[p2pi] Content Identifiers sent to ALTO server?

[John Leslie <john at jlc.net>]

Laird Popkin <laird at pando.com> wrote:
> 
> Note that content optimization can also (potentially) be
> content-specific. For example, in P4P, the guidance to the p2p
> networks can be 'tuned' to reflect the specific distribution of
> content.

   This is (potentially) helpful when content is sufficiently static
to flood the distribution information to all ALTO servers. This is
not the general case, and might not even be the most common case in
future scenarios.

> Perhaps the way to phrase this is that the ALTO server MUST support
> operation with no content identifiers, but ALTO clients MAY send
> content identifiers?

   I think Stas was saying that even receiving and discarding content
Identifiers could cause undesirable legal exposure to large ISPs.
In any case, I agree it could.

   I see two very different use cases for what we're discussing here.

1. Client has a list of IP addresses, and wants to know which to
   try first;

2. Client doesn't have a list of IP addresses, but has a Content
   Identifier, and wants an ordered list of IP addresses to try.

   I frankly would much prefer to develop these separately. The
second might well have reason to call upon the first; but the first
never has any reason to make use of the second. Trying to combine
both into a single protocol complicates things unnecessarily (even
before the legal complications come into play).

   Also, the two cases deal in information best known by parties
with vastly different interests in limiting distribution of that
information -- up to and including a business decision to obscure
or even falsify the information passed to certain other parties.

   The technical problems of combining both into a single protocol
look easy enough, but yield no measurable benefit. The legal and
information-protection problem are much more serious.

--
John Leslie <john at jlc.net>
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