Protocol Action: The Application Exchange Core to Proposed Standard

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

The IESG has approved publication of the following Internet-Drafts as
Proposed Standards:

o The Application Exchange Core <draft-ietf-apex-core-06.txt>
o The APEX Access Service <draft-ietf-apex-access-08.txt> 
o The APEX Option Party Pack, Part Deux! <draft-ietf-apex-party-04.txt>
o The APEX Presence Service <draft-ietf-apex-presence-06.txt>


These documents are the product of the Application Exchange Working
Group.  The IESG contact persons are Ned Freed and Patrik Faltstrom.


Technical Summary
 
This set of memos describe APEX, an extensible, asynchronous message
 relaying service for application layer programs, the well-known
 endpoints "apex=access" and "apex=presence", and a set of options
 used to change the default behavior of the APEX "relay mesh".

 APEX, at its core, provides a best-effort datagram service.  Each
 datagram, simply termed "data", is originated and received by APEX
 "endpoints" -- applications that dynamically attach to the APEX
 "relaying mesh".

 The data transmitted specifies:

   o  an originating endpoint;

   o  an opaque content (via a URI-reference);

   o  one or more recipient endpoints; and,

   o  zero or more options.

 Options are used to alter the semantics of the the service, may occur
 on a per-recipient or per-data basis, and may be processed by either
 a single or multiple relays.

 Additional APEX services are provided on top of the relaying mesh;
 this set of documents specifies services for access control and
 presence information management.

Working Group Summary

 These specifications are all products of the APEX working group

Protocol Quality

 Ned Freed reviewed these specifications for the IESG.