Subject: regarding new working groups

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2000 16:04:27 -0500

one thing that I think is essential in any new content-distribution
work is to explicitly define roles and responsibilities - when an
intermediary is introduced between the content-provider and the
content-user, to which party is the intermediary responsible?
(the same device might be used in either case, but intermediaries
should be clear about whose instructions they are following)  

under no circumstances should content be altered, nor should stale
content be delivered, except with explicit consent from at least one
of the end parties.  for example, we don't want to standardize a
way to allow an ISP to alter or cache content except as intended
by one of the end parties.

finally, there need to be provisions for fault isolation and 
diagnosis, which probably requires (among other things) the 
ability to bypass intermediaries.

Keith

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From: "Hilarie Orman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2000 14:31:50 -0700

I think this is more of an issue for Extensible Proxies than the others.

I'm in complete agreement on the fault isolation issue.  For other things,
while roles and responsibilities are ultimately important, binding
agreements on paper are perfectly acceptable (i.e., they do not
have to have an on-the-wire format).   That being said, I'd like to
see the IETF standardize on protocol representations of references
to SLA's, contracts, etc., so that accounting systems could refer
to the billing basis, the authorization agreeement, etc.  It's not
a perfect solution, but it's a start.

Hilarie

>>> Keith Moore <[email-masked]> 11/09/00 02:04PM >>>

Keith

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2000 16:37:18 -0500

> I'm in complete agreement on the fault isolation issue.  For other
> things, while roles and responsibilities are ultimately important, binding
> have to have an on-the-wire format).   

I agree with this sentiment.  I'm not trying to insist that the details
of such agreements be made a part of the protocol (though it would be
nice if we could do it, I suspect it would take a long time before we 
could find a good way to encode the needs of real users into a protocol)

Keith

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From: "Hilarie Orman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2000 17:32:56 -0700

Agreed.  It's nice when service providers find that their own
economic interests don't conflict with their customers', but
that's nothing to bank on.  For this forum, what we can do is
to have requirements for API's that allow user/publisher configuration
of policy options (and to define the embodiment of those
options).

Hilarie

>>> Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]> 11/09/00 05:16PM >>>

I agree with the sentiment, but not that ISPs represent consumers'
interests; generally, I find that they represent their own, with consumers'
as a distant second. Especially regarding caching.

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From: Gary Tomlinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 21:10:47 -0800

>> I think there still exists a need for the content distribution & delivery
>> providers to divulge their vested interests as well (paper is fine).
>> Traditionally, the CDNs we know today represent the content provider's
>> interests, while ISP's are likely to represent the consumer's interests.
>
>I beg to differ; the ISPs generally represent their own interests
>when they interfere with the communications between a content 
>provider and the content user.  (e.g. by imposing non-voluntary
>caches, adding advertising, changing data formats)
>
>IETF should not sanction such practices.  
>

Fair enough assessment on current ISP practices.  Nonetheless, CDNs as we
know them do represent provider interests, and somebody may emerge to
represent consumer interests (I know of some infomediary startups that would
like to).  My main point is, there are multiple entities representing
various interests involved with intermediary infrastructure.

Gary