Re: [p2pi] After-BoF charter

[Enrico Marocco <[e-mail]>]

Lars Eggert wrote:
> I believe that the new charter text is a huge step in the right
> direction - thank you for not being discouraged from continuing to
> work on this after the BOF.

Well, the interest shown at the BoF was actually encouraging, even if
having all those people (> 240, according to bluesheets) agree is kind
of a nightmare ;-)

> I have a few comments on specific bits of text:
> 
>> DRAFT CHARTER
>> $Id: charter.txt 71 2008-08-07 17:15:10Z enrico $
> 
> What area are you targeting for the WG? (I assume APP.)

The proposed WG will target APP, but probably it will need advisors from
other areas as well.

>> The Working Group will design and specify an Application-Layer Traffic
>> Optimization (ALTO) service that will provide applications with
>> information to perform better-than-random peer selection.
> 
> Hm. There are research results (Peter Key, etc.) that show that random
> peer selection based on observed performance over time approximates an
> optimal peer selection, at least for some metrics. It seems like the
> best ALTO could do is help P2P systems converge on a good set of peers
> faster (maybe much faster) that performance-based random selection
> over time would?

Right. The previous paragraph says that it is a time-related issue, but
probably it would be worth reaffirming it with "initial peer selection"
(as John suggested).

>>  The WG will
>> consider BitTorrent, tracker-less P2P, and other applications, such as
>> content delivery networks (CDN) and mirror selection.
>>
>> The WG will focus on the following items:
> 
> For each of these items, it's be good to indicate in the charter what
> kinds of documents (PS, Experimental, Informational, BCP) the WG is
> expected to produce.

Sure, we would have specified the type in "goals and milestones". The
only item we are still not sure about is the discovery mechanism, which
could be either Informational, PS or BCP, depending on what it will be
based on. Other documents would be informational (reqs) and standards
track protocols.

>> - A requirements document.  This document will list requirements for a
>>   peer selection service, identifying, for example, what kind of
>>   information P2P applications will need for optimizing their choices.
>>
>> - A request/response protocol for querying the ALTO service to obtain
>>   information useful for peer selection, and a format for requests and
>>   responses.
> 
> I'd like to suggest that at least the initial protocol should run over
> TCP.

I don't think we should say that in a charter. However, we could still
say that, for example, "if, for some very good reason, the WG will
decide to define a UDP-based protocol, guidelines in
draft-ietf-tsvwg-udp-guidelines must be followed."

>> - A schema for such a protocol to communicate routing preferences to
>>   applications, including IP ranges to prefer and avoid.
> 
> Your email also talks about AS numbers (as do charter paragraphs
> below), but the work item above is only about IP ranges and no other
> work item talks about AS numbers - missing work item?

Actually it is still not perfectly clear if ASN and geolocation
information should go in the same schema (e.g. as an alternative way to
express routing preferences), or in a different schema.

-- 
Ciao,
Enrico

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