Subject: Re: [p2prg] New survey draft on P2P group management (fwd)

From: Mika Ylianttila <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:42:42 +0200 (EET)

Hi,

as present co-author, I will say few words in the meeting, mainly 
to point out this work we have done, kind of "as per your request".

Presentation slides summarizing the draft can be now found at the
IETF77 meeting materials page:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/77/materials.html
--> http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/10mar/slides/P2PRG-7.pdf

Discussion topics:
- need of this type of taxonomy as Informational RFC? (based on previous 
discussions we assume yes)
- scope and extent of the draft
  - should it be simplified (how)
       - less example solutions?
       - less categories (what)?
  - should it be clarified (how)
      - are the naming conventions clear enough?
  - should it extended (how)
      - for example. maybe additional criteria assessing the feasibility or 
performance of the solution. However, this is propably topic for
further studies and maybe in the solution space.
      - as other solutions emerge, maybe some updates/extensions. This is also 
future topic.

Hope you find time to provide some input.

Many thanks,

Mika Ylianttila
(at IETF77)

On Tue, 23 Mar 2010, Erkki Harjula wrote:

> Howdy,
> 
> In the previous P2PRG meeting in Stockholm, we presented a draft on 
> peer-to-peer based group management. In the meeting, we received multiple 
> comments pointing out that there is a need for a comprehensive survey on 
> existing and proposed group management mechanisms.
> 
> Thus, before proceeding with the solution draft, we decided to write a 
> separate survey-type draft presenting the existing and proposed P2P group 
> management solutions in the literature. The draft is called "Taxonomy for P2P 
> Group Management Solutions". It provides an analysis and the taxonomy of the 
> existing and proposed P2P group management solutions.
> 
> The draft can be found at: 
> http://tools.ietf.org/search/draft-kassinen-p2psip-group-taxonomy-00
> 
> We would be grateful for your comments.
> 
> BR, Erkki
> _______________________________________________
> p2prg mailing list
> [email-masked]
> http://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/p2prg
>

---

From: "Thomas C. Schmidt" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:44:16 -0700

Dear Authors,

you are proposing a taxonomy of P2P group management. I read your draft, 
looked at your presentation slides, and can provide the following comments:

In general, I was lost in the document, as it was not clear to me what 
this actually addresses. You target at "group management" which actually 
is a core operation for group communication solutions. However, I could 
not clearly see that you address group communication in the sense, that 
the communication model you regard and draw examples from actually is in 
groups (as distinguished from other multiparty approaches like swarm 
routing or mesh-building techniques ...).

Correspondingly, you present a (somewhat random) collection of Example 
Solutions in Section 2. These examples are partly from the group 
communication area, partly they are not. In particular, they seem far 
from exploring the design space of group management, and do not always 
represent initial contributions (P2P group management did not start in 
the year 2003).

IMHO it would be useful to compile an overview of all major group 
management mechanisms that are around, and it will be good practice to 
give credits to those who invented them or first transferred them into 
the P2P world. I would highly appreciate to see this overview 
categorized in a number of useful categories like performance, 
cost/overhead, flexibility, scaling ...

The taxonomy you propose, I cannot really follow. This is for several 
reasons. At first, your "high-level properties" don't appear sharp nor 
relevant to me (What difference does it make that some group is formed 
for conferencing or for collaboration?). Second you enumerate categories 
that are orthogonal to each other (e.g., knowledge sharing : 
security/trust). Third you are cutting out the measures above that are 
of typical concern.

Personally, I would think that a clear focus of the document and a 
stringent, rigorous and relevant categorization would be a great 
improvement.

Two additional suggestions:

  * Can you provide your long report to the community?
  * As this is a group topic, it might make sense to get SAMRG involved.

Best regards,

Thomas

On 24.03.2010 12:42, Mika Ylianttila wrote:
> Hi,
>
> as present co-author, I will say few words in the meeting, mainly to
> point out this work we have done, kind of "as per your request".
>
>> peer-to-peer based group management. In the meeting, we received
>> multiple comments pointing out that there is a need for a
>> comprehensive survey on existing and proposed group management
>> mechanisms.
>>
>> separate survey-type draft presenting the existing and proposed P2P
>> group management solutions in the literature. The draft is called
>> "Taxonomy for P2P Group Management Solutions". It provides an analysis
>> and the taxonomy of the existing and proposed P2P group management
>> solutions.
>>

-- 

Prof. Dr. Thomas C. Schmidt
° Hamburg University of Applied Sciences                   Berliner Tor 7 °
° Dept. Informatik, Internet Technologies Group    20099 Hamburg, Germany °
° http://www.haw-hamburg.de/inet                   Fon: +49-40-42875-8452 °
° http://www.informatik.haw-hamburg.de/~schmidt    Fax: +49-40-42875-8409 °

---

From: Bill Yeager <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:57:55 -0700

One can also note that JXTA has had peer groups since it was initially  
architected in 2000. Their use has been publicly available since the  
Project JXTA launch in April, 2001.

Bill

On Mar 26, 2010, at 4:44 PM, Thomas C. Schmidt wrote:

> Dear Authors,
>
> you are proposing a taxonomy of P2P group management. I read your  
> draft, looked at your presentation slides, and can provide the  
> following comments:
>
> In general, I was lost in the document, as it was not clear to me  
> what this actually addresses. You target at "group management" which  
> actually is a core operation for group communication solutions.  
> However, I could not clearly see that you address group  
> communication in the sense, that the communication model you regard  
> and draw examples from actually is in groups (as distinguished from  
> other multiparty approaches like swarm routing or mesh-building  
> techniques ...).
>
> Correspondingly, you present a (somewhat random) collection of  
> Example Solutions in Section 2. These examples are partly from the  
> group communication area, partly they are not. In particular, they  
> seem far from exploring the design space of group management, and do  
> not always represent initial contributions (P2P group management did  
> not start in the year 2003).
>
> management mechanisms that are around, and it will be good practice  
> to give credits to those who invented them or first transferred them  
> into the P2P world. I would highly appreciate to see this overview  
> categorized in a number of useful categories like performance, cost/ 
> overhead, flexibility, scaling ...
>
> The taxonomy you propose, I cannot really follow. This is for  
> several reasons. At first, your "high-level properties" don't appear  
> sharp nor relevant to me (What difference does it make that some  
> group is formed for conferencing or for collaboration?). Second you  
> enumerate categories that are orthogonal to each other (e.g.,  
> knowledge sharing : security/trust). Third you are cutting out the  
> measures above that are of typical concern.
>

---

From: Erkki Harjula <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:35:41 +0300

Hi Thomas, and thanks for your comments. Our responses to your comments 
are inline.

On 27.3.2010 1:44, Thomas C. Schmidt wrote:
> this actually addresses. You target at "group management" which 
> However, I could not clearly see that you address group communication 
> in the sense, that the communication model you regard and draw 
> examples from actually is in groups (as distinguished from other 
> multiparty approaches like swarm routing or mesh-building techniques 
> ...).

We use the group management as a more general term. The word "group" is 
not restricted to group communication. Grouping can happen on several 
levels. For example:
  * Improving search efficiency, e.g. by grouping overlay peers based on 
the latency between them (for more efficient application-level P2P 
routing). This kind of grouping might not be even visible to the end-users.
  * Grouping of users (or actually their terminals) to communities based 
on the users' interests. This kind of grouping is visible to the end-users.

We have excluded physical-level P2P (ad hoc, MANET...) solutions to keep 
the focus on the application level.

> represent initial contributions (P2P group management did not start in 

We think it would be too difficult for the readers, if we presented all 
50+ (currently over 60) publications that we surveyed, at least in this 
first version of our draft. Thus, it is practical to pick only a small, 
heterogeneous subset (6 papers) that covers the different categories as 
well as possible, and thus shows how the classification system works. 
(The categorization system attempts to classify all application-level 
P2P grouping systems, but the selected examples do not.)

Moreover, the example publications neither tried to represent the 
initial, nor the 'best' solutions.

> cost/overhead, flexibility, scaling ...

In general, we think that comparing different solutions would not be 
beneficial due to the differences in their purpose, peer grouping 
criteria/methods, and the underlying P2P technology. Instead, this draft 
would be a good starting point for making an evaluation study for a 
selected subset (e.g. similar in purpose or underlying P2P technology) 
of the solutions.

> for conferencing or for collaboration?). Second you enumerate 
> categories that are orthogonal to each other (e.g., knowledge sharing 
> : security/trust). Third you are cutting out the measures above that 
> are of typical concern.

Good points. We are still working on defining the high level properties 
more clearly. We admit that some of the categories might seem 
overlapping, but they emerge from dozens of surveyed publications. We 
are planning to improve the descriptions to be more specific in the next 
draft version.

You mention the orthogonality of our categories. We have deliberately 
tried to make the categories orthogonal to enable picking one or more 
relevant categories for a given grouping solution (e.g. security/trust 
could also be the core purpose of a given solution, or could be in 
conjunction with other categories than knowledge sharing. In addition, 
some knowledge sharing solutions do not consider the aspect of 
security/trust at all, but suggest to rely on other existing solutions).

> stringent, rigorous and relevant categorization would be a great 

We will try to make the focus more clear and provide better in-depth 
descriptions of the categories in the next draft version.

>  * Can you provide your long report to the community?

The long report is in progress and we will publish it as a journal 
article later. However, we will update the draft as the work progresses.

>  * As this is a group topic, it might make sense to get SAMRG involved.

Thanks, we will also consider this point.

-Erkki&co

---

From: Erkki Harjula <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:41:04 +0300

Hi,

we are aware of JXTA. As a matter of fact, several of the publications 
in our literature survey rely on JXTA. As mentioned in our earlier post, 
the example publications tried not to present the initial (nor the 
'best') solutions.

-Erkki&co

On 27.3.2010 2:57, Bill Yeager wrote:
>> reasons. At first, your "high-level properties" don't appear sharp 
>> nor relevant to me (What difference does it make that some group is 
>> formed for conferencing or for collaboration?). Second you enumerate 

-- 
_______________________________________________________________
Erkki Harjula, M.Sc. (Eng.), Research Scientist
MediaTeam, P.O. Box 4500, 4STOCSE/TS389
FIN-90014 University of Oulu, Finland
E-mail: [email-masked],
Web: http://www.mediateam.oulu.fi
Tel: +358 8 5532522, Mob: +358 50 3030478, Fax: +358 8 5532534