the IETF Workshop on p2p infrastructure

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

From: ietf-announce-bounces () ietf org [mailto:ietf-announce-bounces () ietf org] On Behalf Of IESG Secretary
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 8:00 AM
To: ietf-announce () ietf org
Cc: iesg () ietf org
Subject: P2P Infrastructure Workshop Announcement, May 28, 2008

The Real-time Applications & Infrastructure (RAI) Area Directors, Jon Peterson and Cullen Jennings, would like to 
announce an IETF workshop on P2P Infrastructure to be held on May 28, 2008 at 50 Vassar St, Room
34-101 on the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA USA.

Several large ISPs have encountered issues with P2P traffic. The transfer of static, delay-tolerant data between nodes 
on the Internet is a well-understood problem, but traditional management of fairness at the transport level has largely 
been circumvented by applications designed to achieve the best end-user transfer rates. This results, at peak times, in 
networks running near absolute capacity, and in which all traffic incurs delays; the applications that bear the brunt 
of this additional latency are real-time applications like VoIP and Internet gaming. This has led to need for further 
discussion of the proper approaches to P2P application development, and infrastructure management in environments where 
P2P is commonly used. This workshop intends to discover where additional IETF standards work is needed, or existing 
work might be reapplied, to alleviate these difficulties. In particular, the workshop will draw on the experiences of 
Comcast and BitTorrent, representatives of both of whom will present their perspectives on the problem space.

Example solution discussions might include, but are not limited to:
deployment of application servers or caches to reduce network load; new rendez-vous mechanisms to optimize P2P network 
topology; enabling applications to signal their bandwidth needs (and priority or lack
thereof) to networks; enabling networks to signal bandwidth constraints to elastic and inelastic applications; and, new 
approaches to fairness that are coupled with incentives for applications. Contributions from subject matter experts in 
the problem and solution space are welcome. The primary outcome should be a direction for one or more IETF efforts 
exploring the best practices for addressing these challenges.

The organizers would like to stress that this is a technical workshop exploring engineering issues and practices. The 
public policy implications of P2P applications are not in the scope of this workshop.

Position papers are requested from all attendees by May 9. Contact the RAI ADs for a waiver if it is inappropriate for 
you to submit a position paper. These should constitute one to five pages on the problem or solution space of P2P 
architectures, with a particular emphasis on areas that the IETF should address or revisit. Position papers will be 
made publicly available. On the basis of the position papers, a number of invited speakers will be asked to present at 
the workshop. A final agenda with timeslots will be published by May 16th. Potential attendees for whom it is not 
appropriate to supply a position paper may contact the RAI ADs for a waiver.

Evaluation of the position papers will be performed with the assistance of a program committee consisting of the RAI 
ADs, Lars Eggert (Transport AD), Danny Weitzner (MIT), John Morris (CDT), and Dave Clark (MIT).

Further information about position paper submission procedures are forthcoming. Interested parties are advised to 
subscribe to the p2pi () ietf org mailing list for discussion and announcements related to the workshop. Additional 
information will be available at http://www3.tools.ietf.org/area/rai/trac/wiki/PeerToPeerInfrastructure.
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