RFC2910 - Internet Printing Protocol/1.1: Encoding and Transport

Network Working Group R. Herriot, Editor
Request for Comments: 2910 Xerox Corporation
Obsoletes: 2565 S. Butler
Category: Standards Track Hewlett-Packard
P. Moore
Peerless Systems Networking
R. Turner
2wire.com
J. Wenn
Xerox Corporation
September 2000
Internet Printing Protocol/1.1: Encoding and Transport
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 (2000). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document is one of a set of documents, which together describe
all ASPects of a new Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). IPP is an
application level protocol that can be used for distributed printing
using Internet tools and technologies. This document defines the
rules for encoding IPP operations and IPP attributes into a new
Internet mime media type called "application/ipp". This document
also defines the rules for transporting over Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP) a message body whose Content-Type is
"application/ipp". This document defines a new scheme named "ipp" for
identifying IPP printers and jobs.
The full set of IPP documents includes:
Design Goals for an Internet Printing Protocol [RFC2567]
Rationale for the StrUCture and Model and Protocol for the Internet
Printing Protocol [RFC2568]
Internet Printing Protocol/1.1: Model and Semantics [RFC2911]
Internet Printing Protocol/1.1: Encoding and Transport (this
document)
Internet Printing Protocol/1.1: Implementer"s Guide [ipp-iig]
Mapping between LPD and IPP Protocols [RFC2569]
The document, "Design Goals for an Internet Printing Protocol", takes
a broad look at distributed printing functionality, and it enumerates
real-life scenarios that help to clarify the features that need to be
included in a printing protocol for the Internet. It identifies
requirements for three types of users: end users, operators, and
administrators. It calls out a subset of end user requirements that
are satisfied in IPP/1.1. A few OPTIONAL operator operations have
been added to IPP/1.1.
The document, "Rationale for the Structure and Model and Protocol for
the Internet Printing Protocol", describes IPP from a high level
view, defines a roadmap for the various documents that form the suite
of IPP specification documents, and gives background and rationale
for the IETF working group"s major decisions.
The document, "Internet Printing Protocol/1.1: Model and Semantics",
describes a simplified model with abstract objects, their attributes,
and their operations that are independent of encoding and transport.
It introduces a Printer and a Job object. The Job object optionally
supports multiple documents per Job. It also addresses security,
internationalization, and Directory issues.
The document "Internet Printing Protocol/1.1: Implementer"s Guide",
gives advice to implementers of IPP clients and IPP objects.
The document "Mapping between LPD and IPP Protocols", gives some
advice to implementers of gateways between IPP and LPD (Line Printer
Daemon) implementations.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ...................................................4
2. Conformance Terminology ........................................4
3. Encoding of the Operation Layer ...............................4
3.1 Picture of the Encoding ...................................6
3.1.1 Request and Response...................................6
3.1.2 Attribute Group........................................6
3.1.3 Attribute..............................................7
3.1.4 Picture of the Encoding of an Attribute-with-one-value.7
3.1.5 Additional-value.......................................8
3.1.6 Alternative Picture of the Encoding of a Request Or a
Response...............................................9
3.2 Syntax of Encoding ........................................9
3.3 Attribute-group ..........................................11
3.4 Required Parameters ......................................12
3.4.1 Version-number........................................12
3.4.2 Operation-id..........................................12
3.4.3 Status-code...........................................12
3.4.4 Request-id............................................13
3.5 Tags .....................................................13
3.5.1 Delimiter Tags........................................13
3.5.2 Value Tags............................................14
3.6 Name-Length ..............................................16
3.7 (Attribute) Name .........................................16
3.8 Value Length .............................................16
3.9 (Attribute) Value ........................................17
3.10 Data .....................................................18
4. Encoding of Transport Layer ...................................18
4.1 Printer-uri and job-uri ..................................19
5. IPP URL Scheme ................................................20
6. IANA Considerations ...........................................22
7. Internationalization Considerations ...........................23
8. Security Considerations .......................................23
8.1 Security Conformance Requirements ........................23
8.1.1 Digest Authentication.................................23
8.1.2 Transport Layer Security (TLS)........................24
8.2 Using IPP with TLS .......................................25
9. Interoperability with IPP/1.0 Implementations .................25
9.1 The "version-number" Parameter ...........................25
9.2 Security and URL Schemes .................................26
10. References ...................................................27
11. Authors" Addresses ...........................................29
12. Other Participants: ..........................................31
13. Appendix A: Protocol Examples ................................33
13.1 Print-Job Request ........................................33
13.2 Print-Job Response (successful) ..........................34
13.3 Print-Job Response (failure) .............................35
13.4 Print-Job Response (success with attributes ignored) .....36
13.5 Print-URI Request ........................................38
13.6 Create-Job Request .......................................39
13.7 Get-Jobs Request .........................................40
13.8 Get-Jobs Response ........................................41
14. Appendix B: Registration of MIME Media Type Information for
"application/ipp".............................................42
15. Appendix C: Changes from IPP/1.0 .............................44
16. Full Copyright Statement .....................................45
1. Introduction
This document contains the rules for encoding IPP operations and
describes two layers: the transport layer and the operation layer.
The transport layer consists of an HTTP/1.1 request or response. RFC
2616 [RFC2616] describes HTTP/1.1. This document specifies the HTTP
headers that an IPP implementation supports.
The operation layer consists of a message body in an HTTP request or
response. The document "Internet Printing Protocol/1.1: Model and
Semantics" [RFC2911] defines the semantics of such a message body and
the supported values. This document specifies the encoding of an IPP
operation. The aforementioned document [RFC2911] is henceforth
referred to as the "IPP model document" or simply "model document".
Note: the version number of IPP (1.1) and HTTP (1.1) are not linked.
They both just happen to be 1.1.
2. Conformance Terminology
The key Words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT",
"RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be
interpreted as described in RFC2119 [RFC2119].
3. Encoding of the Operation Layer
The operation layer is the message body part of the HTTP request or
response and it MUST contain a single IPP operation request or IPP
operation response. Each request or response consists of a sequence
of values and attribute groups. Attribute groups consist of a
sequence of attributes each of which is a name and value. Names and
values are ultimately sequences of octets.
The encoding consists of octets as the most primitive type. There are
several types built from octets, but three important types are
integers, character strings and octet strings, on which most other
data types are built. Every character string in this encoding MUST be
a sequence of characters where the characters are associated with
some charset and some natural language. A character string MUST be in
"reading order" with the first character in the value (according to
reading order) being the first character in the encoding. A character
string whose associated charset is US-ASCII whose associated natural
language is US English is henceforth called a US-ASCII-STRING. A
character string whose associated charset and natural language are
specified in a request or response as described in the model document
is henceforth called a LOCALIZED-STRING. An octet string MUST be in
"IPP model document order" with the first octet in the value
(according to the IPP model document order) being the first octet in
the encoding. Every integer in this encoding MUST be encoded as a
signed integer using two"s-complement binary encoding with big-endian
format (also known as "network order" and "most significant byte
first"). The number of octets for an integer MUST be 1, 2 or 4,
depending on usage in the protocol. Such one-octet integers,
henceforth called SIGNED-BYTE, are used for the version-number and
tag fields. Such two-byte integers, henceforth called SIGNED-SHORT
are used for the operation-id, status-code and length fields. Four
byte integers, henceforth called SIGNED-INTEGER, are used for value
fields and the request-id.
The following two sections present the encoding of the operation
layer in two ways:
- informally through pictures and description
- formally through Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF), as
specified by RFC2234 [RFC2234]
An operation request or response MUST use the encoding described in
these two sections.
3.1 Picture of the Encoding
3.1.1 Request and Response
An operation request or response is encoded as follows:
-----------------------------------------------
version-number 2 bytes - required
-----------------------------------------------
operation-id (request)
or 2 bytes - required
status-code (response)
-----------------------------------------------
request-id 4 bytes - required
-----------------------------------------------
attribute-group n bytes - 0 or more
-----------------------------------------------
end-of-attributes-tag 1 byte - required
-----------------------------------------------
data q bytes - optional
-----------------------------------------------
The first three fields in the above diagram contain the value of
attributes described in section 3.1.1 of the Model document.
The fourth field is the "attribute-group" field, and it occurs 0 or
more times. Each "attribute-group" field represents a single group of
attributes, such as an Operation Attributes group or a Job Attributes
group (see the Model document). The IPP model document specifies the
required attribute groups and their order for each operation request
and response.
The "end-of-attributes-tag" field is always present, even when the
"data" is not present. The Model document specifies for each
operation request and response whether the "data" field is present or
absent.
3.1.2 Attribute Group
Each "attribute-group" field is encoded as follows:
-----------------------------------------------
begin-attribute-group-tag 1 byte
----------------------------------------------------------
attribute p bytes - 0 or more
----------------------------------------------------------
The "begin-attribute-group-tag" field marks the beginning of an
"attribute-group" field and its value identifies the type of
attribute group, e.g. Operations Attributes group versus a Job
Attributes group. The "begin-attribute-group-tag" field also marks
the end of the previous attribute group except for the "begin-
attribute-group-tag" field in the first "attribute-group" field of a
request or response. The "begin-attribute-group-tag" field acts as
an "attribute-group" terminator because an "attribute-group" field
cannot nest inside another "attribute-group" field.
An "attribute-group" field contains zero or more "attribute" fields.
Note, the values of the "begin-attribute-group-tag" field and the
"end-of-attributes-tag" field are called "delimiter-tags".
3.1.3 Attribute
An "attribute" field is encoded as follows:
-----------------------------------------------
attribute-with-one-value q bytes
----------------------------------------------------------
additional-value r bytes - 0 or more
----------------------------------------------------------
When an attribute is single valued (e.g. "copies" with value of 10)
or multi-valued with one value (e.g. "sides-supported" with just the
value "one-sided") it is encoded with just an "attribute-with-one-
value" field. When an attribute is multi-valued with n values (e.g.
"sides-supported" with the values "one-sided" and "two-sided-long-
edge"), it is encoded with an "attribute-with-one-value" field
followed by n-1 "additional-value" fields.
3.1.4 Picture of the Encoding of an Attribute-with-one-value
Each "attribute-with-one-value" field is encoded as follows:
-----------------------------------------------
value-tag 1 byte
-----------------------------------------------
name-length (value is u) 2 bytes
-----------------------------------------------
name u bytes
-----------------------------------------------
value-length (value is v) 2 bytes
-----------------------------------------------
value v bytes
-----------------------------------------------
An "attribute-with-one-value" field is encoded with five subfields:
The "value-tag" field specifies the attribute syntax, e.g. 0x44
for the attribute syntax "keyword".
The "name-length" field specifies the length of the "name" field
in bytes, e.g. u in the above diagram or 15 for the name "sides-
supported".
The "name" field contains the textual name of the attribute, e.g.
"sides-supported".
The "value-length" field specifies the length of the "value" field
in bytes, e.g. v in the above diagram or 9 for the (keyword) value
"one-sided".
The "value" field contains the value of the attribute, e.g. the
textual value "one-sided".
3.1.5 Additional-value
Each "additional-value" field is encoded as follows:
-----------------------------------------------
value-tag 1 byte
-----------------------------------------------
name-length (value is 0x0000) 2 bytes
-----------------------------------------------
value-length (value is w) 2 bytes
-----------------------------------------------
value w bytes
-----------------------------------------------
An "additional-value" is encoded with four subfields:
The "value-tag" field specifies the attribute syntax, e.g. 0x44
for the attribute syntax "keyword".
The "name-length" field has the value of 0 in order to signify
that it is an "additional-value". The value of the "name-length"
field distinguishes an "additional-value" field ("name-length" is
0) from an "attribute-with-one-value" field ("name-length" is not
0).
The "value-length" field specifies the length of the "value" field
in bytes, e.g. w in the above diagram or 19 for the (keyword)
value "two-sided-long-edge".
The "value" field contains the value of the attribute, e.g. the
textual value "two-sided-long-edge".
3.1.6 Alternative Picture of the Encoding of a Request Or a Response
From the standpoint of a parser that performs an action based on a
"tag" value, the encoding consists of:
-----------------------------------------------
version-number 2 bytes - required
-----------------------------------------------
operation-id (request)
or 2 bytes - required
status-code (response)
-----------------------------------------------
request-id 4 bytes - required
-----------------------------------------------------------
tag (delimiter-tag or value-tag) 1 byte
----------------------------------------------- -0 or more
empty or rest of attribute x bytes
-----------------------------------------------------------
end-of-attributes-tag 1 byte - required
-----------------------------------------------
data y bytes - optional
-----------------------------------------------
The following show what fields the parser would eXPect after each
type of "tag":
- "begin-attribute-group-tag": expect zero or more "attribute"
fields
- "value-tag": expect the remainder of an "attribute-with-one-
value" or an "additional-value".
- "end-of-attributes-tag": expect that "attribute" fields are
complete and there is optional "data"
3.2 Syntax of Encoding
The syntax below is ABNF [RFC2234] except "strings of literals" MUST
be case sensitive. For example "a" means lower case "a" and not
upper case "A". In addition, SIGNED-BYTE and SIGNED-SHORT fields
are represented as "%x" values which show their range of values.
ipp-message = ipp-request / ipp-response
ipp-request = version-number operation-id request-id
*attribute-group end-of-attributes-tag data
ipp-response = version-number status-code request-id
*attribute-group end-of-attributes-tag data
attribute-group = begin-attribute-group-tag *attribute
version-number = major-version-number minor-version-number
major-version-number = SIGNED-BYTE
minor-version-number = SIGNED-BYTE
operation-id = SIGNED-SHORT ; mapping from model defined below
status-code = SIGNED-SHORT ; mapping from model defined below
request-id = SIGNED-INTEGER ; whose value is > 0
attribute = attribute-with-one-value *additional-value
attribute-with-one-value = value-tag name-length name
value-length value
additional-value = value-tag zero-name-length value-length value
name-length = SIGNED-SHORT ; number of octets of "name"
name = LALPHA *( LALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "_" / "." )
value-length = SIGNED-SHORT ; number of octets of "value"
value = OCTET-STRING
data = OCTET-STRING
zero-name-length = %x00.00 ; name-length of 0
value-tag = %x10-FF ;see section 3.7.2
begin-attribute-group-tag = %x00-02 / %04-0F ; see section 3.7.1
end-of-attributes-tag = %x03 ; tag of 3
; see section 3.7.1
SIGNED-BYTE = BYTE
SIGNED-SHORT = 2BYTE
SIGNED-INTEGER = 4BYTE
DIGIT = %x30-39 ; "0" to "9"
LALPHA = %x61-7A ; "a" to "z"
BYTE = %x00-FF
OCTET-STRING = *BYTE
The syntax below defines additional terms that are referenced in this
document. This syntax provides an alternate grouping of the delimiter
tags.
delimiter-tag = begin-attribute-group-tag / ; see section 3.7.1
end-of-attributes-tag
delimiter-tag = %x00-0F ; see section 3.7.1
begin-attribute-group-tag = %x00 / operation-attributes-tag /
job-attributes-tag / printer-attributes-tag /
unsupported-attributes-tag / %x06-0F
operation-attributes-tag = %x01 ; tag of 1
job-attributes-tag = %x02 ; tag of 2
printer-attributes-tag = %x04 ; tag of 4
unsupported-attributes-tag = %x05 ; tag of 5
3.3 Attribute-group
Each "attribute-group" field MUST be encoded with the "begin-
attribute-group-tag" field followed by zero or more "attribute" sub-
fields.
The table below maps the model document group name to value of the
"begin-attribute-group-tag" field:
Model Document Group "begin-attribute-group-tag" field
values
Operation Attributes "operations-attributes-tag"
Job Template Attributes "job-attributes-tag"
Job Object Attributes "job-attributes-tag"
Unsupported Attributes "unsupported-attributes-tag"
Requested Attributes "job-attributes-tag"
(Get-Job-Attributes)
Requested Attributes "printer-attributes-tag"
(Get-Printer-Attributes)
Document Content in a special position as
described above
For each operation request and response, the model document
prescribes the required and optional attribute groups, along with
their order. Within each attribute group, the model document
prescribes the required and optional attributes, along with their
order.
When the Model document requires an attribute group in a request or
response and the attribute group contains zero attributes, a request
or response SHOULD encode the attribute group with the "begin-
attribute-group-tag" field followed by zero "attribute" fields. For
example, if the client requests a single unsupported attribute with
the Get-Printer-Attributes operation, the Printer MUST return no
"attribute" fields, and it SHOULD return a "begin-attribute-group-
tag" field for the Printer Attributes Group. The Unsupported
Attributes group is not such an example. According to the model
document, the Unsupported Attributes Group SHOULD be present only if
the unsupported attributes group contains at least one attribute.
A receiver of a request MUST be able to process the following as
equivalent empty attribute groups:
a) A "begin-attribute-group-tag" field with zero following
"attribute" fields.
b) An expected but missing "begin-attribute-group-tag" field.
When the Model document requires a sequence of an unknown number of
attribute groups, each of the same type, the encoding MUST contain
one "begin-attribute-group-tag" field for each attribute group even
when an "attribute-group" field contains zero "attribute" sub-fields.
For example, for the Get-Jobs operation may return zero attributes
for some jobs and not others. The "begin-attribute-group-tag" field
followed by zero "attribute" fields tells the recipient that there is
a job in queue for which no information is available except that it
is in the queue.
3.4 Required Parameters
Some operation elements are called parameters in the model document
[RFC2911]. They MUST be encoded in a special position and they MUST
NOT appear as operation attributes. These parameters are described
in the subsections below.
3.4.1 Version-number
The "version-number" field MUST consist of a major and minor
version-number, each of which MUST be represented by a SIGNED-BYTE.
The major version-number MUST be the first byte of the encoding and
the minor version-number MUST be the second byte of the encoding. The
protocol described in this document MUST have a major version-number
of 1 (0x01) and a minor version-number of 1 (0x01). The ABNF for
these two bytes MUST be %x01.01.
3.4.2 Operation-id
The "operation-id" field MUST contain an operation-id value defined
in the model document. The value MUST be encoded as a SIGNED-SHORT
and it MUST be in the third and fourth bytes of the encoding of an
operation request.
3.4.3 Status-code
The "status-code" field MUST contain a status-code value defined in
the model document. The value MUST be encoded as a SIGNED-SHORT and
it MUST be in the third and fourth bytes of the encoding of an
operation response.
The status-code is an operation attribute in the model document. In
the protocol, the status-code is in a special position, outside of
the operation attributes.
If an IPP status-code is returned, then the HTTP Status-Code MUST be
200 (successful-ok). With any other HTTP Status-Code value, the HTTP
response MUST NOT contain an IPP message-body, and thus no IPP
status-code is returned.
3.4.4 Request-id
The "request-id" field MUST contain a request-id value as defined in
the model document. The value MUST be encoded as a SIGNED-INTEGER and
it MUST be in the fifth through eighth bytes of the encoding.
3.5 Tags
There are two kinds of tags:
- delimiter tags: delimit major sections of the protocol, namely
attributes and data
- value tags: specify the type of each attribute value
3.5.1 Delimiter Tags
The following table specifies the values for the delimiter tags:
Tag Value (Hex) Meaning
0x00 reserved for definition in a future IETF
standards track document
0x01 "operation-attributes-tag"
0x02 "job-attributes-tag"
0x03 "end-of-attributes-tag"
0x04 "printer-attributes-tag"
0x05 "unsupported-attributes-tag"
0x06-0x0f reserved for future delimiters in IETF
standards track documents
When a "begin-attribute-group-tag" field occurs in the protocol, it
means that zero or more following attributes up to the next delimiter
tag MUST be attributes belonging to the attribute group specified by
the value of the "begin-attribute-group-tag". For example, if the
value of "begin-attribute-group-tag" is 0x01, the following
attributes MUST be members of the Operations Attributes group.
The "end-of-attributes-tag" (value 0x03) MUST occur exactly once in
an operation. It MUST be the last "delimiter-tag". If the operation
has a document-content group, the document data in that group MUST
follow the "end-of-attributes-tag".
The order and presence of "attribute-group" fields (whose beginning
is marked by the "begin-attribute-group-tag" subfield) for each
operation request and each operation response MUST be that defined in
the model document. For further details, see section 3.7 "(Attribute)
Name" and 13 "Appendix A: Protocol Examples".
A Printer MUST treat a "delimiter-tag" (values from 0x00 through
0x0F) differently from a "value-tag" (values from 0x10 through 0xFF)
so that the Printer knows that there is an entire attribute group
that it doesn"t understand as opposed to a single value that it
doesn"t understand.
3.5.2 Value Tags
The remaining tables show values for the "value-tag" field, which is
the first octet of an attribute. The "value-tag" field specifies the
type of the value of the attribute.
The following table specifies the "out-of-band" values for the
"value-tag" field.
Tag Value (Hex) Meaning
0x10 unsupported
0x11 reserved for "default" for definition in a future
IETF standards track document
0x12 unknown
0x13 no-value
0x14-0x1F reserved for "out-of-band" values in future IETF
standards track documents.
The following table specifies the integer values for the "value-tag"
field:
Tag Value (Hex) Meaning
0x20 reserved for definition in a future IETF
standards track document
0x21 integer
0x22 boolean
0x23 enum
0x24-0x2F reserved for integer types for definition in
future IETF standards track documents
NOTE: 0x20 is reserved for "generic integer" if it should ever be
needed.
The following table specifies the octetString values for the "value-
tag" field:
Tag Value (Hex) Meaning
0x30 octetString with an unspecified format
0x31 dateTime
0x32 resolution
0x33 rangeOfInteger
0x34 reserved for definition in a future IETF
standards track document
0x35 textWithLanguage
0x36 nameWithLanguage
0x37-0x3F reserved for octetString type definitions in
future IETF standards track documents
The following table specifies the character-string values for the
"value-tag" field:
Tag Value (Hex) Meaning
0x40 reserved for definition in a future IETF
standards track document
0x41 textWithoutLanguage
0x42 nameWithoutLanguage
0x43 reserved for definition in a future IETF
standards track document
0x44 keyword
0x45 uri
0x46 uriScheme
0x47 charset
0x48 naturalLanguage
0x49 mimeMediaType
0x4A-0x5F reserved for character string type definitions
in future IETF standards track documents
NOTE: 0x40 is reserved for "generic character-string" if it should
ever be needed.
NOTE: an attribute value always has a type, which is explicitly
specified by its tag; one such tag value is "nameWithoutLanguage".
An attribute"s name has an implicit type, which is keyword.
The values 0x60-0xFF are reserved for future type definitions in IETF
standards track documents.
The tag 0x7F is reserved for extending types beyond the 255 values
available with a single byte. A tag value of 0x7F MUST signify that
the first 4 bytes of the value field are interpreted as the tag
value. Note this future extension doesn"t affect parsers that are
unaware of this special tag. The tag is like any other unknown tag,
and the value length specifies the length of a value, which contains
a value that the parser treats atomically. Values from 0x00 to
0x37777777 are reserved for definition in future IETF standard track
documents. The values 0x40000000 to 0x7FFFFFFF are reserved for
vendor extensions.
3.6 Name-Length
The "name-length" field MUST consist of a SIGNED-SHORT. This field
MUST specify the number of octets in the immediately following "name"
field. The value of this field excludes the two bytes of the "name-
length" field. For example, if the "name" field contains "sides", the
value of this field is 5.
If a "name-length" field has a value of zero, the following "name"
field MUST be empty, and the following value MUST be treated as an
additional value for the attribute encoded in the nearest preceding
"attribute-with-one-value" field. Within an attribute group, if two
or more attributes have the same name, the attribute group is mal-
formed (see [RFC2911] section 3.1.3). The zero-length name is the
only mechanism for multi-valued attributes.
3.7 (Attribute) Name
The "name" field MUST contain the name of an attribute. The model
document [RFC2911] specifies such names.
3.8 Value Length
The "value-length" field MUST consist of a SIGNED-SHORT. This field
MUST specify the number of octets in the immediately following
"value" field. The value of this field excludes the two bytes of the
"value-length" field. For example, if the "value" field contains the
keyword (text) value "one-sided", the value of this field is 9.
For any of the types represented by binary signed integers, the
sender MUST encode the value in exactly four octets.
For any of the types represented by character-strings, the sender
MUST encode the value with all the characters of the string and
without any padding characters.
For "out-of-band" "value-tag" fields defined in this document, such
as "unsupported", the "value-length" MUST be 0 and the "value" empty;
the "value" has no meaning when the "value-tag" has one of these
"out-of-band" values. For future "out-of-band" "value-tag" fields,
the same rule holds unless the definition explicitly states that the
"value-length" MAY be non-zero and the "value" non-empty.
3.9 (Attribute) Value
The syntax types (specified by the "value-tag" field) and most of the
details of the representation of attribute values are defined in the
IPP model document. The table below augments the information in the
model document, and defines the syntax types from the model document
in terms of the 5 basic types defined in section 3, "Encoding of the
Operation Layer". The 5 types are US-ASCII-STRING, LOCALIZED-STRING,
SIGNED-INTEGER, SIGNED-SHORT, SIGNED-BYTE, and OCTET-STRING.
Syntax of Attribute Encoding
Value
textWithoutLanguage, LOCALIZED-STRING.
nameWithoutLanguage
textWithLanguage OCTET-STRING consisting of 4 fields:
a. a SIGNED-SHORT which is the number of
octets in the following field
b. a value of type natural-language,
c. a SIGNED-SHORT which is the number of
octets in the following field,
d. a value of type textWithoutLanguage.
The length of a textWithLanguage value MUST be
4 + the value of field a + the value of field c.
nameWithLanguage OCTET-STRING consisting of 4 fields:
a. a SIGNED-SHORT which is the number of
octets in the following field
b. a value of type natural-language,
c. a SIGNED-SHORT which is the number of
octets in the following field
d. a value of type nameWithoutLanguage.
The length of a nameWithLanguage value MUST be
4 + the value of field a + the value of field c.
charset, US-ASCII-STRING.
naturalLanguage,
mimeMediaType,
keyword, uri, and
uriScheme
Syntax of Attribute Encoding
Value
boolean SIGNED-BYTE where 0x00 is "false" and 0x01 is
"true".
integer and enum a SIGNED-INTEGER.
dateTime OCTET-STRING consisting of eleven octets whose
contents are defined by "DateAndTime" in RFC
1903 [RFC1903].
resolution OCTET-STRING consisting of nine octets of 2
SIGNED-INTEGERs followed by a SIGNED-BYTE. The
first SIGNED-INTEGER contains the value of
cross feed direction resolution. The second
SIGNED-INTEGER contains the value of feed
direction resolution. The SIGNED-BYTE contains
the units
rangeOfInteger Eight octets consisting of 2 SIGNED-INTEGERs.
The first SIGNED-INTEGER contains the lower
bound and the second SIGNED-INTEGER contains
the upper bound.
1setOf X Encoding according to the rules for an
attribute with more than 1 value. Each value
X is encoded according to the rules for
encoding its type.
octetString OCTET-STRING
The attribute syntax type of the value determines its encoding and
the value of its "value-tag".
3.10 Data
The "data" field MUST include any data required by the operation
4. Encoding of Transport Layer
HTTP/1.1 [RFC2616] is the transport layer for this protocol.
The operation layer has been designed with the assumption that the
transport layer contains the following information:
- the URI of the target job or printer operation
- the total length of the data in the operation layer, either as
a single length or as a sequence of chunks each with a length.
It is REQUIRED that a printer implementation support HTTP over the
IANA assigned Well Known Port 631 (the IPP default port), though a
printer implementation may support HTTP over some other port as well.
Each HTTP operation MUST use the POST method where the request-URI is
the object target of the operation, and where the "Content-Type" of
the message-body in each request and response MUST be
"application/ipp". The message-body MUST contain the operation layer
and MUST have the syntax described in section 3.2 "Syntax of
Encoding". A client implementation MUST adhere to the rules for a
client described for HTTP1.1 [RFC2616]. A printer (server)
implementation MUST adhere the rules for an origin server described
for HTTP1.1 [RFC2616].
An IPP server sends a response for each request that it receives. If
an IPP server detects an error, it MAY send a response before it has
read the entire request. If the HTTP layer of the IPP server
completes processing the HTTP headers successfully, it MAY send an
intermediate response, such as "100 Continue", with no IPP data
before sending the IPP response. A client MUST expect such a variety
of responses from an IPP server. For further information on HTTP/1.1,
consult the HTTP documents [RFC2616].
An HTTP server MUST support chunking for IPP requests, and an IPP
client MUST support chunking for IPP responses according to HTTP/1.1
[RFC2616]. Note: this rule causes a conflict with non-compliant
implementations of HTTP/1.1 that don"t support chunking for POST
methods, and this rule may cause a conflict with non-compliant
implementations of HTTP/1.1 that don"t support chunking for CGI
scripts.
4.1 Printer-uri and job-uri
All Printer and Job objects are identified by a Uniform Resource
Identifier (URI) [RFC2396] so that they can be persistently and
unambiguously referenced. Since every URL is a specialized form of a
URI, even though the more generic term URI is used throughout the
rest of this document, its usage is intended to cover the more
specific notion of URL as well.
Some operation elements are encoded twice, once as the request-URI on
the HTTP Request-Line and a second time as a REQUIRED operation
attribute in the application/ipp entity. These attributes are the
target URI for the operation and are called printer-uri and job-uri.
Note: The target URI is included twice in an operation referencing
the same IPP object, but the two URIs NEED NOT be literally
identical. One can be a relative URI and the other can be an absolute
URI. HTTP/1.1 allows clients to generate and send a relative URI
rather than an absolute URI. A relative URI identifies a resource
with the scope of the HTTP server, but does not include scheme, host
or port. The following statements characterize how URLs should be
used in the mapping of IPP onto HTTP/1.1:
1. Although potentially redundant, a client MUST supply the target
of the operation both as an operation attribute and as a URI at
the HTTP layer. The rationale for this decision is to maintain
a consistent set of rules for mapping application/ipp to
possibly many communication layers, even where URLs are not
used as the addressing mechanism in the transport layer.
2. Even though these two URLs might not be literally identical
(one being relative and the other being absolute), they MUST
both reference the same IPP object. However, a Printer NEED NOT
verify that the two URLs reference the same IPP object, and
NEED NOT take any action if it determines the two URLs to be
different.
3. The URI in the HTTP layer is either relative or absolute and is
used by the HTTP server to route the HTTP request to the
correct resource relative to that HTTP server. The HTTP server
need not be aware of the URI within the operation request.
4. Once the HTTP server resource begins to process the HTTP
request, it might get the reference to the appropriate IPP
Printer object from either the HTTP URI (using to the context
of the HTTP server for relative URLs) or from the URI within
the operation request; the choice is up to the implementation.
5. HTTP URIs can be relative or absolute, but the target URI in
the operation MUST be an absolute URI.
5. IPP URL Scheme
The IPP/1.1 document defines a new scheme "ipp" as the value of a URL
that identifies either an IPP printer object or an IPP job object.
The IPP attributes using the "ipp" scheme are specified below.
Because the HTTP layer does not support the "ipp" scheme, a client
MUST map "ipp" URLs to "http" URLs, and then follows the HTTP
[RFC2616][RFC2617] rules for constructing a Request-Line and HTTP
headers. The mapping is simple because the "ipp" scheme implies all
of the same protocol semantics as that of the "http" scheme
[RFC2616], except that it represents a print service and the implicit
(default) port number that clients use to connect to a server is port
631.
In the remainder of this section the term "ipp-URL" means a URL whose
scheme is "ipp" and whose implicit (default) port is 631. The term
"http-URL" means a URL whose scheme is "http", and the term "https-
URL" means a URL whose scheme is "https",
A client and an IPP object (i.e. the server) MUST support the ipp-URL
value in the following IPP attributes.
job attributes:
job-uri
job-printer-uri
printer attributes:
printer-uri-supported
operation attributes:
job-uri
printer-uri
Each of the above attributes identifies a printer or job object. The
ipp-URL is intended as the value of the attributes in this list, and
for no other attributes. All of these attributes have a syntax type
of "uri", but there are attributes with a syntax type of "uri" that
do not use the "ipp" scheme, e.g. "job-more-info".
If a printer registers its URL with a directory service, the printer
MUST register an ipp-URL.
User interfaces are beyond the scope of this document. But if
software exposes the ipp-URL values of any of the above five
attributes to a human user, it is REQUIRED that the human see the
ipp-URL as is.
When a client sends a request, it MUST convert a target ipp-URL to a
target http-URL for the HTTP layer according to the following rules:
1. change the "ipp" scheme to "http"
2. add an explicit port 631 if the URL does not contain an
explicit port. Note: port 631 is the IANA assigned Well Known
Port for the "ipp" scheme.
The client MUST use the target http-URL in both the HTTP Request-
Line and HTTP headers, as specified by HTTP [RFC2616] [RFC2617] .
However, the client MUST use the target ipp-URL for the value of the
"printer-uri" or "job-uri" operation attribute within the
application/ipp body of the request. The server MUST use the ipp-URL
for the value of the "printer-uri", "job-uri" or "printer-uri-
supported" attributes within the application/ipp body of the
response.
For example, when an IPP client sends a request directly (i.e. no
proxy) to an ipp-URL "ipp://myhost.com/myprinter/myqueue", it opens a
TCP connection to port 631 (the ipp implicit port) on the host
"myhost.com" and sends the following data:
POST /myprinter/myqueue HTTP/1.1
Host: myhost.com:631
Content-type: application/ipp
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
...
"printer-uri" "ipp://myhost.com/myprinter/myqueue"
(encoded in application/ipp message body)
...
As another example, when an IPP client sends the same request as
above via a proxy "myproxy.com", it opens a TCP connection to the
proxy port 8080 on the proxy host "myproxy.com" and sends the
following data:
POST http://myhost.com:631/myprinter/myqueue HTTP/1.1
Host: myhost.com:631
Content-type: application/ipp
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
...
"printer-uri" "ipp://myhost.com/myprinter/myqueue"
(encoded in application/ipp message body)
...
The proxy then connects to the IPP origin server with headers that
are the same as the "no-proxy" example above.
6. IANA Considerations
This section describes the procedures for allocating encoding for the
following IETF standards track extensions and vendor extensions to
the IPP/1.1 Encoding and Transport document:
1. attribute syntaxes - see [RFC2911] section 6.3
2. attribute groups - see [RFC2911] section 6.5
3. out-of-band attribute values - see [RFC2911] section 6.7
These extensions follow the "type2" registration procedures defined
in [RFC2911] section 6. Extensions registered for use with IPP/1.1
are OPTIONAL for client and IPP object conformance to the IPP/1.1
Encoding and Transport document.
These extension procedures are aligned with the guidelines as set
forth by the IESG [IANA-CON]. The [RFC2911] Section 11 describes how
to propose new registrations for consideration. IANA will reject
registration proposals that leave out required information or do not
follow the appropriate format described in [RFC2911] Section 11. The
IPP/1.1 Encoding and Transport document may also be extended by an
appropriate RFCthat specifies any of the above extensions.
7. Internationalization Considerations
See the section on "Internationalization Considerations" in the
document "Internet Printing Protocol/1.1: Model and Semantics"
[RFC2911] for information on internationalization. This document adds
no additional issues.
8. Security Considerations
The IPP Model and Semantics document [RFC2911] discusses high level
security requirements (Client Authentication, Server Authentication
and Operation Privacy). Client Authentication is the mechanism by
which the client proves its identity to the server in a secure
manner. Server Authentication is the mechanism by which the server
proves its identity to the client in a secure manner. Operation
Privacy is defined as a mechanism for protecting operations from
eavesdropping.
8.1 Security Conformance Requirements
This section defines the security requirements for IPP clients and
IPP objects.
8.1.1 Digest Authentication
IPP clients MUST support:
Digest Authentication [RFC2617].
MD5 and MD5-sess MUST be implemented and supported.
The Message Integrity feature NEED NOT be used.
IPP Printers SHOULD support:
Digest Authentication [RFC2617].
MD5 and MD5-sess MUST be implemented and supported.
The Message Integrity feature NEED NOT be used.
The reasons that IPP Printers SHOULD (rather than MUST) support
Digest Authentication are:
1. While Client Authentication is important, there is a certain class
of printer devices where it does not make sense. Specifically, a
low-end device with limited ROM space and low paper throughput may
not need Client Authentication. This class of device typically
requires firmware designers to make trade-offs between protocols
and functionality to arrive at the lowest-cost solution possible.
Factored into the designer"s decisions is not just the size of the
code, but also the testing, maintenance, usefulness, and time-to-
market impact for each feature delivered to the customer. Forcing
such low-end devices to provide security in order to claim IPP/1.1
conformance would not make business sense and could potentially
stall the adoption of the standard.
2. Print devices that have high-volume throughput and have available
ROM space have a compelling argument to provide support for Client
Authentication that safeguards the device from unauthorized
Access. These devices are prone to a high loss of consumables and
paper if unauthorized access should occur.
8.1.2 Transport Layer Security (TLS)
IPP Printers SHOULD support Transport Layer Security (TLS) [RFC2246]
for Server Authentication and Operation Privacy. IPP Printers MAY
also support TLS for Client Authentication. If an IPP Printer
supports TLS, it MUST support the TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA
cipher suite as mandated by RFC2246 [RFC2246]. All other cipher
suites are OPTIONAL. An IPP Printer MAY support Basic Authentication
(described in HTTP/1.1 [RFC2617]) for Client Authentication if the
channel is secure. TLS with the above mandated cipher suite can
provide such a secure channel.
If a IPP client supports TLS, it MUST support the
TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA cipher suite as mandated by RFC
2246 [RFC2246]. All other cipher suites are OPTIONAL.
The IPP Model and Semantics document defines two printer attributes
("uri-authentication-supported" and "uri-security-supported") that
the client can use to discover the security policy of a printer. That
document also outlines IPP-specific security considerations and
should be the primary reference for security implications with regard
to the IPP protocol itself. For backward compatibility with IPP
version 1.0, IPP clients and printers may also support SSL3 [ssl].
This is in addition to the security required in this document.
8.2 Using IPP with TLS
IPP/1.1 uses the "Upgrading to TLS Within HTTP/1.1" mechanism
[RFC2817]. An initial IPP request never uses TLS. The client
requests a secure TLS connection by using the HTTP "Upgrade" header,
while the server agrees in the HTTP response. The switch to TLS
occurs either because the server grants the client"s request to
upgrade to TLS, or a server asks to switch to TLS in its response.
Secure communication begins with a server"s response to switch to
TLS.
9. Interoperability with IPP/1.0 Implementations
It is beyond the scope of this specification to mandate conformance
with previous versions. IPP/1.1 was deliberately designed, however,
to make supporting previous versions easy. It is worth noting that,
at the time of composing this specification (1999), we would expect
IPP/1.1 Printer implementations to:
understand any valid request in the format of IPP/1.0, or 1.1;
respond appropriately with a response containing the same
"version-number" parameter value used by the client in the
request.
And we would expect IPP/1.1 clients to:
understand any valid response in the format of IPP/1.0, or 1.1.
9.1 The "version-number" Parameter
The following are rules regarding the "version-number" parameter (see
section 3.3):
1. Clients MUST send requests containing a "version-number"
parameter with a "1.1" value and SHOULD try supplying alternate
version numbers if they receive a "server-error-version-not-
supported" error return in a response.
2. IPP objects MUST accept requests containing a "version-number"
parameter with a "1.1" value (or reject the request for reasons
other than "server-error-version-not-supported").
3. It is recommended that IPP objects accept any request with the
major version "1" (or reject the request for reasons other than
"server-error-version-not-supported"). See [RFC2911]
"versions" sub-section.
4. In any case, security MUST NOT be compromised when a client
supplies a lower "version-number" parameter in a request. For
example, if an IPP/1.1 conforming Printer object accepts
version "1.0" requests and is configured to enforce Digest
Authentication, it MUST do the same for a version "1.0"
request.
9.2 Security and URL Schemes
The following are rules regarding security, the "version-number"
parameter, and the URL scheme supplied in target attributes and
responses:
1. When a client supplies a request, the "printer-uri" or "job-
uri" target operation attribute MUST have the same scheme as
that indicated in one of the values of the "printer-uri-
supported" Printer attribute.
2. When the server returns the "job-printer-uri" or "job-uri" Job
Description attributes, it SHOULD return the same scheme
("ipp", "https", "http", etc.) that the client supplied in the
"printer-uri" or "job-uri" target operation attributes in the
Get-Job-Attributes or Get-Jobs request, rather than the scheme
used when the job was created. However, when a client requests
job attributes using the Get-Job-Attributes or Get-Jobs
operations, the jobs and job attributes that the server returns
depends on: (1) the security in effect when the job was
created, (2) the security in effect in the query request, and
(3) the security policy in force.
3. It is recommended that if a server registers a non-secure ipp-
URL with a directory service (see [RFC2911] "Generic Directory
Schema" Appendix), then it also register an http-URL for
interoperability with IPP/1.0 clients (see section 9).
4. In any case, security MUST NOT be compromised when a client
supplies an "http" or other non-secure URL scheme in the target
"printer-uri" and "job-uri" operation attributes in a request.
10. References
[dpa] ISO/IEC 10175 Document Printing Application (DPA), June
1996.
[iana] IANA Registry of Coded Character Sets:
FTP://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/character-
sets.
[IANA-CON] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC2434,
October 1998.
[ipp-iig] Hastings, Tom, et al., "Internet Printing Protocol/1.1:
Implementer"s Guide", Work in Progress.
[RFC822] Crocker, D., "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet
Text Messages", STD 11, RFC822, August 1982.
[RFC1123] Braden, S., "Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application
and Support", STD 3, RFC1123, October, 1989.
[RFC1179] McLaughlin, L. III, (editor), "Line Printer Daemon
Protocol", RFC1179, August 1990.
[RFC2223] Postel, J. and J. Reynolds, "Instructions to RFCAuthors",
RFC2223, October 1997.
[RFC1738] Berners-Lee, T., Masinter, L. and M. McCahill, "Uniform
Resource Locators (URL)", RFC1738, December 1994.
[RFC1759] Smith, R., Wright, F., Hastings, T., Zilles, S. and J.
Gyllenskog, "Printer MIB", RFC1759, March 1995.
[RFC1766] Alvestrand, H., "Tags for the Identification of
Languages", RFC1766, March 1995.
[RFC1808] Fielding, R., "Relative Uniform Resource Locators", RFC
1808, June 1995.
[RFC1903] Case, J., McCloghrie, K., Rose, M. and S. Waldbusser,
"Textual Conventions for Version 2 of the Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMPv2)", RFC1903, January 1996.
[RFC2046] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC2046,
November 1996.
[RFC2048] Freed, N., Klensin, J. and J. Postel, "Multipurpose
Internet Mail Extension (MIME) Part Four: Registration
Procedures", BCP 13, RFC2048, November 1996.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC2119, March 1997.
[RFC2184] Freed, N. and K. Moore, "MIME Parameter Value and Encoded
Word Extensions: Character Sets, Languages, and
Continuations", RFC2184, August 1997.
[RFC2234] Crocker, D. and P. Overall, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", RFC2234, November 1997.
[RFC2246] Dierks, T. and C. Allen, "The TLS Protocol", RFC2246.
January 1999.
[RFC2396] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC2396,
August 1998.
[RFC2565] Herriot, R., Butler, S., Moore,