Folks: Over the last few IETFs, Enrico and I have solicited feedback
during face-to-face meetings, WG sessions, hallway conversations, ALTO
mailing list and private conversations on how to move ahead with respect
to adopting new work items.

As we begin the charter discussions, we have identified seven
work items to propose as additions to the charter.  The first four of
these work items are fairly uncontroversial.  The last three are work
items that have a monumental mind share in the ALTO working group and
have been found to be extremely useful in controlled networks (e.g.,
VPNs).  However, we have to take some care in defining these such that
we do not duplicate the functionality available elsewhere (e.g., general
routing) in ALTO, nor do we take on an aspect that the working group
does not fully understand.

Here are the seven items up for discussion:

1. Anycast-based server discovery
    (Presented by Reinaldo Penno in IETF 86 and appears to have
    some support for adoption.)

2. Third-party server discovery
    (Sebastian Kiesel et al. have been driving this work and it
    also appears to have support.)

3. Incremental ALTO map updates
    (Side meeting held during IETF 86; two proposals have been
    studied.  One way forward is to use an ALTO-specific incremental
    update that may be more efficient, and the second approach is to
    simply use JSON patch.)

4. Server-initiated update notifications
    (Jan Seedorf and Enrico Marocco have suggested the use of
    Websockets; HTTP/2.0 may provide some mitigation as well.)

5. Extensions to annotate PIDs with properties (e.g., geographical
    locations).
    (Useful as an extension in controlled environments, e.g., VPNs
    where IP addresses are not the only form of identification.
    Some drafts, including draft-roome-alto-pid-properties
    has already started work in this direction.)

6. Extensions for cost metrics.
    (Some drafts, including draft-wu-alto-json-te, have started work
    in this direction.)

7. An ALTO format for encoding graphs.
    (draft-ietf-alto-protocol already recognizes the need to provide
    topology details that are useful in controlled environments.
    Richard Yang, Greg Bernstein and others have been working on the
    need and use cases for such an encoding.  draft-yang-alto-topology
    is a good start.  Projects like OpenDayLight and NetworkX (Python)
    have JSON models for graph representation.  Some concrete examples
    of how we envision encoding graphs will be useful during list
    discussion.)

We will like to understand whether the working group believe such
additional deliverables, if included in an updated charter proposal,
would allow people to do the extension work that has been repeatedly
proposed. (Clarification: we are explicitly asking whether people could
find such an update acceptable. We understand that anyone will have a
preferred flavor of the above.)

We are at a point where show of support by whoever is interested is
essential for moving forward. If it turns out to be positive, Enrico
and I will subsequently circulate actual text, including milestones, for
a rechartering request.

Thanks.

- vijay
-- 
Vijay K. Gurbani, Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent
1960 Lucent Lane, Rm. 9C-533, Naperville, Illinois 60563 (USA)
Email: vkg@{bell-labs.com,acm.org} / vijay.gurbani@alcatel-lucent.com
Web: http://ect.bell-labs.com/who/vkg/  | Calendar: http://goo.gl/x3Ogq