Re: [alto] ALTO Draft ReCharter WG review -- ALTO Data Model

[Jensen Zhang <[e-mail]>]

Dear all,

I would like to make some comments on the 3rd recharter item.

This item is going to propose YANG data models for ALTO configuration and
management. Most of this kind of YANG data models for communication
protocols like PCEP [1] and HTTP [2] will support both client and server
configuration. One of the open issues for ALTO is:

*whether we should also provide the data model for the ALTO client
configuration*.

For some of the traditional ALTO use cases like p2p, I think the YANG data
model only for the ALTO server is enough. It can help the network operator
easily configure and manage ALTO services. The data model for the ALTO
client may not be necessary because the client is usually not under the
control of the network operator. However, there are two cases where people
may be interested in the data model for the ALTO client:

1. The multi-domain setting is a potential use case. But it depends on how
we are going to design the server-to-server communication.

  (a) If we are going to reuse the current ALTO framework, then the
architecture could be similar to the PCE-based architecture, i.e., each
ALTO domain should initiate an entity that can be an alto-server,
alto-client, or alto-server-and-client. And for the alto-client or
alto-server-and-client entity, the operator could configure the list of
peered alto-server/alto-server-and-client entity directly, or how to
discover the peers. The operator could also configure which information the
client entity is interested in and would like to fetch from the peers.

  (b) If we are going to completely redesign the communication protocol
among ALTO servers, we may need specific data models for the configuration
of this new protocol. The traditional roles of the ALTO client and server
may no longer be applicable.

2. The other use case could come from the network-application integration.
More specifically, the multi-service operator (e.g., Comcast, Telefonica)
who can offer both application service (e.g., TV, CDN) and network service
can be an example. In such a case, the application service operator may
have some collaboration with the network operator on the protocol
configuration level.

  For example, in a CDN-ISP collaboration setting (@Luis can comment on
it), the CDN operator may request the network operator to install a new
ALTO service to compute on-demand ALTO information resources based on new
parameters dynamically. And in the meantime, the CDN operator may also
configure its own ALTO client to periodically send requests to the new ALTO
service or use the pub/sub mechanism (e.g. SSE). And the CDN operator may
want the ALTO client to report some operational status/statistics like when
the last request is done, whether the last response is out-dated, how many
versions are updated for the current information resource (Not quite sure
if this info should be in the scope of the ALTO data model). It makes more
sense to do these kinds of things via the configuration protocol instead of
another ALTO protocol extension.

It would be great if people can share further comments or their own
interesting use cases.

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-pce-pcep-yang-15
[2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-netconf-http-client-server-06

Best regards,
Jensen


On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 9:51 PM Qin Wu <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi, :
>
> We have requested one hour session for ALTO WG meeting in the upcoming
> IETF 110, which is arranged on Friday, March 12, 14:30-15:30(UTC).
>
> The goal is to boil down ALTO recharter and have consensus on charter
> contents in IETF 110.
>
> To get this goal, an updated inline draft charter text for ALTO has just
> been posted to this list,
>
> This charter has received a couple of rounds of informal review from WG members, chairs and our Ads from brief to deep thorough, 5 new chartered items have been listed.
>
> We would like to solicit feedback on these new chartered items and your
> use case, deployment, idea corresponding to these new chartered items.
>
> Sharing your past deployment story will also be appreciated.
>
>
>
>
> ============================================================================================
>
> The ALTO working group was established in 2008 to devise a
> request/response protocol to allow a host to benefit from a server that is
> more cognizant of the network infrastructure than the host is.
>
>
>
> The working group has developed an HTTP-based protocol and recent work has
> reported large-scale deployment of ALTO based solutions supporting
> applications such as content distribution networks (CDN).
>
>
>
> ALTO is now proposed as a component for cloud-based interactive
> applications, large-scale data analytics, multi-cloud SD-WAN deployment,
> and distributed
>
> computing. In all these cases, exposing network information such as
> abstract topologies and network function deployment location helps
> applications.
>
>
>
> To support these emerging uses, extensions are needed, and additional
> functional and architectural features need to be considered as follows:
>
>
>
> o Protocol extensions to support a richer and extensible set of policy
> attributes in ALTO information update request and response. Such policy
> attributes may indicate information dependency (e.g., ALTO path-cost/QoS
> properties with dependency on real-time network  indications), optimization
> criteria (e.g., lowest latency/throughput network performance objective),
> and constraints (e.g., relaxation bound of optimization criteria, domain or
> network node to be traversed, diversity and redundancy of paths).
>
>
>
> o Protocol extensions for facilitating operational automation tasks and
> improving transport efficiency. In particular, extensions to provide
> "pub/sub" mechanisms to allow the client to request and receive a diverse
> types (such as event-triggered/sporadic, continuous), continuous,
> customized feed of publisher-generated information. Efforts developed in
> other working groups such as MQTT Publish / Subscribe Architecture, WebSub,
> Subscription to YANG Notifications will be considered, and issues such as
> scalability (e.g., using unicast or broadcast/multicast, and periodicity of
> object updates) should be considered.
>
>
>
> o The working group will investigate the configuration, management, and
> operation of ALTO systems and may develop suitable data models.
>
>
>
> o Extensions to ALTO services to support multi-domain settings. ALTO is
> currently specified for a single ALTO server in a single administrative
> domain, but a network may consist of
>
> multiple domains and the potential information sources may not be limited
> to a certain domain. The working group will investigate extending the ALTO
> framework to (1) specify multi-ALTO-server protocol flow and usage
> guidelines when an ALTO service involves network paths spanning multiple
> domains with multiple ALTO servers, and (2) extend or introduce ALTO
>
> services allowing east-west interfaces for multiple ALTO server
> integration and collaboration. The specifications and extensions should use
> existing services whenever possible. The specifications and extensions
> should consider realistic complexities including incremental deployment,
> dynamicity, and security issues such as access control, authorization
> (e.g., an ALTO server provides information for a network that the server
> has no authorization), and privacy protection in multi-domain settings.
>
>
>
> o The working group will update RFC 7971 to provide operational
> considerations for recent protocol extensions (e.g., cost calendar, unified
> properties, and path vector) and new extensions that the WG develops. New
> considerations will include decisions about the set of information
> resources (e.g., what metrics to use), notification of changes either in
> proactive or reactive mode (e.g., pull the backend, or trigger just-in-time
> measurements), aggregation/processing of the collected information  (e.g.,
> compute information and network information )according to the clients’
> requests, and integration with new transport mechanisms (e.g., HTTP/2 and
> HTTP/3).
>
>
>
> When the WG considers standardizing information that the ALTO server could
> provide, the following criteria are important
>
> to ensure real feasibility:
>
>
>
> - Can the ALTO server realistically provide (measure or derive) that
> information?
>
>
>
> - Is it information that the ALTO client cannot find easily some other way?
>
>
>
> - Is the distribution of the information allowed by the operator of the
> network? Does the exposure of the information introduce privacy and
> information leakage concerns?
>
>
>
> Issues related to the specific content exchanged in systems that make use
> of ALTO are excluded from the WG's scope, as is the issue of dealing with
> enforcing the legality of the content. The WG will also not propose
> standards on how congestion is signaled, remediated, or avoided.
>
>
>
> -Qin Wu (on behalf of chairs)
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