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<book id="tm" xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">
    <bookinfo>
    	<title>TM Module</title>
	<authorgroup>
	    <author>
		<firstname>Jiri</firstname>
		<surname>Kuthan</surname>
		<affiliation><orgname>FhG FOKUS</orgname></affiliation>
		<address>
		    <email>jiri@iptel.org</email>
		</address>
	    </author>
		<author>
		<firstname>Juha</firstname>
		<surname>Heinanen</surname>
	        <email>jh@tutpro.com</email>
		</author>
	</authorgroup>
	<copyright>
	    <year>2003</year>
	    <holder>FhG FOKUS</holder>
	</copyright>
	<copyright>
		<year>2008</year>
		<holder>Juha Heinanen</holder>
	</copyright>
    </bookinfo>
    <toc></toc>

    <chapter>
	<title>Admin Guide</title>
    <section id="tm.overview">
	<title>Overview</title>
	<para>
	    The <acronym>TM</acronym> module enables stateful processing of SIP
	    transactions.  Stateful logic is costly in terms of memory and 
	    <acronym>CPU</acronym>. The main use is services that
	    inherently need state. For example, transaction-based accounting
	    (module acc) needs to process transaction state as opposed to
	    individual messages. Any kind of forking must be implemented
	    transaction statefully. By using transaction states you trade
	    <acronym>CPU</acronym> caused by retransmission processing for
	    memory. That only makes sense if <acronym>CPU</acronym>
	    consumption per request is huge. For example, if you want to avoid
	    costly <acronym>DNS</acronym> resolution for every retransmission
	    of a request to an unresolvable destination, use stateful
	    mode. Then, only the initial message burdens server by
	    <acronym>DNS</acronym> queries, subsequent retransmissions will be
	    dropped and will not result in more processes blocked by
	    <acronym>DNS</acronym> resolution. The price is more memory
	    consumption and higher processing latency.
	</para>
	<para>
	    From the admin's perspective, these are the major functions : t_relay,
	    t_relay_to_udp and t_relay_to_tcp. All of them setup transaction
	    state, absorb retransmissions from upstream, generate downstream
	    retransmissions and correlate replies to requests. t_relay forwards
	    to current URI (be it original request's URI or a URI changed by
	    some of URI-modifying functions, such as sethost). t_relay_to_udp
	    and t_relay_to_tcp forward to a specific address over UDP or TCP
	    respectively.
	</para>
	<para>
	    In general, if <acronym>TM</acronym> is used, it copies clones of
	    received SIP messages in shared memory. That costs memory and
	    also <acronym>CPU</acronym> time (memcpys, lookups, shmem locks,
	    etc.)  Note that non-<acronym>TM</acronym> functions operate over
	    the received message in private memory, that means that any core
	    operations will have no effect on statefully processed messages
	    after creating the transactional state. For example, calling
	    record_route <emphasis>after</emphasis> t_relay is pretty useless,
	    as the <acronym>RR</acronym> is added to privately held message
	    whereas its <acronym>TM</acronym> clone is being forwarded.
	</para>
	<para>
	    The <acronym>TM</acronym> module is quite big and uneasy to program
	    --lots of mutexes, shared memory access, malloc and free, timers--you really
	    need to be careful when you do anything. To simplify
	    <acronym>TM</acronym> programming, there is the instrument of
	    callbacks. The callback mechanisms allow programmers to register
	    their functions to a specific event. See t_hooks.h for a list of
	    possible events.
	</para>
	<para>
	    Other things programmers may want to know is UAC--it is a very
	    simplistic code which allows you to generate your own
	    transactions. Particularly useful for things like NOTIFYs or
	    <acronym>IM</acronym> gateways. The UAC takes care of all the
	    transaction machinery: retransmissions, FR timeouts, forking, etc.
	    See t_uac prototype in uac.h for more details. If you want to see the
	    transaction result the code can register for a callback.
	</para>
	<note>
		<para>Several Kamailio TM module functions are now
		implemented in the TMX module: <quote>modules_k/tmx</quote>. Check
		it to see if what you are looking for is there.</para>
	</note>
    </section>

	<section id="tm.serial_forking">
	  <title>Serial Forking Based on Q Value</title>
	  <para>
		A single SIP INVITE request may be forked to multiple destinations. We
		call the set of all such destinations a <quote>destination set</quote>.
		Individual elements within the destination sets are called branches.
		The script writer can add URIs to the destination set from the configuration
		file, or they can be loaded from the user location database. Each
		registered contact then becomes one branch in the destination set.
	  </para>
	  <para>
		The default behavior of the <acronym>TM</acronym> module, 
		if it encounters a SIP message with multiple branches in the destination
		set, is to forward the SIP message to all the branches in parallel.
		That means it sends the message to all the branch destinations before it
		waits for replies from any of them. This is the default behavior if you
		call <function>t_relay()</function> and similar functions without
		any other arguments.
	  </para>
	  <para>
		Another approach of handling multiple branches in a destination set is
		serial forking. When configured to do serial forking, the server takes
		the first branch out of the destination set, forwards the message to
		its destination and waits for a reply or timeout. Only after a reply
		has been received or a timeout occurred, the server takes another
		destination from the destination set and tries again, until it
		receives a positive final reply or until all branches from the
		destination set have been tried.
	  </para>
	  <para>
		Yet another, more sophisticated, way of handling multiple branches is
		combined serial/parallel forking, where individual branches within the
		destination set are assigned priorities. The order in which individual
		branches are tried is then determined by their relative priority
		within the destination set. Branches can be tried sequentially in the
		descending priority order and all branches that have the same priority
		can be tried in parallel. Such combined serial/parallel forking can be
		achieved in the <acronym>TM</acronym> module with the help of
		functions <function>t_load_contacts()</function>
		and <function>t_next_contacts()</function>.
	  </para>
	  <para>
		Every branch in the destination set is assigned a priority number,
		also known as the <quote>q value</quote>. The q value is a floating 
		point number in a range 0 to 1.0. The higher the q value number, 
		the more priority is given to the particular branch in the destination set.
		Branches with q value 1.0 have maximum priority, such branches should be always
		be tried first in serial forking. Branches with q value 0 have the lowest
		priority and they should by tried after all other branches with higher
		priority in the destination set.
	  </para>
	  <para>
		As an example, consider the following simple configuration file. When
		the server receives an INVITE, it creates four branches with
		usernames A through D and then forwards the request
		using <function>t_relay()</function>:
	  </para>
	  <programlisting format="linespecific">
route {
  seturi("sip:a@example.com");
  append_branch("sip:b@example.com");
  append_branch("sip:c@example.com");
  append_branch("sip:d@example.com");

  t_relay();
  break;
}
</programlisting>
	  <para>
		With this configuration the server forwards the request to all four
		branches at once, performing parallel forking as described above. We did
		not set the q value for individual branches in this example but we can
		do that by slightly modifying the arguments given
		to <function>append_branch()</function>:
	  </para>
	  <programlisting format="linespecific">
route {
  seturi("sip:a@example.com");
  append_branch("sip:b@example.com", "0.5");
  append_branch("sip:c@example.com", "0.5");
  append_branch("sip:d@example.com", "1.0");

  t_relay();
  break;
}	 
</programlisting>
	  <para>
		Here we assigned q value 0.5 to branches B and C and q value 1.0 to
		branch D. We did not specify any q value for branch A and in that case
		it is assumed that its q value is the lowest from all branches within
		the destination set. If you try to run this example again, you will
		figure out that nothing changed, <function>t_relay()</function> still
		forward the message to all branches in parallel.
	  </para>
	  <para>
		We now want to implement the combined serial/parallel forking. Branch
		D should be tried first, because its q value is 1.0. Branches B and C
		should be tried in parallel, but only after D finishes. Branch A
		should be tried after B and C finished, because its q value (the
		default) is the lowest of all. To do that, we need to introduce two
		new functions into our example and two tm module parameters:
	  </para>
	  <programlisting format="linespecific">
modparam("tm", "contacts_avp", "tm_contacts");
modparam("tm", "contact_flows_avp", "tm_contact_flows");

route {
  seturi("sip:a@example.com");
  append_branch("sip:b@example.com", "0.5");
  append_branch("sip:c@example.com", "0.5");
  append_branch("sip:d@example.com", "1.0");

  t_load_contacts();

  t_next_contacts();
  t_relay();
  break;
}	 
</programlisting>
	  <para>
		First of all, the tm module parameters are mandatory if the two new
		functions are used. Function <function>t_load_contacts()</function>
		takes all branches from the destination set, sorts them according to
		their q values and stores them in the AVP configured in the modparam.
		The function also clears the destination set, which means that it
		removes all branches configured before
		with <function>seturi()</function>
		and <function>append_branch()</function>.
	  </para>
	  <para>
		Function <function>t_next_contacts()</function> takes the AVP created
		by the previous function and extract the branches with highest q
		values from it. In our example it is branch D. That branch is then put
		back into the destination set and when the script finally
		reaches <function>t_relay()</function>, the destination set only
		contains branch D and the request will be forwarded there.
	  </para>
	  <para>
		We achieved the first step of serial forking, but this is not
		sufficient. Now we also need to forward to other branches with lower
		priority values when branch D finishes. To do that, we need to extend
		the configuration file again and introduce a failure_route section:
		</para>
	  <programlisting format="linespecific">
modparam("tm", "contacts_avp", "tm_contacts");

route {
  seturi("sip:a@example.com");
  append_branch("sip:b@example.com", "0.5");
  append_branch("sip:c@example.com", "0.5");
  append_branch("sip:d@example.com", "1.0");

  t_load_contacts();

  t_next_contacts();
  t_on_failure("serial");
  t_relay();
  break;
}

failure_route["serial"]
{
  if (!t_next_contacts()) {
    exit;
  }

  t_on_failure("serial");
  t_relay();
}
</programlisting>
	  <para>
		The failure_route section will be executed when branch D finishes. It
		executes <function>t_next_contacts()</function> again and this time
		the function retrieves branches B and C from the AVP and adds them to
		the destination set. Here we need to check the return value of the
		function, because a negative value indicates that there were no more
		branches, in that case the failure_route should just terminate and
		forward the response from branch D upstream.
	  </para>
	  <para>
		If <function>t_next_contact()</function> returns a positive value then
		we have more new branches to try and we need to setup the
		failure_route again and call <function>t_relay()</function>. In our
		example the request will now be forwarded to branches B and C in
		paralell, because they were both added to the destination set
		by <function>t_next_contacts()</function> at the same time.
	  </para>
	  <para>
		When branches B and C finish, the failure_route block is executed
		again, this time <function>t_next_contacts()</function> puts the final
		branch A into the destination set and <function>t_relay()</function>
		forwards the request there.
	  </para>
	  <para>
		And that's the whole example, we achieved combined serial/parallel
		forking based on the q value of individual branches. In real-world
		configuration files the script writer would need to check the return
		value of all functions and <varname>restart_fr_on_each_reply</varname>. 
		The destination set would not be configured directly in the configuration file, but
		can be retrieved from the user location database. In that
		case registered contacts will be stored in the destination set as
		branches and their q values (provided by UAs) will be used.
	  </para>
	</section>
    
    <section id="tm.known_issues">
	<title>Known Issues</title>
	<itemizedlist>
	    <listitem>
		<para>
		    Possibly, performance could be improved by not parsing
		    non-INVITEs, as they do not be replied with 100, and do not
		    result in ACK/CANCELs, and other things which take
		    parsing. However, we need to rethink whether we don't need
		    parsed headers later for something else. Remember, when we
		    now store a request in sh_mem, we can't apply any
		    pkg_mem operations to it any more. (that might be
		    redesigned too).
		</para>
	    </listitem>
	    <listitem>
		<para>
		    Another performance improvement may be achieved by not
		    parsing CSeq in replies until reply branch matches branch
		    of an INVITE/CANCEL in transaction table.
		</para>
	    </listitem>
	    <listitem>
		<para>
		    <function>t_replicate</function> should be done more
		    cleanly--Vias, Routes, etc. should be removed from a
		    message prior to replicating it (well, does not matter any
		    longer so much as there is a new replication module).
		</para>
	    </listitem>

	</itemizedlist>
    </section>
    
    <xi:include href="params.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="functions.xml"/>
    <xi:include href="api.xml"/>
    </chapter>
</book>
