Subject: I-D Action:draft-penno-alto-protocol-00.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 16:30:01 -0800 (PST)

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.

	Title           : ALTO Protocol
	Author(s)       : R. Penno, Y. Yang
	Filename        : draft-penno-alto-protocol-00.txt
	Pages           : 21
	Date            : 2009-03-04

The ALTO Service enables an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to convey
cost preferences to network applications in order to modify network
resource consumption patterns while maintaining or improving
application performance.  Applications that could use this service
are those that have a choice in connection endpoints.  Examples of
such applications are peer-to-peer (P2P) and content delivery
networks.

Applications already have access to great amount of underlying
topology information.  For example, views of the Internet routing
table are easily available at looking glass servers and entirely
practical to download to every client.  What is missing is the cost
information -- what does an ISP or Content Provider actually prefer?

This document describes a very simple protocol that allows a ISP to
convey such information to applications.  While such service would
primarily be provided by the network, i.e., the local ISP, Content
Provider and third parties could also operate this service.

A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-penno-alto-protocol-00.txt

Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/

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