[grobj] Referral definition and its purpose?

[Sheng Jiang <[e-mail]>]

Hi, all,

We are now working on an referral PS draft, targeting to submit end of May
or the beginning of June. We'd like to discuss the relevant contents/topic
publicly in the mail list during our writing. Comments or contributions are
more than welcome.

The first target is to understand what is referral and its purpose. There
may be different understanding, our goal here is to find a common definition
for our PS draft. The following is my understanding and what's in the draft
now.

In abstract: The purpose of a referral is to enable a given entity in a
multiparty Internet application to pass information to another party. It
enables a communication initiator to aware relevant information of its
destination entity before launching the communication.

In the introduction: A frequently occurring situation is that one entity A
connected to the Internet (or to some private network using the Internet
protocol suite) needs to inform another entity B how to reach either A
itself or some third-party entity C. This is known as a referral.

Does everyone can agree on this Referral definition and its purpose? Only if
consensus can reach here, our next discussion for referral scenarios can
make sense.

Best regards,

Sheng