1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for authenticating requests for data services from at least one user equipment using multiple protocols.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The 3GPP Technical Specification TS 33.203 vi.0.0 (2001-12), which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, authenticates IP multimedia core network subsystem (IMS) customers by running the Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocol during a SIP register transaction. See Section 6.1 for a discussion of the AKA. After authentication using AKA is completed, the created integrity key (IK) and Cipher Key (CK) are shared between the User Equipment (UE) and the Proxy Call State Control Function (PCSCF) which is the first entity in a SIP network receiving a request for a session from UE. The P-CSCF may be resident in either a home network or a visited network. SIP requests for services are protected by the IK and CK keys until the keys are renewed by another register transaction. The IK and CK keys are securely distributed by any well known technique, such as IP Sec or EPS.
The main SIP entities used for registration of the UE are: UE, P-CSCF, the serving call state control function (S-CSCF) and a home subscriber server (HSS). The UE communicates with the P-CSCF, which communicates with the S-CSCF which communicates with the HSS. A detailed description of authentication and registration is found in Sections 4 and 5-5.2 of the aforementioned specification.
With the advent of IP multimedia services (IM), it is desirable for UE using SIP to have access to data services using additional protocols, such as the Hyper Text Transport. Protocol (HTTP) and the Real-Time Streaming Protocol (HTSP) protocol. A description of the RTSP is found in RFC 2326 dated 1998 which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Basic to the access of UE to network services involving any protocol, such as SIP, HTTP, and RTSP, is the need for authentication of the UE and security. The state of the art presently is that each protocol utilizes its own security and authentication measures when a request by UE is made for a session of data services. When a UE is a requester of data services involving multiple protocols, individual protocol specific network entities are necessary in the form of a proxy server or otherwise to perform authentication for each protocol. The multiple entities required currently for authentication of UE to obtain sessions involving multiple protocols, which may have different network addresses, involve a duplication of processing by each proxy to obtain the authentication information.