[Taps] Early TAPS Implementation in Go, Feedback Welcome

[Thorben Krüger <[e-mail]>]

Dear TAPS,

In the context of a recently started EU NGI Pointer project[1], we 
are currently involved in engineering[2] an open source transport 
services system in Go, with support for SCION[4], a 
next-generation path-aware Internet architecture, enabling 
multi-path communication at the inter-domain level.

Our system, called PANAPI[3] (Path-Aware Networking API), aims to 
hide complex automated processes (such as protocol racing) behind 
convenient high-level abstractions. In the backend, PANAPI 
consists of a (Lua) scriptable framework to support practical path 
selection in the context of the SCION architecture. (We also aim 
to provide UDP, TCP/IP and QUIC support, but achieving full 
RFC8923[5] compliance is only a secondary goal.)

To avoid re-inventing the wheel on the frontend-side, we have 
chosen to adopt the abstractions laid out in the current TAPS 
Interface draft[6]. Most of these could be easily mapped to our Go 
implementation, but in a few cases we decided to depart from the 
specification. We are unsure to what degree our decisions[7] are 
in violation of the TAPS vision and would appreciate feedback, 
especially from folks who have some familiarity with Go.

Note that this email is not intended to announce a fait 
accompli. PANAPI is still under development and only partially 
usable in its current state. The user-facing API[8] is about two 
thirds done, and we would be glad to incorporate your feedback on 
our implementation choices[7]. While Candidate Gathering and 
Candidate Racing are still waiting to be implemented, the main 
SCION-based, scriptable path-selection framework for the backend 
is nearly complete. We would highly appreciate any kind of 
contributions, even only informal feedback, also from non-Go 
programmers.

Finally, we believe we have identified a few minor mistakes in the 
Interface draft[6]. What is the proper process of discussing 
these?

Kind regards and happy new year,

Thorben Krüger
Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg

[1]: https://www.ngi.eu/funded_solution/ngi-pointer-project-33/
[2]: https://github.com/netsys-lab/panapi/tree/taps
[3]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3472727.3472808
[4]: https://scion-architecture.net/
[5]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8923.html
[6]: 
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-taps-interface-13.html
[7]: 
https://github.com/netsys-lab/panapi/blob/taps/doc/Implementation.md
[8]: 
https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/netsys-lab/panapi@v0.3.0-alpha7/taps

PS: PANAPI receives official funding from NGI Pointer[1]