Accomplishments

Content Distribution Internetworking (CDNP)
IETF BOF Meeting Summary

December 12th, 2000
San Diego, California

[Original agenda]

Mark Day, chair, opened the meeting.

Phil Rzewski and Gary Tomlinson made a joint presentation summarizing the work done to date.

Mark Day briefly showed the previously-circulated proposed charter before presenting an updated version that was less focused on CDNs and more open to other forms of content internetworking.

Minutes

We are fortunate to have two sets of minutes; by reading both sets you can get a better overall sense of the meeting than by reading either on its own. Many thanks to both Aaron and Abbie for their note-taking.

Minutes #1

(taken by aaron@panamsat.com)
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Content Distribution Internetworking BoF (CDNP)

BoF Chair was Mark Day, Cisco (markday@cisco.com).

Agenda

Bash agenda, find note taker
Explain domain, summarize drafts
Present draft charter
Questions / Discussion
Summary

Overview presentations by Gary Tomlinson, Enterra, Phil Rzewsi, Inktomi. Discussion of what is Content Networking. Content Networks defined to include heirarchical caching.
CDNs defined to include request routing and surrogates.
Content Distribution Internetworking defined as interconnecting different CDN clouds.
Surrogates defined to be a delivery server other than the origin.
Delivery defined as the act of presenting content to the consumer.
Distribution defined as the activitiy of moving a publisher's content from its origin to one or more surrogates.
Injection defined as publishing content into one or more CDNs by origin.
Request-routing defined to mean finding a suitable surrogate.
Accouting defined to mean measuring and recording distribution.

Two teams produced 8 of 9 drafts. Teams aligned with Content Bridge and Content Alliance. Have worked out most issues. Summary of draft followed:

-model- includes taxonomy,
-scenarios- has requirements,
-architecture- describes elements and systems,
-known-request-routing-describes what people are currently doing for redirection,
-aaa-reqs- describes anticipated AAA requirements for accounting,
-oacp- describes a specific vertical implmentation of how (CB) system works,
-cndistcs- describes what signalling CB system needs,
-cnacct- describes how CB accounting works.

Possible working group structure may include breaking into communities of interest for Accouting, Distribution, Request-routing.

Comment: (Ted Hardie, Equinix) observed most CDNs are overlay networks, do CPGs need to be co-resident with surrogates.

Draft charter: The goal of this group is to define protocols to allow the interoperation of separately--administred content networks...

The group will define requirmeents and protocol specifications for 3 types of content networking: Requirements and protocols for each of request routing, distribution, and accounting. Other documents include documents on scenarios, system architecture, known request-routing mechanisms, and vocabulary.

Schedule

Questions

-- Aaron Falk, Net-36: Is streaming in scope_ A: not decided, may just want to have hooks for later addition. Level of involvement will be in charter.

-- Curious about trust model to prevent requests coming being served to non-peers.

-- Question about scope. What about when CDNs peer with other service networks_ E.g., trans-coding services. How do you talk to them when they don't have the request-routing services, etc_

-- Dan Li, Cisco: Scalability of architecture very important. Possible overlap with WREC working group. A: WREC is focusing on intra-domain, CDNP is cross-domain. Groups will share technology where necessary.

-- Alex French, Via-Net Networks: isn't it a bit soon to start drafting protocols_ Some of these problems are pretty hard.

-- Are you following other resource allocation protocol development in the IETF_ These may offer some guidance in security and authentication. A: can you ID the necessary groups_

-- Is settlement within the scope_ A: wanted to decouple accounting from transfer of value. May not be able to put definition of which way value flows may be difficult because it will depend heavily on the business model. Suggestion: settlement is out of scope.

-- Oliver Spatscheck, ATT: if accounting is standardized, what else does IETF need to standardize in terms of settlement_

Closing Comments

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Minutes #2

Notes (taken by abbieb@nortelnetworks.com; transcribed by markday@cisco.com)

1. What are the dependencies on HTTP_
2. Does scope of work include streaming, where will the boundary be drawn_
3. For request routing, what is the criteria for standardizing content exchange_
4. What is the trust model between CDNs. Are routes announced or not_
5. Security issues: what about a CDN that sucks up all your content_
6. Will the scope be extended to distribute content among non-CDN networks_
7. Scalability issues: will these be addressed in WREC or CDNP_
8. Is RUP [a protocol proposed in WREC] intended for one administrative domain_ What about multiple administrative domains_
9. Is it too soon to start drafting protocols_ Delay to February_
10. AAA or other resource allocation groups such as RAP_
11. Settlement, how it works: Is it in scope_
12. Intended to support any business model.
13. Accounting is for other things besides billing. Settlement is out of scope.
14. Accounting information could be used for other information or purposes.
15. If you have acounting what else is needed for two parties to settle_
16. There are many things other than money that should be settled.
17. Work must be done across CDN. Primary work is primarily an experiment.