Re: [p2pi] why i hummed no

[<toby.moncaster at bt.com>]

I too was one of those who "vehemently hummed" no at the BoF. Several people (including some ADs) seemed to seek to characterise those of us that hummed no as not believing that there was any sort of problem to be worked on.
 
I feel it is important to highlight that this is NOT because I believe there is no problem to be addressed here. Nor is it because I think the IETF is not able to do work in this space. My main objection is rather that the draft charter for this BoF could be (possibly unfairly) paraphrased as "wouldn't it be nice to have an entity in the network that we could ask lots of random questions...".
 
As Louise said below there are all sorts of potential problems with this approach. Not least the fact thaat the optimisation from the point of view of the network operator is likely to be VERY different from that of the end-user. Furthermore it seems that P2P apps such as BitTorrent are already producing near-optimal results from the point of view of the end-user and it is definitely not clear that an oracle could improve on these.
 
The overall sense I picked up from this BoF was that a group of people had already decided that the best solution was an oracle and this BoF was menat to just ratify that decision.
 
Having said all that I do want to encourage people to work on solutions to the "P2P problem" (note the " "...). I think much of this work could perhaps be done in the IRTF (as Tim Sheppard pointed out there is a very "researchy" feel to a lot of the stuff we saw presented). Once we have a really clear idea of the potential use cases for an oracle, an idea of how you can incentivise both user and ISP in such a way that any information can be trusted and if the information is only that which changes relatively slowly (e.g topology, price and nature of any interconnects) then it might be worth coming back to try again.
 
Toby Moncaster

________________________________

From: p2pi-bounces at ietf.org on behalf of louise.burness at bt.com
Sent: Tue 29/07/2008 12:47
To: p2pi at ietf.org
Subject: [p2pi] why i hummed no



Chairs asked for feedback from the no's , so here is mine

I think the general problem space - peer to peer (overlay) networks making routing choices that have bad effects on the lower layers is a very big and important problem

I think it is very important that we understand what solutions we should be working towards very well as I would hate to see bright and motivated people wasting time working on the wrong things, as this could divert effort from better solutions

my concern is that an oracle approach might not be terribly helpful

neither the p2p ap or the network have any reason to trust each other and the goals they are trying to achieve are likely to be different - how do i know you are telling me the highest bandwidth not the lowest cost choice?

the information recieved could be used in ways to harm the network - deliberatly choosing the non-preferred routes

the information might influenece the p2p application, but if the actual bandwidth (or lowest delay or lowest jitter etc etc) available from a non-preferred peer is higher than that then the non-preferred peer will be used, therefore analysis is required to try and quantify the likely benefit of such a scheme. there needs to be good corrolation between the oracle output and the p2p needs.

To really do the path choice thing sensibly in my mind requires dynamic information which can not be obtained from an oracle. Indeed from a provider perspective, this dynamic infomation could be more/as important also - I would want to direct you to lightly loaded links as directing you to a cheap, short high bandwidth but congested link is likely to do me more harm as well

I would like to see these issues considered better before rushing into solution space

Louise



_______________________________________________
p2pi mailing list
p2pi at ietf.org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/p2pi


_______________________________________________
p2pi mailing list
p2pi at ietf.org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/p2pi