Subject: [p2pi] ALTO BoF - Charter

From: "Roy, Radhika R Dr CTR USA USAMC" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:48:06 -0400

Hi, all:

Many of us do not understand the words "Oracle" and "Tracker" right form the charter.

So, the above two words have been clarified in the modified one as follows (also enclosed in a file with change marks).

BR/Radhika

DRAFT CHARTER

A significant part of the Internet traffic is today generated by
peer-to-peer (P2P) applications used for file sharing, real-time
communications and live media streaming. Contrary to client/server
architectures, P2P applications access resources distributed across
the Internet (e.g. files or media relays) and exchange large amounts
of data in connections that they establish directly with nodes hosting
such resources.

One of the advantages of P2P systems comes from the fact that the
resources they offer are often made available through multiple
instances. Yet, applications generally ignore the topology of the
latent overlay network and have to select among available instances
based on information they deduce from empirical measurements which
often lead to suboptimal choices. Optimizing such selection brings
about, on the one hand, an increase in P2P applications performance
and, on the other hand a better use of network resources.

The Working Group will produce protocols to enable communications
between P2P systems and "informed" external services in order to
optimize peer selection. The “informed” external service is assumed to be provided by the peer selection server. The WG will consider tracker-based P2P
systems (a la Bit Torrent) that communicate among its Internet Service Provider (ISP)-based P2P systems as well as tracker-less (i.e. Non-ISP) P2P networks. Both
type of P2P formations -- structured as well as unstructured -- will
be considered.

Furthermore, recognizing that the discovery of nearby peers has equal
applicability to many real-time communications protocols (for example,
the discovery of the nearest relay that will enable the establishment
of a VoIP session), the WG will attempt to produce deliverables
consisting of generic mechanisms that are broadly applicable to many
current and future applications.

The WG will focus on the following items.

- Surveys and taxonomies. (a) A survey of existing solutions for peer
selection optimization. Internet coordinate systems, path selection
services and various forms of collaboration between Internet Service
Providers (ISP) and P2P networks have been recently proposed,
simulated and deployed with encouraging results. (b) A survey of
existing solutions for service discovery (both in P2P and
traditional client-server systems.) (c) Taxonomy of other classes
of applications -- besides P2P -- that can benefit from topological
proximity information.

- A requirements document. This document will list requirements for a
peer selection service, identifying, for example, what kind of
information P2P applications will need for optimizing their choices.

- A discovery mechanism for locating the peer selection server oracle. Certain applications
may use a tracker and the intelligence embedded in it to find nearby
peers, others may simply want the oracle to sort a list of IP
addresses. Regardless, applications will use the discovery
mechanism for locating the proper server to query, which may vary
depending on factors such as, for example, their network location.

- A signaling protocol for querying the peer selection server oracle. Once located,
applications will use this protocol for querying information useful
for peer selection. A sample deliverable will be a document that
defines the PDU layout of the query/response packets. Informational
documents that outline an API of some sort could also be produced.

This WG will focus solely on the interface exposed to P2P systems by
peer selection services; if, in the future, the IETF will consider the
opportunity to work on protocols for actually implementing such
systems (e.g. application-layer protocols for Internet coordinate
systems, routing protocol extensions for ISP-based solutions), such
work will be done in strict coordination with the appropriate WGs.

Issues related to the content exchanged in P2P systems are excluded
from the Working Group's scope, as is the issue dealing with enforcing
the legality of the content
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From: "Vijay K. Gurbani" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:26:13 -0500

Roy, Radhika R Dr CTR USA USAMC wrote:
> So, the above two words have been clarified in the modified one as
> follows (also enclosed in a file with change marks).

Radhika: Thank you immensely for a close read.

Your point is well taken, however the best place to define
any such values will probably be a terminology I-D of some sort.
The good folks who have put out the requirements document
(please see http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-kiesel-alto-reqs-00)
have started a terminology section in S3 of the above draft.
It is expected that this section may expand and consume its own
draft at some time in the future.

Having said that, I do want to point out that we are using
the term "oracle" in the canonical meaning of the word
as defined by Merriam-Webster's dictionary; namely

     a person giving wise or authoritative decisions or opinions

Think of the Oracle of Delphi. There is no more magic about it
beyond that.

Regarding the term tracker, a stab at a definition is already
there in the above draft (end of page 6.)  The authors would
probably be advised to expand on it in subsequent releases of
the draft.

And finally, one clarification in your suggested modification:

OLD:
  The WG will consider tracker-based P2P systems (a la Bit Torrent)
  as well as tracker-less P2P networks.

NEW:
  The WG will consider tracker-based P2P systems (a la Bit Torrent)
  that communicate among its Internet Service Provider (ISP)-based
  P2P systems as well as tracker-less (i.e. Non-ISP) P2P networks.

Tracker-less does not necessarily imply non-ISP any more than
tracker-based implies explicit ISP support.  IMHO, I believe that
the text as written in the draft charter is sufficient and
the conflation of the role of an ISP with the need for trackers
may serve to confuse the issue further.

Thank you.

- vijay
-- 
Vijay K. Gurbani, Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent
2701 Lucent Lane, Rm. 9F-546, Lisle, Illinois 60532 (USA)
Email: vkg@{alcatel-lucent.com,bell-labs.com,acm.org}
WWW:   http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/bell-labs
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---

From: Stanislav Shalunov <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:43:46 -0700

And of course we're all familiar with the computer science concept of  
computation with an oracle, where a Turing machine is fitted with a  
single-step access to computing an arbitrary (not necessarily  
partially recursive) function.

As for trackers, the concept is probably indeed not widely understood  
outside of P2P world, but given that ALTO originated in P2PI, it'd  
seem that it's safe to expect we don't need to define "peer",  
"tracker", etc., to be understood.  But it probably won't hurt either.

-- Stas

-- 
Stanislav Shalunov
http://shlang.com