Subject: Re: Extensible Proxy Services, website and workshop

From: "Hilarie Orman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 16:37:32 -0600

Thanks for  the comments.  On some of them, I'm  not sure what  you want ...
background of the parties?  Raised in Fresno, California and  currently
living in Utah?  Novell is a company headquartered in Provo, Utah and
sells a caching  product?  Sun is a big company?  

We tried to start with requirements for an extensible services environment,
prior to having a full architecture.  We do want to standardize the ruleset
matching (something that the IETF Policy WG is touching  on these days)
and proxylets.  

Sorry we failed on terminology.  The term "surrogate" was being defined
as we were writing (and I tried to help with the definition).  We like to be
tidy wrt to the WREC usage, so if you could give a couple of misuse
examples we could clean them up pretty quickly.

It's possible that entities "in flight" don't need entity names.  However, the
entire area of variant naming needs examination.  An ephemeral object
isn't necessarily a variant, though.  And I'm not sure what you mean
by "synthetic" objects (those that don't exist).  Perhaps the roadmap 
should include a terminology document.

It's surprisingly difficult to find people here in Pittsburgh through
Brownian motion, but I'd be glad to talk about these issues in person
if you collar me; otherwise, look at the message board for Thursday
evening plans.

Hilarie

---

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 18:11:04 -0700

On Mon, Jul 31, 2000 at 04:37:32PM -0600, Hilarie Orman wrote:
> Thanks for  the comments.  On some of them, I'm  not sure what you want
> ... background of the parties?  Raised in Fresno, California and currently

Sorry, the question was poorly put. I'm interested in the context of the
project; your web page refers to an 'EPSFW charter', which implies a few
things; I'll wait for your presentation.

> We tried to start with requirements for an extensible services
> environment, prior to having a full architecture.  We do want to
> standardize the ruleset matching (something that the IETF Policy WG is
> touching on these days) and proxylets.

Great. I'm excited by what you're doing, because to me it represents an
opportunity to develop a standard set of requirements and a framework in an
umbrella over proxies, surrogates, CDNs using surrogates, etc. and has the
potential to address many of the areas that I looked at in my surrogates
paper, for all of these devices.

> Sorry we failed on terminology.  The term "surrogate" was being defined as
> we were writing (and I tried to help with the definition).  We like to be

The most noticable is 'proxy', when many of the uses described are in a
surrogate role, which is separate. Surrogates are gateways, which is a
different kind of intermediate in RFC2616.

So, it would be best to call this the 'Extensible Intermediate Services
Framework', and so on.

> It's possible that entities "in flight" don't need entity names.  However,
> the entire area of variant naming needs examination.  An ephemeral object
> isn't necessarily a variant, though.

There should probably be requirements re: entity identity if the entity is
changed; it should either be stripped or changed, but there are probably
other issues lurking in there as well.

Varience is very interesting in the context of an extended service
intermediate.

> And I'm not sure what you mean by "synthetic" objects (those that don't
> exist).  Perhaps the roadmap should include a terminology document.

Using ICAP as an example, Request Satisfaction mode allows construction of
objects at the 'edge', effectively making the intermediate an end point,
whether it's a proxy or a surrogate. Distinguishing this object from one
which *would* have been returned had ICAP not taken place can be
problematic, for purposes of configuration, metadata, logging, etc.

> Brownian motion, but I'd be glad to talk about these issues in person if
> you collar me; otherwise, look at the message board for Thursday evening
> plans.

I'm coming in on Thurday night; will try and catch you there, or on Friday.

Cheers,

-- 
Mark Nottingham, Research Scientist
Akamai Technologies (San Mateo, CA)