Re: [alto] 'Link capacity' in scope?

[Enrico Marocco <[e-mail]>]

Salman Abdul Baset wrote:
> Nevertheless, applications greatly benefit when they can determine the 
> link speed without measurements, especially if they are running on 
> a machine which is connected to a WiFi router which in turn is 
> connected to a DSL/cable modem. Passing the purchased link speed is a 
> useful hint for p2p applications and for diagnostic purposes.
> 
> My question to the chairs and to the authors of problem statement draft is 
> whether it is within the scope of ALTO to design a mechanism to pass the 
> link capacity, that ISP promised to the customer at the time of the 
> purchase of the plan, to the [A]DSL/high speed modem which passes it to 
> the devices upstream?

The WG has been chartered to define a protocol to provide applications
with information to perform better than random peer selection; honestly,
I don't see how information about its own link capacity -- assuming it
is feasible to determine it in a meaningful way without recurring to
realtime measurements -- could help a peer in finding good peers to
connect to. So I'd say it is out of scope, but I'd be glad to be proven
wrong.

OTOH, but as I understand it this is not what you're talking about,
information about other peers' link capacity might fall within the scope
of ALTO, as it could be useful in peer selection optimization. However,
as Rich mentioned, there are many reasons why an ALTO server can't or
may not want to pass it.

-- 
Ciao,
Enrico