Hello ALTO WG,

Regarding the proposed work item on "Protocol extensions to support a richer 
and extensible set of policy attributes in ALTO information update request and 
response" (GPE for short) , I would like to add the following:

This work item can be useful, among others, to allow a UE getting cellular 
network KPIs from an ALTO Server, to figure out for example whether the cell is 
congested, or which cell to choose.

An ALTO Server cannot provide real-time information. With the proposed 
extensions, it can indicate a number of real-time network parameters against 
which ALTO cost values can be modulated.

These parameters are received by UEs directly from the network and not from 
ALTO. The UE receives an array of ALTO cell KPI values that each depend on the 
value of a parameter. The UE can pick the  ALTO value corresponding to the 
value of the real-time parameter received from the network. Thus, the UE 
modulates the received ALTO values in real-time.

This use-case is illustrated in the slides presented at the previous IETF 109 
ALTO WG meeting, see (1), slide 4. A preliminary design with example IRD and 
ALTO request and response can be found in slides 7 and 8.

Any feedback is more than welcome,
(1)  
https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/109/materials/slides-109-alto-proposed-recharter-item-general-alto-protocol-extensions-00
Thanks,
Sabine



From: alto <alto-boun...@ietf.org> On Behalf Of Qin Wu
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2021 2:51 PM
To: IETF ALTO <alto@ietf.org>
Cc: alto-cha...@ietf.org; alto-...@ietf.org
Subject: [alto] ALTO Draft ReCharter WG review

Hi, :
We have requested one hour session for ALTO WG meeting in the upcoming IETF 
110, which is arranged on Friday, March 12, 14:30-15:30(UTC).
The goal is to boil down ALTO recharter and have consensus on charter contents 
in IETF 110.
To get this goal, an updated inline draft charter text for ALTO has just been 
posted to this list,

This charter has received a couple of rounds of informal review from WG 
members, chairs and our Ads from brief to deep thorough, 5 new chartered items 
have been listed.
We would like to solicit feedback on these new chartered items and your use 
case, deployment, idea corresponding to these new chartered items.
Sharing your past deployment story will also be appreciated.

============================================================================================
The ALTO working group was established in 2008 to devise a request/response 
protocol to allow a host to benefit from a server that is more cognizant of the 
network infrastructure than the host is.

The working group has developed an HTTP-based protocol and recent work has 
reported large-scale deployment of ALTO based solutions supporting applications 
such as content distribution networks (CDN).

ALTO is now proposed as a component for cloud-based interactive applications, 
large-scale data analytics, multi-cloud SD-WAN deployment, and distributed
computing. In all these cases, exposing network information such as abstract 
topologies and network function deployment location helps applications.

To support these emerging uses, extensions are needed, and additional 
functional and architectural features need to be considered as follows:

o Protocol extensions to support a richer and extensible set of policy 
attributes in ALTO information update request and response. Such policy 
attributes may indicate information dependency (e.g., ALTO path-cost/QoS 
properties with dependency on real-time network  indications), optimization 
criteria (e.g., lowest latency/throughput network performance objective), and 
constraints (e.g., relaxation bound of optimization criteria, domain or network 
node to be traversed, diversity and redundancy of paths).

o Protocol extensions for facilitating operational automation tasks and 
improving transport efficiency. In particular, extensions to provide "pub/sub" 
mechanisms to allow the client to request and receive a diverse types (such as 
event-triggered/sporadic, continuous), continuous, customized feed of 
publisher-generated information. Efforts developed in other working groups such 
as MQTT Publish / Subscribe Architecture, WebSub, Subscription to YANG 
Notifications will be considered, and issues such as scalability (e.g., using 
unicast or broadcast/multicast, and periodicity of object updates) should be 
considered.

o The working group will investigate the configuration, management, and 
operation of ALTO systems and may develop suitable data models.

o Extensions to ALTO services to support multi-domain settings. ALTO is 
currently specified for a single ALTO server in a single administrative domain, 
but a network may consist of
multiple domains and the potential information sources may not be limited to a 
certain domain. The working group will investigate extending the ALTO framework 
to (1) specify multi-ALTO-server protocol flow and usage guidelines when an 
ALTO service involves network paths spanning multiple domains with multiple 
ALTO servers, and (2) extend or introduce ALTO
services allowing east-west interfaces for multiple ALTO server integration and 
collaboration. The specifications and extensions should use existing services 
whenever possible. The specifications and extensions should consider realistic 
complexities including incremental deployment, dynamicity, and security issues 
such as access control, authorization (e.g., an ALTO server provides 
information for a network that the server has no authorization), and privacy 
protection in multi-domain settings.

o The working group will update RFC 7971 to provide operational considerations 
for recent protocol extensions (e.g., cost calendar, unified properties, and 
path vector) and new extensions that the WG develops. New considerations will 
include decisions about the set of information resources (e.g., what metrics to 
use), notification of changes either in proactive or reactive mode (e.g., pull 
the backend, or trigger just-in-time measurements), aggregation/processing of 
the collected information  (e.g., compute information and network information 
)according to the clients' requests, and integration with new transport 
mechanisms (e.g., HTTP/2 and HTTP/3).

When the WG considers standardizing information that the ALTO server could 
provide, the following criteria are important
to ensure real feasibility:

- Can the ALTO server realistically provide (measure or derive) that 
information?

- Is it information that the ALTO client cannot find easily some other way?

- Is the distribution of the information allowed by the operator of the 
network? Does the exposure of the information introduce privacy and information 
leakage concerns?

Issues related to the specific content exchanged in systems that make use of 
ALTO are excluded from the WG's scope, as is the issue of dealing with 
enforcing the legality of the content. The WG will also not propose standards 
on how congestion is signaled, remediated, or avoided.

-Qin Wu (on behalf of chairs)
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