URLs to their corresponding HTTP URL forms
according to the rules in section 5, "IPP URL Scheme", in RFC2910.
IPP Printer Conformance Requirements
IPP Printers that conform to this specification:
a) MUST listen for incoming IPP protocol connections on IANA-assigned
well-known port 631, unless explicitly configured by system administrators or site policies;
b) SHOULD NOT listen for incoming IPP protocol connections on any
other port, unless explicitly configured by system administrators or site policies;
c) SHOULD only accept IPP URLs used as protocol elements in incoming
IPP protocol request messages (for example, in the "printer-uri" operation attribute in a 'Print-Job' request) that conform to the ABNF specified in section 4.5, "IPP URL Scheme Syntax", of this document;
d) SHOULD only send IPP URLs used as protocol elements in outgoing
IPP protocol response messages (for example, in the "job-uri" attribute in a 'Print-Job' response) that conform to the ABNF specified in section 4.5, "IPP URL Scheme Syntax", of this document;
e) SHOULD only generate IPP Job URLs (for example, in the "job-uri"
attribute in a 'Print-Job' response) by appending exactly one path component to the corresponding IPP Printer URL (for interoperability);
f) SHOULD NOT use literal IPv6 or IPv4 addresses in configured or
locally generated IPP URLs.
IANA Considerations
This IPP URL Scheme specification does not introduce any additional IANA considerations, beyond those described in RFC2910 and RFC2911.
See: Section 6, "IANA Considerations" in RFC2910 See: Section 6, "IANA Considerations" in RFC2911.
Internationalization Considerations
This IPP URL Scheme specification does not introduce any additional internationalization considerations, beyond those described in RFC2910 and RFC2911.
See: Section 7, "Internationalization Considerations", in RFC2910. See: Section 7, "Internationalization Considerations", in RFC2911.
Security Considerations
This IPP URL Scheme specification does not introduce any additional security considerations, beyond those described in RFC2910 and RFC2911, except the following:
a) An IPP URL might be faked to point to a rogue IPP print service,
thus collecting confidential document contents from IPP clients. Server authentication mechanisms and security mechanisms specified in the IPP Protocol RFC2910 are sufficient to address this threat.
b) An IPP URL might be used to access an IPP print service by an
unauthorized IPP client. Client authentication mechanisms and security mechanisms specified in the IPP Protocol RFC2910 are sufficient to address this threat.
c) An IPP URL might be used to access an IPP print service at a print
protocol application layer gateway (for example, an IPP to LPD gateway RFC2569) causing silent compromise of IPP security mechanisms. There is no practical defense against this threat by a client system. System administrators should avoid such compromising configurations.
d) An IPP URL does not have parameters to specify the required client
authentication mechanism (for example, 'certificate' as defined in section 4.4.2, "uri-authentication-supported", of IPP Model
RFC2911) and required security mechanism (for example, 'tls' as defined in section 4.4.3, "uri-security-supported", of IPP Model RFC2911). Service discovery or directory protocols might be used to discover the required client authentication and security mechanisms associated with given IPP URLs.
Historical Note: During the development of this document, consideration was given to the addition of standard IPP URL parameters for the client authentication and security mechanisms. However, based on a strong IETF IPP Working Group consensus, no parameters were added to the "ipp" URL scheme as originally defined in IPP Protocol RFC2910 in September 2000, for reasons of backwards compatibility with the many currently shipping implementations of IPP/1.1.
See: Section 8, "Security Considerations", in RFC2910. See: Section 8, "Security Considerations", in RFC2911.
Intellectual Property Rights
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. Information on the IETF's procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and standards-related documentation can be found in BCP-11. Copies of claims of rights made available for publication and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementors or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF Secretariat.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights which may cover technology that may be required to practice this standard. Please address the information to the IETF Executive Director.
10. Normative References
RFC2234 Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997.
RFC2396 Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter,
"Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax",
RFC 2396, August 1998.
RFC2616 Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P. and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
RFC2732 Hinden, R., Carpenter, B. and L. Masinter, "Format for
Literal IPv6 Addresses in URL's", RFC 2732, December 1999.
RFC2910 Herriot, R., Butler, S., Moore, P., Turner, R. and J.
Wenn, "IPP/1.1 Encoding and Transport [IPP Protocol]",
RFC 2910, September 2000.
RFC2911 Hastings, T., Herriot, R., deBry, R., Isaacson, S. and
P. Powell, "IPP/1.1 Model and Semantics [IPP Model]",
RFC 2911, September 2000.
[US-ASCII] Coded Character Set -- 7-bit American Standard Code
for Information Interchange, ANSI X3.4-1986.
11. Informative References
[IANA-MIMEREG] IANA MIME Media Types Registry.
ftp://ftp.iana.org/in-notes/iana/assignments/media- types/...
[IANA-PORTREG] IANA Port Numbers Registry. ftp://ftp.iana.org/in-
notes/iana/assignments/port-numbers
RFC2569 Herriot, R., Hastings, T., Jacobs, N. and J. Martin,
"Mapping between LPD and IPP Protocols", RFC 2569, April 1999.
RFC2717 Petke, R. and I. King, "Registration Procedures for
URL Scheme Names", RFC 2717, November 1999.
RFC2718 Masinter, L., Alvestrand, H., Zigmond, D. and R.
Petke, "Guidelines for new URL Schemes", RFC 2718, November 1999.
RFC3196 Hastings, T., Manros, C., Zehler, P., Kugler, C. and
H. Holst, "Internet Printing Protocol/1.1:
Implementor's Guide", RFC 3196, November 2001.
12. Acknowledgments
This document is a product of the Internet Printing Protocol Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
Thanks to Pat Fleming (IBM), Tom Hastings (Xerox), Harry Lewis (IBM), Hugo Parra (Novell), Don Wright (Lexmark), and all the members of the IETF IPP WG.
Section 5, "IPP URL Scheme", in IPP Protocol RFC2910 was the primary input to this IPP URL Scheme specification.
Appendix A - Registration of "ipp" URL Scheme
Note: The following registration obsoletes section 5, "IPP URL Scheme", of IPP Protocol RFC2911.
URL Scheme Name: ipp
URL Scheme Syntax:
ipp-URL = "ipp:" "//" host [ ":" port ] [ abs_path [ "?" query ]]
Character Encoding Considerations:
IPP URLs MUST use RFC2396 encoding, as do their equivalent HTTP URLs. Characters other than those in the "reserved" and "unsafe" sets RFC2396 are equivalent to their ""%" HEX HEX" encoding.
Intended Usage:
The intended usage of the "ipp" URL scheme is COMMON.
An "ipp" URL is used to specify the network location of a print service that supports the IPP Protocol RFC2910, or of a network resource (for example, a print job) managed by such a print service. An IPP client can choose to establish an HTTP connection to the specified print service for transmission of IPP protocol requests (for example, IPP print job submission requests).
Applications or Protocols which use this URL scheme:
See: Section 5, "IPP URL Scheme", in IPP Protocol RFC2910.
Interoperability Considerations:
See: Section 9, "Interoperability with IPP/1.0 Implementations", in IPP Protocol RFC2910.
Security Considerations:
See: Section 8, "Security Considerations", in IPP Protocol RFC2910.
Relevant Publications:
RFC2910 Herriot, R., Butler, S., Moore, P., Turner, R. and J. Wenn,
"IPP/1.1 Encoding and Transport [IPP Protocol]", RFC 2910, September 2000.
RFC2616 Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter,
L., Leach, P. and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
RFC3510 Herriot, R. and I. McDonald, "IPP/1.1: IPP URL Scheme", RFC
3510, April 2003.
Person & email address to contact for further information:
Robert Herriot Consultant 706 Colorado Ave Palo Alto, CA 94303
Phone: +1 650-327-4466 EMail: [email protected]
Ira McDonald High North Inc 221 Ridge Ave Grand Marais, MI 49839
Phone: +1 906-494-2434 EMail: [email protected]
Authors' Addresses
Robert Herriot Consultant 706 Colorado Ave Palo Alto, CA 94303
Phone: +1 650-327-4466 EMail: [email protected]
Ira McDonald High North Inc 221 Ridge Ave Grand Marais, MI 49839
Phone: +1 906-494-2434 EMail: [email protected]
Usage questions and comments on this IPP URL Scheme should be sent directly to the editors at their above addresses (and to the IPP mailing list, if you are a subscriber - see below).
IPP Web Page: http://www.pwg.org/ipp/ IPP Mailing List: [email protected]
To subscribe to the IPP mailing list, send the following email:
1) send it to [email protected]
2) leave the subject line blank
3) put the following two lines in the message body: subscribe ipp
Implementers of this specification are encouraged to join the IPP Mailing List in order to participate in any discussions of clarification issues and comments. In order to reduce spam the mailing list rejects mail from non-subscribers, so you must subscribe to the mailing list in order to send a question or comment to the IPP mailing list.
Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.
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Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society.
