In order to fulfill the "server operated by a third-party" requirement,
the ALTO protocol is designed in such a way to allow servers to provide
cost information about networks they are not "authoritative" for.
However, current specification does not provide a means for indicating
some sort of reliability/accuracy level of the provided information.
Such indication could be useful, for instance, in the case of a server
operated by a network operator, when providing (guessed?) cost
information about paths originating and terminating in networks it does
not directly operate.

(Related to this, is also the issue of a clearer specification of the
server behavior when queried about information it does not have nor is
willing to guess. This has been suggested to be addressed with the
definition of a specific error code.)

Possible options (please express and possibly motivate your preference):

  1. do not add anything to the protocol and always assume that the
     server is fully confident in every piece of information it
     provides;

  2. define a binary value field for indicating whether the server is
     authoritative for each network/pid it is providing cost
     information for;

  3. define a discrete or continuous value field for the reliability of
     each piece of cost information provided in responses;

  4. other.

-- 
Ciao,
Enrico


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