Re: [p2pi] Charter and problem statement

["Vijay K. Gurbani" <vkg at alcatel-lucent.com>]

Laird Popkin wrote:
> IMO caches are a (rather valuable) special case of the general
> problem of finding optimal sources of data (for data that has
> multiple available sources).
>
> To elaborate on this, once the ISP has an "oracle" that communicates
> network policies to applications, that seems like an ideal channel
> for communicating information about caches. Doing so explicitly and
> under the direction of the ISP and the support of the p2p networks
> seems much better than the techniques that those guys use now (e.g.
> multiple proprietary cache discovery protocols, or deep packet
> inspection and protocol hacking). As a p2p developer, I have to say
> that it's far more likely that we'd support a single standard cache
> location mechanism (especially if it gave all of the other benefits
> of an "oracle") than for us to test multiple proprietary cache
> discovery mechanisms on every download.

Laird, Stanislav: I think both of you are proposing that cache-
discovery be a part of ALTO.  I am trying to make a distinction
between /cache/ and /content/ in the context of our work.

In a P2P application-based overlay, the "best" peer (however
the network defines "best") is where the querying peer should
be sent to get the resource in question from.  If we stretch
this analogy a bit further, it does not matter that the resource
is mirrored (cached) at the "best" peer or it appears as
the only instance of resource on the "best peer" (i.e., it is
not cached.)  So in cases like this, I believe that sending
a querying peer to the "best" peer is immaterial of whether
or not the "best" peer is a caching-only server versus a
server providing original content.  The content is immutable.

In other applications like HTTP-based caching, it matters whether
or not a cache is hit or the origin server is hit.

If caching is deemed to be a part of the charter, how do we define
it for ALTO?

Thanks,

- vijay
--
Vijay K. Gurbani, Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent
2701 Lucent Lane, Rm. 9F-546, Lisle, Illinois 60532 (USA)
Email: vkg at {alcatel-lucent.com,bell-labs.com,acm.org}
WWW:   http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/bell-labs
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