Re: [alto] Mandatory and optional in alto protocol

[manbhard <[e-mail]>]

Hi,
I agree with the opinion in the meeting that all services should be
optional. A client should use an ALTO server that advertises the service it
needs via the directory service. As mentioned below, downloading full
network and cost maps (and maintaining them) might be a disincentive for
certain clients. Similarly it might be a disincentive to servers run by SPs
who do not want to export their prefix list, and if forced to will do quite
a lot of aggregation which undermines the effectiveness of ALTO.

An approach that would satisfy the client and server constraints above would
be all the services that only provide information (properties, costs) for
that client only.

-Thanks,
Manish.


On 7/26/11 7:59 AM, "Enrico Marocco" <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I would like to re-spin the discussion about what features in the
> protocol should be mandatory and what should be optional, offering a
> slightly different view from an application developer perspective.
> 
> Current version of the protocol defines a minimal set of mandatory basic
> features and a bunch of optional services that, with probably the only
> exception of the endpoint cost service, basically constitute optimizations.
> 
> This is certainly the ideal situation from a server implementation and
> deployment point of view, but I'm worried that from an application
> developer point of view it may constitute a disincentive for ALTO
> adoption. The case I have in mind is that of applications intended to
> run in constrained environment -- in smartphones or browser-embedded
> VMs, for instance -- where filtering services would enable optimization
> whilst downloading full network and cost maps, and process them locally,
> would not be an option.
> 
> I don't have a strong opinion about whether the right approach would be
> to put the burden of mandatory implementing the optimization on the
> server, or the burden of being always prepared for the worst case
> scenario on the application -- or possibly something in between -- and
> would appreciate to hear any opinions from the group.