BOF on internet host proximity service

[Paul Francis <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

I'll be running a BOF in Memphis on something I'm calling
the Internet Host Proximity Service (HOPS).  You can read
a white paper about it at http://www.ingrid.org/hops/wp.html,
and I've attached the abstract below.  The BOF has not yet
been given a time slot.

Since this work has implications for host configuration
in general (though perhaps not necessarily for DHCP specifically),
I just wanted to give the people in this group a heads up.
Any feedback on the white paper would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

PF

ps.  I'm not on this mailing list, so please copy me on
any replies.


                   Abstract

The majority of Internet applications, such as web access
to a mirrored server, have the characteristic whereby a
"client" application wants to contact not a specific host,
but any, and usually the nearest, of a number of hosts that
can provide the desired information or function. This kind
of host access, however, goes completely unsupported in the
global Internet, and largely unsupported in even private
internets (intranets). This paper proposes an architecture,
called the Host Proximity Service (HOPS) that would allow
for an infrastructure to provide such service. The
architecture proposed here would allow such a service with
no changes to current client or server hosts.