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IETF-90 Proceedings

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Web-Based Push Notifications (webpush) (WG)

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Additional information is available at tools.ietf.org/wg/webpush

Chair(s):

Applications and Real-Time Area Area Director(s):

Assigned Area Director

Alissa Cooper

Recordings:

No Recordings Present

Meeting Slides:

No Slides Present

Internet-Drafts:

Generic Event Delivery Using HTTP Push (45684 bytes)

No Request for Comments

Charter (as of 2014-10-06):

Many applications require continuous access to network communications so that real-time events - such as incoming calls or messages - can be conveyed ("pushed") to the user in a timely fashion. Uncoordinated use of the network by multiple applications can contribute to unnecessary use of the network on devices. For instance, maintaining sessions can dominate costs over the long term, since pushed events are relatively rare. This is particularly onerous for battery-powered devices, on which network communication contributes a significant proportion of power usage. Each independent session independently incurs overheads, causing unnecessary resource usage on devices.

Several modern computing platforms provide a push notification service that consolidates application events, distributing those events to applications as they arrive. The single session avoids duplicated overhead costs on devices.

This working group will develop an HTTP-based protocol that applications can use to request the delivery of data to a device using a consolidated push notification service. This protocol will include the ability to push the same message to multiple subscribed devices. The work may describe a protocol that allows a device to subscribe to a push service and receive pushed messages.

The WG will aim to minimize the amount of additional information that is revealed to the push notification service. It must be possible for the application to apply end-to-end security mechanisms so that messages sent via the push notification service cannot be read or modified by the push notification service. The WG will also consider additional privacy protections, including the ability to prevent the push notification service from gleaning other types of information, such as the association between an application and a specific user

This work will be done in collaboration with the W3C Webapps Working Group, who are developing a Web Push API for use in web applications (see ).