Subject: [decade] DECADE Charter discussion

From: Song Haibin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:26:02 +0800

Dear all,

The following is the initial version of DECoupled Application Data Enroute
(DECADE) charter for discussion. Thanks to many people (Richard Yang,
Yushun, Rich Alimi, Ning Zong and many others) for their efforts to work it
out. Please review and any comments are welcome!

Description of Working Group:

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications, including both P2P streaming and P2P
file-sharing applications, make up a large fraction of traffic in the
Internet today. One way to reduce access network and/or cross-domain
bandwidth usage by P2P applications is to introduce storage capabilities in
the networks.  Allowing P2P applications to store and retrieve data from
inside networks can reduce traffic on the last-mile uplink, as well as
backbone and transit links.

Existing P2P caches often utilize the specific P2P application protocols or
acting as regular or super peers to provide in-network storage. But this
approach poses challenges to both P2P cache vendors and P2P application
developers. For P2P cache vendors, the challenges are to support both the
evolving P2P application protocols, and the newly emerging protocols. For
P2P applications, closed P2P caching systems limit P2P applications to
effectively utilize in-network storage.

Both of these challenges can be effectively addressed by using an open,
standard protocol to access in-network storage. P2P applications can store
and retrieve content in the in-network storage, as well as control resources
(e.g., bandwidth, connections) consumed by peers in a P2P application.  As a
simple example, a peer can choose to store content in the in-network
storage, and direct other peers to retrieve from that location, reducing
last-mile link usage.

The Working Group (WG) will design and specify a standard protocol for P2P
applications to utilize in-network storage. The protocol will include
operations for a P2P application system to (1) store and retrieve data, (2)
specify access control on who can store into and retrieve from its allocated
storage, and (3) indicate resource sharing policies.

This WG will focus mainly on the protocol between the in-network storage and
P2P applications.  The protocol will be focused on P2P applications, though
it may also be used in other types of applications.

The WG will focus on the following work items:

-    A "problem statement" document. This document provides a description of
the problem and common terminology.

-    A requirements document. This document lists the requirements for the
in-network storage service (e.g., supported operations) and the protocol to
support it. 

-  A survey document. This document will survey existing related mechanisms
and protocols (e.g., HTTP), and evaluate their applicability and
effectiveness.

-  A request/response protocol for storing, retrieving, and managing content
in the in-network storage. The protocol will have components to specify both
access control and resource control policies.

-  An informational document describing the integration of DECADE with
existing P2P applications (e.g., integration with Bittorrent).

The following issues are not considered in the current scope of the WG.

-    Potential interactions between in-network storage operators and
copyright holders of content. For example, one possibility is that that an
in-network storage system may have system-wide ingress and egress filters to
implement copyright related policies on storing or retrieving content in the
in-network storage. But this is outside the scope of this working group. 

-    Locating the "best" in-network storage location from which to retrieve
content if there are more than one location can provide the same content.

Goals and Milestones:

Aug 2010
Working Group Last Call for problem statement  Nov 2010
Submit problem statement to IESG as Informational 
Nov 2010
Working Group Last Call for requirements document 
Apr 2011
Submit requirements document to IESG as Informational 
Aug 2011
Working Group Last Call for survey document 
Dec 2011
Working Group Last Call for in-network storage access protocol
Apr 2012
Submit in-network storage access protocol to IESG as Proposed Standard 
Apr 2011
Submit survey document to IESG as informational
Aug 2012
Dissolve or re-charter 

Best Regards,

Haibin

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:55:40 +0100

This looks like a good start.
I have a couple of comments on the current charter text:

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 7:26 AM, Song Haibin <[email-masked]> wrote:
 [...]
> applications to utilize in-network storage.

This presupposes that you've reviewed existing protocols and found
them to be unsuitable and not sufficiently extensible to address your
needs.
I think you wouldn't know for sure until after the survey document is done.

> The protocol will include

 [...]

> Submit survey document to IESG as informational

IESG typically complains about WG milestones being too aggressive.
Your milestones look to be a bit too "relaxed". I am hoping that the
problem statement document can be finished much quicker.

---

From: Song Haibin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:34:09 +0800

Hi Alexey,

Thanks for your reply. 

>-----Original Message-----
>From: [email-masked] 
>[mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Alexey Melnikov
>Sent: Friday, September 25, 2009 4:56 PM
>To: Song Haibin
>Cc: [email-masked]
>Subject: Re: [decade] DECADE Charter discussion
>
>> The Working Group (WG) will design and specify a standard 
>protocol for 
>> P2P applications to utilize in-network storage.
>
>This presupposes that you've reviewed existing protocols and 
>found them to be unsuitable and not sufficiently extensible to 
>address your needs.

I agree. The survey document is very important and meaningful for this work.
I guess the possible deficit of the existing protocols that makes them not
suitable for this work is that they don't specify the resource sharing
policies for p2p application, e.g. how the contents and processing resource
in my in-network storage are shared with others. Whatever, we have to do the
survey of related protocols in detail.

>> operations for a P2P application system to (1) store and retrieve 
>> data, (2) specify access control on who can store into and retrieve 
>> from its allocated storage, and (3) indicate resource 
>sharing policies.
>
> [...]
>
>> Goals and Milestones:
>>
>> Aug 2010
>Submit problem 
>> statement to IESG as Informational Nov 2010 Working Group Last Call 
>> for requirements document Apr 2011 Submit requirements document to 
>> IESG as Informational Aug 2011 Working Group Last Call for survey 
>> document Dec 2011 Working Group Last Call for in-network storage 
>> access protocol Apr 2012 Submit in-network storage access 
>protocol to 
>> IESG as Proposed Standard Apr 2011 Submit survey document to IESG as 
>> informational Aug 2012 Dissolve or re-charter
>
>Your milestones look to be a bit too "relaxed". I am hoping 
>that the problem statement document can be finished much quicker.
>

I think it is reasonable to change the milestones  to make it a little
"aggressive".

Thanks,
Haibin