Technical Summary
This is a procedural document, listing requirements for the protocol
the ALTO WG is chartered to standardize. The abstract of the draft
provides an accurate summary:
Many Internet applications are used to access resources, such as
pieces of information or server processes, which are available in
several equivalent replicas on different hosts. This includes, but
is not limited to, peer-to-peer file sharing applications. The goal
of Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) is to provide
guidance to applications, which have to select one or several hosts
from a set of candidates, that are able to provide a desired
resource. This guidance shall be based on parameters that affect
performance and efficiency of the data transmission between the
hosts, e.g., the topological distance. The ultimate goal is to
improve performance (or Quality of Experience) in the application
while reducing resource consumption in the underlying network
infrastructure.
This document enumerates requirements for specifying, assessing, or
comparing protocols and implementations.
Working Group Summary
The document has had reviews by key WG members, as well as by members
of WGs that are considering the work of the alto WG as the basis for
their standardization work (esp. decade and cdni WGs). It has been
intetionally kept alive, refined and reviewed in several iterations,
for quite a long time to track new requirements during the early phase
of the specification work. Since the specs are now generally
considered mature, the WG has expressed strong consensus to move it toward
publication.
Document Quality
The document has received extended review by WG members, as well as by
contributors of other WGs (esp. DECADE and CDNI) that are considering
the ALTO protocol as the basis for their specification work.
Personnel
Document Shepherd: Enrico Marocco
Responsible Area Director: Wesley Eddy