Internet-Draft | ALTO-PV | August 2021 |
Gao, et al. | Expires 26 February 2022 | [Page] |
This document is an extension to the base Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) protocol. It extends the ALTO Cost Map service and ALTO Property Map service so that the application can decide which endpoint(s) to connect based on not only numerical/ordinal cost values but also details of the paths. This is useful for applications whose performance is impacted by specified components of a network on the end-to-end paths, e.g., they may infer that several paths share common links and prevent traffic bottlenecks by avoiding such paths. This extension introduces a new abstraction called Abstract Network Element (ANE) to represent these components and encodes a network path as a vector of ANEs. Thus, it provides a more complete but still abstract graph representation of the underlying network(s) for informed traffic optimization among endpoints.¶
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Network performance metrics are crucial to the Quality of Experience (QoE) of today's applications. The ALTO protocol allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide guidance, such as topological distance between different end hosts, to overlay applications. Thus, the overlay applications can potentially improve the QoE by better orchestrating their traffic to utilize the resources in the underlying network infrastructure.¶
Existing ALTO Cost Map and Endpoint Cost Service provide only cost information on an end-to-end path defined by its <source, destination> endpoints: The base protocol [RFC7285] allows the services to expose the topological distances of end-to-end paths, while various extensions have been proposed to extend the capability of these services, e.g., to express other performance metrics [I-D.ietf-alto-performance-metrics], to query multiple costs simultaneously [RFC8189], and to obtain the time-varying values [RFC8896].¶
While the existing extensions are sufficient for many overlay applications, the QoE of some overlay applications depends not only on the cost information of end-to-end paths, but also on particular components of a network on the paths and their properties. For example, job completion time, which is an important QoE metric for a large-scale data analytics application, is impacted by shared bottleneck links inside the carrier network as link capacity may impact the rate of data input/output to the job. We refer to such components of a network as Abstract Network Elements (ANE).¶
Predicting such information can be very complex without the help of the ISP [AAAI2019]. With proper guidance from the ISP, an overlay application may be able to schedule its traffic for better QoE. In the meantime, it may be helpful as well for ISPs if applications could avoid using bottlenecks or challenging the network with poorly scheduled traffic.¶
Despite the benefits, ISPs are not likely to expose details on their network paths: first for the sake of confidentiality, second because it may increase volume and computation overhead, and last because it is difficult for ISPs to figure out what information and what details an application needs. Likewise, applications do not necessarily need all the network path details and are likely not able to understand them.¶
Therefore, it is beneficial for both parties if an ALTO server provides ALTO clients with an "abstract network state" that provides the necessary details to applications, while hiding the network complexity and confidential information. An "abstract network state" is a selected set of abstract representations of Abstract Network Elements traversed by the paths between <source, destination> pairs combined with properties of these Abstract Network Elements that are relevant to the overlay applications' QoE. Both an application via its ALTO client and the ISP via the ALTO server can achieve better confidentiality and resource utilization by appropriately abstracting relevant Abstract Network Elements. Server scalability can also be improved by combining Abstract Network Elements and their properties in a single response.¶
This document extends [RFC7285] to allow an ALTO server to convey "abstract network state", for paths defined by their <source, destination> pairs. To this end, it introduces a new cost type called "Path Vector". A Path Vector is an array of identifiers that identifies an Abstract Network Element, which can be associated with various properties. The associations between ANEs and their properties are encoded in an ALTO information resource called Unified Property Map, which is specified in [I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new].¶
For better confidentiality, this document aims to minimize information exposure.
In particular, this document enables and recommends that first ANEs are
constructed on demand, and second an ANE is only associated with properties that
are requested by an ALTO client. A Path Vector response involves two ALTO Maps:
the Cost Map that contains the Path Vector results and the up-to-date Unified
Property Map that contains the properties requested for these ANEs. To enforce
consistency and improve server scalability, this document uses the
multipart/related
message defined in [RFC2387] to return the two maps in a
single response.¶
The rest of the document is organized as follows. Section 3 introduces the extra terminologies that are used in this document. Section 4 uses an illustrative example to introduce the additional requirements of the ALTO framework, and discusses potential use cases. Section 5 gives an overview of the protocol design. Section 6 and Section 7 specify the extension to the ALTO IRD and the information resources, with some concrete examples presented in Section 8. Section 9 discusses the backward compatibility with the base protocol and existing extensions. Security and IANA considerations are discussed in Section 11 and Section 12 respectively.¶
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶
When the words appear in lower case, they are to be interpreted with their natural language meanings.¶
NOTE: This document depends on the Unified Property Map extension [I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new] and should be processed after the Unified Property Map document.¶
This document extends the ALTO base protocol [RFC7285] and the Unified Property Map extension [I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new]. In addition to the terms defined in these documents, this document also uses the following additional terms:¶
Abstract Network Element (ANE): An Abstract Network Element is an abstract representation for a component in a network that handles data packets and whose properties can potentially have an impact on the end-to-end performance of traffic. An ANE can be a physical device such as a router, a link or an interface, or an aggregation of devices such as a subnetwork, or a data center.¶
The definition of Abstract Network Element is similar to Network Element defined in [RFC2216] in the sense that they both provide an abstract representation of particular components of a network. However, they have different criteria on how these particular components are selected. Specifically, Network Element requires the components to be capable of exercising QoS control, while Abstract Network Element only requires the components to have an impact on the end-to-end performance.¶
This section gives an illustrative example of how an overlay application can benefit from the extension defined in this document.¶
Assume that an application has control over a set of flows, which may go through shared links or switches and share bottlenecks. The application hopes to schedule the traffic among multiple flows to get better performance. The capacity region information for those flows will benefit the scheduling. However, existing cost maps can not reveal such information.¶
Specifically, consider a network as shown in Figure 1. The network has 7 switches (sw1 to sw7) forming a dumb-bell topology. Switches sw1/sw3 provide access on one side, sw2/sw4 provide access on the other side, and sw5-sw7 form the backbone. End hosts eh1 to eh4 are connected to access switches sw1 to sw4 respectively. Assume that the bandwidth of link eh1 -> sw1 and link sw1 -> sw5 is 150 Mbps, and the bandwidth of the other links is 100 Mbps.¶
+-----+ | | --+ sw6 +-- / | | \ PID1 +-----+ / +-----+ \ +-----+ PID2 eh1__| |_ / \ ____| |__eh2 192.0.2.2 | sw1 | \ +--|--+ +--|--+ / | sw2 | 192.0.2.3 +-----+ \ | | | |/ +-----+ \_| sw5 +---------+ sw7 | PID3 +-----+ / | | | |\ +-----+ PID4 eh3__| |__/ +-----+ +-----+ \____| |__eh4 192.0.2.4 | sw3 | | sw4 | 192.0.2.5 +-----+ +-----+ bw(eh1--sw1) = bw(sw1--sw5) = 150 Mbps bw(eh2--sw2) = bw(eh3--sw3) = bw(eh4--sw4) = 100 Mbps bw(sw1--sw5) = bw(sw3--sw5) = bw(sw2--sw7) = bw(sw4--sw7) = 100 Mbps bw(sw5--sw6) = bw(sw5--sw7) = bw(sw6--sw7) = 100 Mbps
The single-node ALTO topology abstraction of the network is shown in Figure 2. Assume the cost map returns a hypothetical cost type representing the available bandwidth between a source and a destination.¶
+----------------------+ {eh1} | | {eh2} PID1 | | PID2 +------+ +------+ | | | | {eh3} | | {eh4} PID3 | | PID4 +------+ +------+ | | +----------------------+
Now assume the application wants to maximize the total rate of the traffic among a set of <source, destination> pairs, say eh1 -> eh2 and eh1 -> eh4. Let x denote the transmission rate of eh1 -> eh2 and y denote the rate of eh1 -> eh4. The objective function is¶
max(x + y).¶
With the ALTO Cost Map, the cost between PID1 and PID2 and between PID1 and PID4 will be 100 Mbps. And the client can get a capacity region of¶
x <= 100 Mbps, y <= 100 Mbps.¶
With this information, the client may mistakenly think it can achieve a maximum total rate of 200 Mbps. However, one can easily see that this rate is infeasible, as there are only two potential cases:¶
Case 1: eh1 -> eh2 and eh1 -> eh4 take different path segments from sw5 to sw7. For example, if eh1 -> eh2 uses path eh1 -> sw1 -> sw5 -> sw6 -> sw7 -> sw2 -> eh2 and eh1 -> eh4 uses path eh1 -> sw1 -> sw5 -> sw7 -> sw4 -> eh4, then the shared bottleneck links are eh1 -> sw1 and sw1 -> sw5. In this case, the capacity region is¶
x <= 100 Mbps y <= 100 Mbps x + y <= 150 Mbps¶
and the real optimal total rate is 150 Mbps.¶
Case 2: eh1 -> eh2 and eh1 -> eh4 take the same path segment from sw5 to sw7. For example, if eh1 -> eh2 uses path eh1 -> sw1 -> sw5 -> sw7 -> sw2 -> eh2 and eh1 -> eh4 also uses path eh1 -> sw1 -> sw5 -> sw7 -> sw4 -> eh4, then the shared bottleneck link is sw5 -> sw7. In this case, the capacity region is¶
x <= 100 Mbps y <= 100 Mbps x + y <= 100 Mbps¶
and the real optimal total rate is 100 Mbps.¶
Clearly, with more accurate and fine-grained information, the application can gain a better prediction of its traffic and may orchestrate its resources accordingly. However, to provide such information, the network needs to expose more details beyond the simple cost map abstraction. In particular:¶
In general, we can conclude that to support the multiple flow scheduling use case, the ALTO framework must be extended to satisfy the following additional requirements:¶
An ALTO server must provide essential information on ANEs on the path of a <source, destination> pair that are critical to the QoE of the overlay application.¶
An ALTO server must provide essential information on how the paths of different <source, destination> pairs share a common ANE.¶
An ALTO server must provide essential information on the properties associated with the ANEs.¶
The extension defined in this document proposes a solution to provide these details.¶
While the multiple flow scheduling problem is used to help identify the additional requirements, the extension defined in this document can be applied to a wide range of applications. This section highlights some real use cases that are reported.¶
One potential use case of the extension defined in this document is for large-scale data analytics such as [SENSE] and [LHC], where data of gigabytes, terabytes and even petabytes are transferred. For these applications, the QoE is usually measured as the job completion time, which is related to the completion time of all the data transfers belonging to the job. With the extension defined in this document, an ALTO client can identify bottlenecks inside the network. Therefore, the overlay application can make optimal traffic distribution or resource reservation (i.e., proportional to the size of the transferred data), leading to optimal job completion time and network resource utilization.¶
It is important to know the capabilities of various ANEs between two end hosts, especially in the mobile environment. With the extension defined in this document, an ALTO client may query the "network context" information, i.e., whether the two hosts are connected to the access network through a wireless link or a wire, and the capabilities of the access network. Thus, the client may use different data transfer mechanisms, or even deploy different 5G User Plane Functions (UPF) [I-D.ietf-dmm-5g-uplane-analysis] to optimize the data transfer.¶
A growing trend in today's applications is to bring storage and computation closer to the end users for better QoE, such as Content Delivery Network (CDN), AR/VR, and cloud gaming, as reported in various documents ([I-D.contreras-alto-service-edge], [I-D.huang-alto-mowie-for-network-aware-app], and [I-D.yang-alto-deliver-functions-over-networks]).¶
With the extension defined in this document, an ALTO server can selectively reveal the CDNs and service edges that reside along the paths between different end hosts, together with their properties such as capabilities (e.g., storage, GPU) and available Service Level Agreement (SLA) plans. Thus, an ALTO client may leverage the information to better conduct CDN request routing or offload functionalities from the user equipment to the service edge, with considerations on different resource constraints.¶
This section gives a non-normative overview of the extension defined in this document. It is assumed that readers are familiar with both the base protocol [RFC7285] and the Unified Property Map extension [I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new].¶
To satisfies the additional requirements, this extension:¶
Thus, an ALTO client can learn about the ANEs that are critical to the QoE of a <source, destination> pair by investigating the corresponding Path Vector value (AR1), identify common ANEs if an ANE appears in the Path Vectors of multiple <source, destination> pairs (AR2), and retrieve the properties of the ANEs by searching the Unified Property Map (AR3).¶
This extension introduces Abstract Network Element (ANE) as an indirect and network-agnostic way to specify a component or an aggregation of components of a network whose properties have an impact on the end-to-end performance for traffic between a source and a destination.¶
When an ANE is defined by the ALTO server, it is assigned an identifier, i.e., a string of type ANEName as specified in Section 6.1, and a set of associated properties.¶
In this extension, the associations between ANE and the properties are conveyed in a Unified Property Map. Thus, ANEs must constitute an entity domain (Section 5.1 of [I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new]), and each ANE property must be an entity property (Section 5.2 of [I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new]).¶
Specifically, this document defines a new entity domain called ane
as
specified in Section 6.2 and defines two initial properties for the ane
domain.¶
By design, ANEs are ephemeral and not to be used in further requests. More precisely, the corresponding ANE names are no longer valid beyond the scope of the Path Vector response or the incremental update stream for a Path Vector request. This has several benefits including better privacy of the ISPs and more flexible ANE computation.¶
For example, an ALTO server may define an ANE for each aggregated bottleneck link between the sources and destinations specified in the request. For requests with different sources and destinations, the bottlenecks may be different but can safely reuse the same ANE names. The client can still adjust its traffic based on the information but is difficult to infer the underlying topology with multiple queries.¶
However, sometimes an ISP may intend to selectively reveal some "persistent" network components which, opposite to being ephemeral, have a longer life cycle. For example, an ALTO server may define an ANE for each service edge cluster. Once a client chooses to use a service edge, e.g., by deploying some user-defined functions, it may want to stick to the service edge to avoid the complexity of state transition or synchronization, and continuously query the properties of the edge cluster.¶
This document provides a mechanism to expose such network components as persistent ANEs. A persistent ANE has a persistent ID that is registered in a Property Map, together with their properties. See Section 6.2.4 and Section 6.4.2 for more detailed instructions on how to identify ephemeral ANEs and persistent ANEs.¶
Resource-constrained ALTO clients may benefit from the filtering of Path Vector query results at the ALTO server, as an ALTO client may only require a subset of the available properties.¶
Specifically, the available properties for a given resource are announced in the
Information Resource Directory as a new capability called ane-property-names
.
The selected properties are specified in a filter called ane-property-names
in
the request body, and the response includes and only includes the selected
properties for the ANEs in the response.¶
The ane-property-names
capability for Cost Map and for Endpoint Cost Service
is specified in Section 7.2.4 and Section 7.3.4 respectively. The
ane-property-names
filter for Cost Map and Endpoint Cost Service is specified
in Section 7.2.3 and Section 7.3.3 accordingly.¶
For an ALTO client to correctly interpret the Path Vector, this extension specifies a new cost type called the Path Vector cost type.¶
The Path Vector cost type must convey both the interpretation and semantics in
the "cost-mode" and "cost-metric" respectively. Unfortunately, a single
"cost-mode" value cannot fully specify the interpretation of a Path Vector,
which is a compound data type. For example, in programming languages such as
C++, a Path Vector will have the type of JSONArray<ANEName>
.¶
Instead of extending the "type system" of ALTO, this document takes a simple and backward compatible approach. Specifically, the "cost-mode" of the Path Vector cost type is "array", which indicates the value is a JSON array. Then, an ALTO client must check the value of the "cost-metric". If the value is "ane-path", it means that the JSON array should be further interpreted as a path of ANENames.¶
The Path Vector cost type is specified in Section 6.5.¶
For a basic ALTO information resource, a response contains only one type of ALTO resources, e.g., Network Map, Cost Map, or Property Map. Thus, only one round of communication is required: An ALTO client sends a request to an ALTO server, and the ALTO server returns a response, as shown in Figure 3.¶
ALTO client ALTO server |-------------- Request ---------------->| |<------------- Response ----------------|
The extension defined in this document, on the other hand, involves two types of information resources: Path Vectors conveyed in an InfoResourceCostMap (defined in Section 11.2.3.6 of [RFC7285]) or an InfoResourceEndpointCostMap (defined in Section 11.5.1.6 of [RFC7285]), and ANE properties conveyed in an InfoResourceProperties (defined in Section 7.6 of [I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new]).¶
Instead of two consecutive message exchanges, the extension defined in this document enforces one round of communication. Specifically, the ALTO client must include the source and destination pairs and the requested ANE properties in a single request, and the ALTO server must return a single response containing both the Path Vectors and properties associated with the ANEs in the Path Vectors, as shown in Figure 4. Since the two parts are bundled together in one response message, their orders are interchangeable. See Section 7.2.6 and Section 7.3.6 for details.¶
ALTO client ALTO server |------------- PV Request -------------->| |<----- PV Response (Cost Map Part) -----| |<--- PV Response (Property Map Part) ---|
This design is based on the following considerations:¶
One approach to realize the one-round communication is to define a new media
type to contain both objects, but this violates modular design. This document
follows the standard-conforming usage of multipart/related
media type defined
in [RFC2387] to elegantly combine the objects. Path Vectors are encoded in an
InfoResourceCostMap or an InfoResourceEndpointCostMap, and the Property Map is
encoded in an InfoResourceProperties. They are encapsulated as parts of a
multipart message. The modular composition allows ALTO servers and clients to
reuse the data models of the existing information resources. Specifically, this
document addresses the following practical issues using multipart/related
.¶
ALTO uses media type to indicate the type of an entry in the Information
Resource Directory (IRD) (e.g., application/alto-costmap+json
for Cost Map
and application/alto-endpointcost+json
for Endpoint Cost Service). Simply
putting multipart/related
as the media type, however, makes it impossible
for an ALTO client to identify the type of service provided by related
entries.¶
To address this issue, this document uses the type
parameter to indicate the
root object of a multipart/related message. For a Cost Map resource, the
media-type
in the IRD entry is multipart/related
with the parameter
type=application/alto-costmap+json
; for an Endpoint Cost Service, the
parameter is type=application/alto-endpointcost+json
.¶
As the response of a Path Vector resource is a multipart message with two
different parts, it is important that each part can be uniquely identified.
Following the designs of [RFC8895], this extension requires that an ALTO
server assigns a unique identifier to each part of the multipart/related
response message. This identifier, referred to as a Part Resource ID (See
Section 6.6 for details), is present in the part message's Content-ID
header. By concatenating the Part Resource ID to the identifier of the Path
Vector request, an ALTO server/client can uniquely identify the Path Vector Part
or the Property Map part.¶
An ANE Name is encoded as a JSON string with the same format as that of the type PIDName (Section 10.1 of [RFC7285]).¶
The type ANEName is used in this document to indicate a string of this format.¶
The ANE domain associates property values with the Abstract Network Elements in a Property Map. Accordingly, the ANE domain always depends on a Property Map.¶
The entity identifiers are the ANE Names in the associated Property Map.¶
There is no hierarchy or inheritance for properties associated with ANEs.¶
When resource specific domains are defined with entities of domain type ane
,
the defining resource for entity domain type pid
MUST be a Property Map. The
media type of defining resources for the ane
domain is:¶
application/alto-propmap+json¶
Specifically, for ephemeral ANEs that appear in a Path Vector response, their
entity domain names MUST be exactly ".ane" and the defining resource of these
ANEs is the Property Map part of the multipart response. Meanwhile, for
persistent ANEs whose entity domain name has the format of "PROPMAP.ane" where
PROPMAP is the name of a Property Map resource, PROPMAP is the defining resource
of these ANEs. Persistent entities are persistent
because standalone queries
can be made by an ALTO client to their defining resources when the connection to
the Path Vector service is closed.¶
For example, the defining resource of an ephemeral ANE whose entity identifier is ".ane:NET1" is the Property Map part that contains this identifier. The defining resource of a persistent ANE whose entity identifier is "dc-props.ane:DC1" is the Property Map with the resource ID "dc-props".¶
An ANE Property Name is encoded as a JSON string with the same format as that of Entity Property Name (Section 5.2.2 of [I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new]).¶
In this document, two initial ANE property types are specified,
max-reservable-bandwidth
and persistent-entity-id
.¶
Note that the two property types defined in this document do not depend on any information resource, so their ResourceID part must be empty.¶
----- L1 / PID1 +---------------+ 10 Gbps +----------+ PID3 192.0.2.0/28+-+ +-----------+ +---------+ +--+192.0.2.32/28 | | MEC1 | | | | | +-----------+ | +-----+ | PID2 | | | +----------+ 192.0.2.16/28+-+ | | NET3 | | | 15 Gbps | | | \ +---------------+ | -------- L2 NET1 | +---------------+ | +-----------+ | PID4 | | MEC2 | +--+192.0.2.48/28 | +-----------+ | +---------------+ NET2
In this document, Figure 5 is used to illustrate the use of the two initial ANE property types. There are 3 sub-networks (NET1, NET2 and NET3) and two interconnection links (L1 and L2). It is assumed that each sub-network has sufficiently large bandwidth to be reserved.¶
max-reservable-bandwidth
¶
The maximum reservable bandwidth property stands for the maximum bandwidth that can be reserved for all the traffic that traverses an ANE. The value MUST be encoded as a non-negative numerical cost value as defined in Section 6.1.2.1 of [RFC7285] and the unit is bit per second. If this property is requested but not present in an ANE, it MUST be interpreted as that the ANE does not support bandwidth reservation.¶
ALTO entity properties expose information to ALTO clients. ALTO service providers should be made aware of the security ramifications related to the exposure of an entity property.¶
application/alto-propmap+json¶
To illustrate the use of max-reservable-bandwidth
, consider the network in
Figure 5. An ALTO server can create an ANE for each interconnection link,
where the initial value for max-reservable-bandwidth
is the link capacity.¶
persistent-entity-id
¶
The persistent entity ID property is the entity identifier of the persistent ANE which an ephemeral ANE presents (See Section 5.1.2 for details). The value of this property is encoded with the format defined in Section 5.1.3 of [I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new].¶
In this format, the entity ID combines:¶
With this format, the client has all the needed information for further standalone query properties on the persistent ANE.¶
ALTO entity properties expose information to ALTO clients. ALTO service providers should be made aware of the security ramifications related to the exposure of an entity property.¶
application/alto-propmap+json¶
To illustrate the use of persistent-entity-id
, consider the network in
Figure 5. Assume the ALTO server has a Property Map resource called
"mec-props" that defines persistent ANEs "MEC1" and "MEC2" that represent the
corresponding mobile edge computing (MEC) clusters. Since MEC1 is associated
with NET1, the persistent-entity-id
of the ephemeral ANE .ane:NET1
is the
persistent entity id mec-props.ane:MEC1
.¶
This document defines a new cost type, which is referred to as the Path Vector
cost type. An ALTO server MUST offer this cost type if it supports the extension
defined in this document.¶
The cost metric "ane-path" indicates the value of such a cost type conveys an array of ANE names, where each ANE name uniquely represents an ANE traversed by traffic from a source to a destination.¶
An ALTO client MUST interpret the Path Vector as if the traffic between a source and a destination logically traverses the ANEs in the same order as they appear in the Path Vector.¶
The cost mode "array" indicates that every cost value in the response body of a (Filtered) Cost Map or an Endpoint Cost Service MUST be interpreted as a JSON array object.¶
Note that this cost mode only requires the cost value to be a JSON array of JSONValue. However, an ALTO server that enables this extension MUST return a JSON array of ANEName (Section 6.1) when the cost metric is "ane-path".¶
A Part Resource ID is encoded as a JSON string with the same format as that of the type ResourceID (Section 10.2 of [RFC7285]).¶
Even though the client-id assigned to a Path Vector request and the Part Resource ID MAY contain up to 64 characters by their own definition, their concatenation (see Section 5.3.2) MUST also conform to the same length constraint. The same requirement applies to the resource ID of the Path Vector resource, too. Thus, it is RECOMMENDED to limit the length of resource ID and client ID related to a Path Vector resource to 31 characters.¶
This document uses the same syntax and notations as introduced in Section 8.2 of RFC 7285 [RFC7285] to specify the extensions to existing ALTO resources and services.¶
This document introduces a new ALTO resource called multipart Filtered Cost Map resource, which allows an ALTO server to provide other ALTO resources associated with the Cost Map resource in the same response.¶
The media type of the multipart Filtered Cost Map resource is
multipart/related;type=application/alto-costmap+json
.¶
The multipart Filtered Cost Map is requested using the HTTP POST method.¶
The input parameters of the multipart Filtered Cost Map are supplied in the body
of an HTTP POST request. This document extends the input parameters to a
Filtered Cost Map, which is defined as a JSON object of type
ReqFilteredCostMap
in Section 4.1.2 of RFC 8189 [RFC8189], with a data
format indicated by the media type application/alto-costmapfilter+json
, which
is a JSON object of type PVReqFilteredCostMap:¶
object { [EntityPropertyName ane-property-names<0..*>;] } PVReqFilteredCostMap : ReqFilteredCostMap;¶
with fields:¶
A list of selected ANE properties to be included in the response. Each
property in this list MUST match one of the supported ANE properties indicated
in the resource's ane-property-names
capability (See Section 7.2.4). If the
field is NOT present, it MUST be interpreted as an empty list.¶
Example: Consider the network in Figure 1. If an ALTO client wants to
query the max-reservable-bandwidth
between PID1 and PID2, it can submit the
following request.¶
POST /costmap/pv HTTP/1.1 Host: alto.example.com Accept: multipart/related;type=application/alto-costmap+json, application/alto-error+json Content-Length: 201 Content-Type: application/alto-costmapfilter+json { "cost-type": { "cost-mode": "array", "cost-metric": "ane-path" }, "pids": { "srcs": [ "PID1" ], "dsts": [ "PID2" ] }, "ane-property-names": [ "max-reservable-bandwidth" ] }¶
The multipart Filtered Cost Map resource extends the capabilities defined in Section 4.1.1 of [RFC8189]. The capabilities are defined by a JSON object of type PVFilteredCostMapCapabilities:¶
object { [EntityPropertyName ane-property-names<0..*>;] } PVFilteredCostMapCapabilities : FilteredCostMapCapabilities;¶
with fields:¶
The cost-type-names
field MUST include the Path Vector cost type,
unless explicitly documented by a future extension. This also implies that the
Path Vector cost type MUST be defined in the cost-types
of the Information
Resource Directory's meta
field.¶
If the cost-type-names
field includes the Path Vector cost type,
cost-constraints
field MUST be false
or not present unless specifically
instructed by a future document.¶
If the cost-type-names
field includes the Path Vector cost type and the
testable-cost-type-names
field is present, the Path Vector cost type MUST
NOT be included in the testable-cost-type-names
field unless specifically
instructed by a future document.¶
Defines a list of ANE properties that can be returned. If the field is NOT present, it MUST be interpreted as an empty list, indicating the ALTO server cannot provide any ANE property.¶
This member MUST include the resource ID of the network map based on which the
PIDs are defined. If this resource supports persistent-entity-id
, it MUST also
include the defining resources of persistent ANEs that may appear in the response.¶
The response MUST indicate an error, using ALTO protocol error handling, as defined in Section 8.5 of [RFC7285], if the request is invalid.¶
The "Content-Type" header of the response MUST be multipart/related
as defined
by [RFC2387] with the following parameters:¶
The type parameter MUST be "application/alto-costmap+json". Note that [RFC2387] permits both parameters with and without the double quotes.¶
The start parameter is as defined in [RFC2387]. If present, it MUST have the
same value as the Content-ID
header of the Path Vector part.¶
The body of the response MUST consist of two parts:¶
The Path Vector part MUST include Content-ID
and Content-Type
in its
header. The value of Content-ID
MUST has the format of a Part Resource ID.
The Content-Type
MUST be application/alto-costmap+json
.¶
The body of the Path Vector part MUST be a JSON object with the same format as
defined in Section 11.2.3.6 of [RFC7285] when the cost-type
field is
present in the input parameters and MUST be a JSON object with the same format
as defined in Section 4.1.3 of [RFC8189] if the multi-cost-types
field is
present. The JSON object MUST include the
vtag
field in the meta
field, which provides the version tag of the
returned CostMapData. The resource ID of the version tag MUST follow the
format of¶
resource-id '.' part-resource-id¶
where resource-id
is the resource Id of the Path Vector resource, and
part-resource-id
has the same value as the Content-ID
of the Path Vector
part.
The meta
field MUST also include the dependent-vtags
field, whose value is
a single-element array to indicate the version tag of the network map used,
where the network map is specified in the uses
attribute of the multipart
Filtered Cost Map resource in IRD.¶
The Unified Property Map part MUST also include Content-ID
and
Content-Type
in its header. The value of Content-ID
has the format of a
Part Resource ID. The Content-Type
MUST be application/alto-propmap+json
.¶
The body of the Unified Property Map part is a JSON object with the same
format as defined in Section 4.6 of [I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new]. The
JSON object MUST include the dependent-vtags
field in the meta
field. The
value of the dependent-vtags
field MUST be an array of VersionTag objects as
defined by Section 10.3 of [RFC7285]. The vtag
of the Path Vector part MUST
be included in the dependent-vtags
. If persistent-entity-id
is requested, the
version tags of the dependent resources that MAY expose the entities in the
response MUST also be included.¶
The PropertyMapData has one member for each ANEName that appears in the Path
Vector part, which is an entity identifier belonging to the self-defined
entity domain as defined in Section 5.1.2.3 of
[I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new]. The EntityProps for each ANE has one
member for each property that is both 1) associated with the ANE, and 2)
specified in the ane-property-names
in the request. If the Path Vector cost
type is not included in the cost-type
field or the multi-cost-type
field,
the property-map
field MUST be present and the value MUST be an empty object
({}).¶
A complete and valid response MUST include both the Path Vector part and the Property Map part in the multipart message. If any part is NOT present, the client MUST discard the received information and send another request if necessary.¶
According to [RFC2387], the Path Vector part, whose media type is
the same as the type
parameter of the multipart response message, is the root
object. Thus, it is the element the application processes first. Even though the
start
parameter allows it to be placed anywhere in the part sequence, it is
RECOMMENDED that the parts arrive in the same order as they are processed, i.e.,
the Path Vector part is always put as the first part, followed by the Property
Map part. When doing so, an ALTO server MAY choose not to set the start
parameter, which implies the first part is the root object.¶
Example: Consider the network in Figure 1. The response of the example
request in Section 7.2.3 is as follows, where ANE1
represents the
aggregation of all the switches in the network.¶
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 821 Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary=example-1; type=application/alto-costmap+json --example-1 Content-ID: costmap Content-Type: application/alto-costmap+json { "meta": { "vtag": { "resource-id": "filtered-cost-map-pv.costmap", "tag": "d827f484cb66ce6df6b5077cb8562b0a" }, "dependent-vtags": [ { "resource-id": "my-default-networkmap", "tag": "75ed013b3cb58f896e839582504f6228" } ], "cost-type": { "cost-mode": "array", "cost-metric": "ane-path" } }, "cost-map": { "PID1": { "PID2": ["ANE1"] } } } --example-1 Content-ID: propmap Content-Type: application/alto-propmap+json { "meta": { "dependent-vtags": [ { "resource-id": "filtered-cost-map-pv.costmap", "tag": "d827f484cb66ce6df6b5077cb8562b0a" } ] }, "property-map": { ".ane:ANE1": { "max-reservable-bandwidth": 100000000 } } }¶
This document introduces a new ALTO resource called multipart Endpoint Cost Service, which allows an ALTO server to provide other ALTO resources associated with the Endpoint Cost Service resource in the same response.¶
The media type of the multipart Endpoint Cost Service resource is
multipart/related;type=application/alto-endpointcost+json
.¶
The multipart Endpoint Cost Service resource is requested using the HTTP POST method.¶
The input parameters of the multipart Endpoint Cost Service resource are
supplied in the body of an HTTP POST request. This document extends the input
parameters to an Endpoint Cost Service, which is defined as a JSON object of
type ReqEndpointCost in Section 4.2.2 in RFC 8189 [RFC8189], with a data
format indicated by the media type application/alto-endpointcostparams+json
,
which is a JSON object of type PVReqEndpointCost:¶
object { [EntityPropertyName ane-property-names<0..*>;] } PVReqEndpointcost : ReqEndpointcostMap;¶
with fields:¶
This document defines the ane-property-names
in PVReqEndpointcost as the
same as in PVReqFilteredCostMap. See Section 7.2.3.¶
Example: Consider the network in Figure 1. If an ALTO client wants to
query the max-reservable-bandwidth
between eh1 and eh2, it can submit the
following request.¶
POST /ecs/pv HTTP/1.1 Host: alto.example.com Accept: multipart/related;type=application/alto-endpointcost+json, application/alto-error+json Content-Length: 222 Content-Type: application/alto-endpointcostparams+json { "cost-type": { "cost-mode": "array", "cost-metric": "ane-path" }, "endpoints": { "srcs": [ "ipv4:192.0.2.2" ], "dsts": [ "ipv4:192.0.2.18" ] }, "ane-property-names": [ "max-reservable-bandwidth" ] }¶
The capabilities of the multipart Endpoint Cost Service resource are defined by a JSON object of type PVEndpointcostCapabilities, which is defined as the same as PVFilteredCostMapCapabilities. See Section 7.2.4.¶
If this resource supports persistent-entity-id
, it MUST also include the
defining resources of persistent ANEs that may appear in the response.¶
The response MUST indicate an error, using ALTO protocol error handling, as defined in Section 8.5 of [RFC7285], if the request is invalid.¶
The "Content-Type" header of the response MUST be multipart/related
as defined
by [RFC7285] with the following parameters:¶
The type parameter MUST be "application/alto-endpointcost+json".¶
The start parameter is as defined in Section 7.2.6.¶
The body MUST consist of two parts:¶
The Path Vector part MUST include Content-ID
and Content-Type
in its
header. The value of Content-ID
MUST has the format of a Part Resource ID.
The Content-Type
MUST be application/alto-endpointcost+json
.¶
The body of the Path Vector part MUST be a JSON object with the same format as
defined in Section 11.5.1.6 of [RFC7285] when the cost-type
field is
present in the input parameters and MUST be a JSON object with the same format
as defined in Section 4.1.3 of [RFC8189] if the multi-cost-types
field is
present. The JSON object MUST include the
vtag
field in the meta
field, which provides the version tag of the returned
EndpointCostMapData. The resource ID of the version tag MUST follow the format of¶
resource-id '.' part-resource-id¶
where resource-id
is the resource Id of the Path Vector resource, and
part-resource-id
has the same value as the Content-ID
of the Path Vector
part.¶
The Unified Property Map part MUST also include Content-ID
and
Content-Type
in its header. The value of Content-ID
MUST has the format
of a Part Resource ID. The Content-Type
MUST be
application/alto-propmap+json
.¶
The body of the Unified Property Map part MUST be a JSON object with the same
format as defined in Section 4.6 of [I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new]. The
JSON object MUST include the dependent-vtags
field in the meta
field. The
value of the dependent-vtags
field MUST be an array of VersionTag objects as
defined by Section 10.3 of [RFC7285]. The vtag
of the Path Vector part MUST
be included in the dependent-vtags
. If persistent-entity-id
is requested, the
version tags of the dependent resources that MAY expose the entities in the
response MUST also be included.¶
The PropertyMapData has one member for each ANEName that appears in the Path
Vector part, which is an entity identifier belonging to the self-defined
entity domain as defined in Section 5.1.2.3 of
[I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new]. The EntityProps for each ANE has one
member for each property that is both 1) associated with the ANE, and 2)
specified in the ane-property-names
in the request. If the Path Vector cost
type is not included in the cost-type
field or the multi-cost-type
field,
the property-map
field MUST be present and the value MUST be an empty object
({}).¶
A complete and valid response MUST include both the Path Vector part and the Property Map part in the multipart message. If any part is NOT present, the client MUST discard the received information and send another request if necessary.¶
According to [RFC2387], the Path Vector part, whose media type is
the same as the type
parameter of the multipart response message, is the root
object. Thus, it is the element the application processes first. Even though the
start
parameter allows it to be placed anywhere in the part sequence, it is
RECOMMENDED that the parts arrive in the same order as they are processed, i.e.,
the Path Vector part is always put as the first part, followed by the Property
Map part. When doing so, an ALTO server MAY choose not to set the start
parameter, which implies the first part is the root object.¶
Example: Consider the network in Figure 1. The response of the example request in Section 7.3.3 is as follows.¶
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 810 Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary=example-1; type=application/alto-endpointcost+json --example-1 Content-ID: ecs Content-Type: application/alto-endpointcost+json { "meta": { "vtag": { "resource-id": "ecs-pv.costmap", "tag": "d827f484cb66ce6df6b5077cb8562b0a" }, "dependent-vtags": [ { "resource-id": "my-default-networkmap", "tag": "75ed013b3cb58f896e839582504f6228" } ], "cost-type": { "cost-mode": "array", "cost-metric": "ane-path" } }, "cost-map": { "ipv4:192.0.2.2": { "ipv4:192.0.2.18": ["ANE1"] } } } --example-1 Content-ID: propmap Content-Type: application/alto-propmap+json { "meta": { "dependent-vtags": [ { "resource-id": "ecs-pv.costmap", "tag": "d827f484cb66ce6df6b5077cb8562b0a" } ] }, "property-map": { ".ane:ANE1": { "max-reservable-bandwidth": 100000000 } } }¶
This section lists some examples of Path Vector queries and the corresponding responses. Some long lines are truncated for better readability.¶
To give a comprehensive example of the extension defined in this document, we consider the network in Figure 5. Assume that the ALTO server provides the following information resources:¶
my-default-networkmap
: A Network Map resource which contains the PIDs in the
network.¶
filtered-cost-map-pv
: A Multipart Filtered Cost Map resource for Path Vector,
which exposes the max-reservable-bandwidth
property for the PIDs in
my-default-networkmap
.¶
ane-props
: A filtered Unified Property resource that exposes the
information for persistent ANEs in the network.¶
endpoint-cost-pv
: A Multipart Endpoint Cost Service for Path Vector, which
exposes the max-reservable-bandwidth
and the persistent-entity-id
properties.¶
update-pv
: An Update Stream service, which provides the incremental update
service for the endpoint-cost-pv
service.¶
multicost-pv
: A Multipart Endpoint Cost Service with both Multi-Cost and
Path Vector.¶
Below is the Information Resource Directory of the example ALTO server. To
enable the extension defined in this document, the path-vector
cost type
(Section 6.5) is defined in the cost-types
of the meta
field, and is
included in the cost-type-names
of resources filtered-cost-map-pv
and
endpoint-cost-pv
.¶
{ "meta": { "cost-types": { "path-vector": { "cost-mode": "array", "cost-metric": "ane-path" }, "num-rc": { "cost-mode": "numerical", "cost-metric": "routingcost" } } }, "resources": { "my-default-networkmap": { "uri" : "https://alto.example.com/networkmap", "media-type" : "application/alto-networkmap+json" }, "filtered-cost-map-pv": { "uri": "https://alto.example.com/costmap/pv", "media-type": "multipart/related; type=application/alto-costmap+json", "accepts": "application/alto-costmapfilter+json", "capabilities": { "cost-type-names": [ "path-vector" ], "ane-property-names": [ "max-reservable-bandwidth" ] }, "uses": [ "my-default-networkmap" ] }, "ane-props": { "uri": "https://alto.example.com/ane-props", "media-type": "application/alto-propmap+json", "accepts": "application/alto-propmapparams+json", "capabilities": { "mappings": { ".ane": [ "cpu" ] } } }, "endpoint-cost-pv": { "uri": "https://alto.exmaple.com/endpointcost/pv", "media-type": "multipart/related; type=application/alto-endpointcost+json", "accepts": "application/alto-endpointcostparams+json", "capabilities": { "cost-type-names": [ "path-vector" ], "ane-property-names": [ "max-reservable-bandwidth", "persistent-entity-id" ] }, "uses": [ "ane-props" ] }, "update-pv": { "uri": "https://alto.example.com/updates/pv", "media-type": "text/event-stream", "uses": [ "endpoint-cost-pv" ], "accepts": "application/alto-updatestreamparams+json", "capabilities": { "support-stream-control": true } }, "multicost-pv": { "uri": "https://alto.exmaple.com/endpointcost/mcpv", "media-type": "multipart/related; type=application/alto-endpointcost+json", "accepts": "application/alto-endpointcostparams+json", "capabilities": { "cost-type-names": [ "path-vector", "num-rc" ], "max-cost-types": 2, "testable-cost-type-names": [ "num-rc" ] "ane-property-names": [ "max-reservable-bandwidth", "persistent-entity-id" ] }, "uses": [ "ane-props" ] } } }¶
The following examples demonstrate the request to the filtered-cost-map-pv
resource and the corresponding response.¶
The request uses the "path-vector" cost type in the cost-type
field. The
ane-property-names
field is missing, indicating that the client only requests
for the Path Vector but not the ANE properties.¶
The response consists of two parts. The first part returns the array of ANEName
for each source and destination pair. There are two ANEs, where L1
represents
the interconnection link L1, and L2
represents the interconnection link L2.¶
The second part returns an empty Property Map. Note that the ANE entries are omitted since they have no properties (See Section 3.1 of [I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new]).¶
POST /costmap/pv HTTP/1.1 Host: alto.example.com Accept: multipart/related;type=application/alto-costmap+json, application/alto-error+json Content-Length: 153 Content-Type: application/alto-costmapfilter+json { "cost-type": { "cost-mode": "array", "cost-metric": "ane-path" }, "pids": { "srcs": [ "PID1" ], "dsts": [ "PID3", "PID4" ] } }¶
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 818 Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary=example-1; type=application/alto-costmap+json --example-1 Content-ID: costmap Content-Type: application/alto-costmap+json { "meta": { "vtag": { "resource-id": "filtered-cost-map-pv.costmap", "tag": "d827f484cb66ce6df6b5077cb8562b0a" }, "dependent-vtags": [ { "resource-id": "my-default-networkmap", "tag": "75ed013b3cb58f896e839582504f6228" } ], "cost-type": { "cost-mode": "array", "cost-metric": "ane-path" } }, "cost-map": { "PID1": { "PID3": [ "L1" ], "PID4": [ "L1", "L2" ] } } } --example-1 Content-ID: propmap Content-Type: application/alto-propmap+json { "meta": { "dependent-vtags": [ { "resource-id": "filtered-cost-map-pv.costmap", "tag": "d827f484cb66ce6df6b5077cb8562b0a" } ] }, "property-map": { } }¶
The following examples demonstrate the request to the endpoint-cost-pv
resource and the corresponding response.¶
The request uses the Path Vector cost type in the cost-type
field, and
queries the Maximum Reservable Bandwidth ANE property and the Persistent Entity
property for two source and destination pairs: 192.0.2.34 -> 192.0.2.2 and
192.0.2.34 -> 192.0.2.50.¶
The response consists of two parts. The first part returns the array of ANEName for each valid source and destination pair. As one can see in Figure 5, flow 192.0.2.34 -> 192.0.2.2 traverses NET2, L1 and NET1, and flow 192.0.2.34 -> 192.0.2.50 traverses NET2, L2 and NET3.¶
The second part returns the requested properties of ANEs. Assume NET1, NET2 and NET3 has
sufficient bandwidth and their max-reservable-bandwidth
values are set to a sufficiently
large number (50 Gbps in this case). On the other hand, assume there are no
prior reservation on L1 and L2, and their max-reservable-bandwidth
values are
the corresponding link capacity (10 Gbps for L1 and 15 Gbps for L2).¶
Both NET1 and NET2 have a mobile edge deployed, i.e., MEC1 in NET1 and MEC2 in
NET2. Assume the ANEName for MEC1 and MEC2 are MEC1
and MEC2
and their
properties can be retrieved from the Property Map ane-props
. Thus, the
persistent-entity-id
property of NET1 and NET3 are ane-props.ane:MEC1
and
ane-props.ane:MEC2
respectively.¶
POST /endpointcost/pv HTTP/1.1 Host: alto.example.com Accept: multipart/related; type=application/alto-endpointcost+json, application/alto-error+json Content-Length: 278 Content-Type: application/alto-endpointcostparams+json { "cost-type": { "cost-mode": "array", "cost-metric": "ane-path" }, "endpoints": { "srcs": [ "ipv4:192.0.2.34" ], "dsts": [ "ipv4:192.0.2.2", "ipv4:192.0.2.50" ] }, "ane-property-names": [ "max-reservable-bandwidth", "persistent-entity-id" ] }¶
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 1305 Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary=example-2; type=application/alto-endpointcost+json --example-2 Content-ID: ecs Content-Type: application/alto-endpointcost+json { "meta": { "vtags": { "resource-id": "endpoint-cost-pv.ecs", "tag": "bb6bb72eafe8f9bdc4f335c7ed3b10822a391cef" }, "cost-type": { "cost-mode": "array", "cost-metric": "ane-path" } }, "endpoint-cost-map": { "ipv4:192.0.2.34": { "ipv4:192.0.2.2": [ "NET3", "L1", "NET1" ], "ipv4:192.0.2.50": [ "NET3", "L2", "NET2" ] } } } --example-2 Content-ID: propmap Content-Type: application/alto-propmap+json { "meta": { "dependent-vtags": [ { "resource-id": "endpoint-cost-pv.ecs", "tag": "bb6bb72eafe8f9bdc4f335c7ed3b10822a391cef" }, { "resource-id": "ane-props", "tag": "bf3c8c1819d2421c9a95a9d02af557a3" } ] }, "property-map": { ".ane:NET1": { "max-reservable-bandwidth": 50000000000, "persistent-entity-id": "ane-props.ane:MEC1" }, ".ane:NET2": { "max-reservable-bandwidth": 50000000000, "persistent-entity-id": "ane-props.ane:MEC2" }, ".ane:NET3": { "max-reservable-bandwidth": 50000000000 }, ".ane:L1": { "max-reservable-bandwidth": 10000000000 }, ".ane:L2": { "max-reservable-bandwidth": 15000000000 } } }¶
As mentioned in Section 6.5.1, an advanced ALTO server may obfuscate the
response in order to preserve its own privacy or conform to its own policies.
For example, an ALTO server may choose to aggregate NET1 and L1 as a new ANE
with ANE name AGGR1
, and aggregate NET2 and L2 as a new ANE with ANE name
AGGR2
. The max-reservable-bandwidth
of AGGR1
takes the value of L1, which
is smaller than that of NET1, and the persistent-entity-id
of AGGR1
takes
the value of NET1. The properties of AGGR2
are computed in a similar way and
the obfuscated response is as shown below. Note that the obfuscation of Path
Vector responses is implementation-specific and is out of the scope of this
document, and developers may refer to Section 11 for further references.¶
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 1157 Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary=example-2; type=application/alto-endpointcost+json --example-2 Content-ID: ecs Content-Type: application/alto-endpointcost+json { "meta": { "vtags": { "resource-id": "endpoint-cost-pv.ecs", "tag": "bb6bb72eafe8f9bdc4f335c7ed3b10822a391cef" }, "cost-type": { "cost-mode": "array", "cost-metric": "ane-path" } }, "endpoint-cost-map": { "ipv4:192.0.2.34": { "ipv4:192.0.2.2": [ "NET3", "AGGR1" ], "ipv4:192.0.2.50": [ "NET3", "AGGR2" ] } } } --example-2 Content-ID: propmap Content-Type: application/alto-propmap+json { "meta": { "dependent-vtags": [ { "resource-id": "endpoint-cost-pv.ecs", "tag": "bb6bb72eafe8f9bdc4f335c7ed3b10822a391cef" }, { "resource-id": "ane-props", "tag": "bf3c8c1819d2421c9a95a9d02af557a3" } ] }, "property-map": { ".ane:AGGR1": { "max-reservable-bandwidth": 10000000000, "persistent-entity-id": "ane-props.ane:MEC1" }, ".ane:AGGR2": { "max-reservable-bandwidth": 15000000000, "persistent-entity-id": "ane-props.ane:MEC2" }, ".ane:NET3": { "max-reservable-bandwidth": 50000000000 } } }¶
In this example, an ALTO client subscribes to the incremental update for the
multipart Endpoint Cost Service resource endpoint-cost-pv
.¶
POST /updates/pv HTTP/1.1 Host: alto.example.com Accept: text/event-stream Content-Type: application/alto-updatestreamparams+json Content-Length: 112 { "add": { "ecspvsub1": { "resource-id": "endpoint-cost-pv", "input": <ecs-input> } } }¶
Based on the server-side process defined in [RFC8895], the ALTO server will
send the control-uri
first using Server-Sent Event (SSE), followed by the full
response of the multipart message.¶
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Connection: keep-alive Content-Type: text/event-stream event: application/alto-updatestreamcontrol+json data: {"control-uri": "https://alto.example.com/updates/streams/123"} event: multipart/related;boundary=example-3; type=application/alto-endpointcost+json,ecspvsub1 data: --example-3 data: Content-ID: ecsmap data: Content-Type: application/alto-endpointcost+json data: data: <endpoint-cost-map-entry> data: --example-3 data: Content-ID: propmap data: Content-Type: application/alto-propmap+json data: data: <property-map-entry> data: --example-3--¶
When the contents change, the ALTO server will publish the updates for each node in this tree separately.¶
event: application/merge-patch+json, ecspvsub1.ecsmap data: <Merge patch for endpoint-cost-map-update> event: application/merge-patch+json, ecspvsub1.propmap data: <Merge patch for property-map-update>¶
The following examples demonstrate the request to the multicost-pv
resource and the corresponding response.¶
The request asks for two cost types: the first is the Path Vector cost type, and the second is a numerical routing cost. It also queries the Maximum Reservable Bandwidth ANE property and the Persistent Entity property for two source and destination pairs: 192.0.2.34 -> 192.0.2.2 and 192.0.2.34 -> 192.0.2.50.¶
The response consists of two parts. The first part returns a JSONArray that contains two JSONValue for each requested source and destination pair: the first JSONValue is a JSONArray of ANENames, which is the value of the Path Vector cost type, and the second JSONValue is a JSONNumber which is the value of the routing cost. The second part is the same as in Section 8.3¶
POST /endpointcost/mcpv HTTP/1.1 Host: alto.example.com Accept: multipart/related; type=application/alto-endpointcost+json, application/alto-error+json Content-Length: 351 Content-Type: application/alto-endpointcostparams+json { "multi-cost-types": [ { "cost-mode": "array", "cost-metric": "ane-path" }, { "cost-mode": "numerical", "cost-metric": "routingcost" } ], "endpoints": { "srcs": [ "ipv4:192.0.2.34" ], "dsts": [ "ipv4:192.0.2.2", "ipv4:192.0.2.50" ] }, "ane-property-names": [ "max-reservable-bandwidth", "persistent-entity-id" ] }¶
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 1240 Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary=example-2; type=application/alto-endpointcost+json --example-2 Content-ID: ecs Content-Type: application/alto-endpointcost+json { "meta": { "vtags": { "resource-id": "endpoint-cost-pv.ecs", "tag": "bb6bb72eafe8f9bdc4f335c7ed3b10822a391cef" }, "multi-cost-types": [ { "cost-mode": "array", "cost-metric": "ane-path" }, { "cost-mode": "numerical", "cost-metric": "routingcost" } ] }, "endpoint-cost-map": { "ipv4:192.0.2.34": { "ipv4:192.0.2.2": [[ "NET3", "AGGR1" ], 1], "ipv4:192.0.2.50": [[ "NET3", "AGGR2" ], 1] } } } --example-2 Content-ID: propmap Content-Type: application/alto-propmap+json { "meta": { "dependent-vtags": [ { "resource-id": "endpoint-cost-pv.ecs", "tag": "bb6bb72eafe8f9bdc4f335c7ed3b10822a391cef" }, { "resource-id": "ane-props", "tag": "bf3c8c1819d2421c9a95a9d02af557a3" } ] }, "property-map": { ".ane:AGGR1": { "max-reservable-bandwidth": 10000000000, "persistent-entity-id": "ane-props.ane:MEC1" }, ".ane:AGGR2": { "max-reservable-bandwidth": 15000000000, "persistent-entity-id": "ane-props.ane:MEC2" }, ".ane:NET3": { "max-reservable-bandwidth": 50000000000 } } }¶
The multipart Filtered Cost Map resource and the multipart Endpoint Cost Service resource has no backward compatibility issue with legacy ALTO clients and servers. Although these two types of resources reuse the media types defined in the base ALTO protocol for the accept input parameters, they have different media types for responses. If the ALTO server provides these two types of resources, but the ALTO client does not support them, the ALTO client will ignore the resources without incurring any incompatibility problem.¶
The extension defined in this document is compatible with the multi-cost
extension [RFC8189]. Such a resource has a media type of either
multipart/related; type=application/alto-costmap+json
or multipart/related;
type=application/alto-endpointcost+json
. Its cost-constraints
field must
either be false
or not present and the Path Vector cost type must be present
in the cost-type-names
capability field but must not be present in the
testable-cost-type-names
field, as specified in Section 7.2.4 and Section 7.3.4.¶
ALTO clients and servers MUST follow the specifications given in Section 5.2 of [RFC8895] to support incremental updates for a Path Vector resource.¶
The extension specified in this document is compatible with the Cost Calendar extension [RFC8896]. When used together with the Cost Calendar extension, the cost value between a source and a destination is an array of Path Vectors, where the k-th Path Vector refers to the abstract network paths traversed in the k-th time interval by traffic from the source to the destination.¶
When used with time-varying properties, e.g., maximum reservable bandwidth (maxresbw), a property of a single ANE may also have different values in different time intervals. In this case, if such an ANE has different property values in two time intervals, it MUST be treated as two different ANEs, i.e., with different entity identifiers. However, if it has the same property values in two time intervals, it MAY use the same identifier.¶
This rule allows the Path Vector extension to represent both changes of ANEs and changes of the ANEs' properties in a uniform way. The Path Vector part is calendared in a compatible way, and the Property Map part is not affected by the calendar extension.¶
The two extensions combined together can provide the historical network correlation information for a set of source and destination pairs. A network broker or client may use this information to derive other resource requirements such as Time-Block-Maximum Bandwidth, Bandwidth-Sliding-Window, and Time-Bandwidth-Product (TBP) (See [SENSE] for details).¶
The constraint test is a simple approach to query the data. It allows users to
filter the query result by specifying some boolean tests. This approach is
already used in the ALTO protocol. [RFC7285] and [RFC8189] allow ALTO
clients to specify the constraints
and or-constraints
tests to better
filter the result.¶
However, the current syntax can only be used to test scalar cost types, and cannot easily express constraints on complex cost types, e.g., the Path Vector cost type defined in this document.¶
In practice, developing a bespoke language for general-purpose boolean tests can be a complex undertaking, and it is conceivable that there are some existing implementations already (the authors have not done an exhaustive search to determine whether there are such implementations). One avenue to develop such a language may be to explore extending current query languages like XQuery [XQuery] or JSONiq [JSONiq] and integrating these with ALTO.¶
Filtering the Path Vector results or developing a more sophisticated filtering mechanism is beyond the scope of this document.¶
Querying multiple ALTO information resources continuously is a general requirement. Enabling such a capability, however, must address general issues like efficiency and consistency. The incremental update extension [RFC8895] supports submitting multiple queries in a single request, and allows flexible control over the queries. However, it does not cover the case introduced in this document where multiple resources are needed for a single request.¶
This extension gives an example of using a multipart message to encode the responses from two specific ALTO information resources: a Filtered Cost Map or an Endpoint Cost Service, and a Property Map. By packing multiple resources in a single response, the implication is that servers may proactively push related information resources to clients.¶
Thus, it is worth looking into the direction of extending the SSE mechanism as used in the incremental update extension [RFC8895], or upgrading to HTTP/2 [RFC7540] and HTTP/3 [I-D.ietf-quic-http], which provides the ability to multiplex queries and to allow servers proactively send related information resources.¶
Defining a general multi-resource query mechanism is out of the scope of this document.¶
This document is an extension of the base ALTO protocol, so the Security Considerations [RFC7285] of the base ALTO protocol fully apply when this extension is provided by an ALTO server.¶
The Path Vector extension requires additional scrutiny on three security considerations discussed in the base protocol: confidentiality of ALTO information (Section 15.3 of [RFC7285]), potential undesirable guidance from authenticated ALTO information (Section 15.2 of [RFC7285]), and availability of ALTO service (Section 15.5 of [RFC7285]).¶
For confidentiality of ALTO information, a network operator should be aware of that this extension may introduce a new risk: the Path Vector information may make network attacks easier. For example, as the Path Vector information may reveal more fine-grained internal network structures than the base protocol, an ALTO client may detect the bottleneck link and start a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack involving minimal flows to conduct the in-network congestion.¶
To mitigate this risk, the ALTO server should consider protection mechanisms to reduce information exposure or obfuscate the real information, in particular, in settings where the network and the application do not belong to the same trust domain. For example, in the multi-flow bandwidth reservation use case as introduced in Section 4, only the available bandwidth of the shared bottleneck link is crucial, and the ALTO server may only preserve the critical bottlenecks and can change the order of links appearing in the Path Vector response.¶
However, arbitrary reduction and obfuscation of information exposure may potentially introduce a risk on the integrity of the ALTO information, leading to infeasible or suboptimal decisions of ALTO clients,¶
To mitigate this risk, if an ALTO client finds that the traffic distribution based on the Path Vector information is not feasible (e.g., causing constant congestion) or not better than a distribution which does not fully conform to the information (e.g., by randomly choosing the source/destination for certain flows), it can follow the protection strategies for potential undesirable guidance from authenticated ALTO information, specified in Section 15.2.2 of RFC 7285 [RFC7285]. While repeatedly sending the same query can potentially detect the integrity problem for certain obfuscation methods (e.g., those based on time or randomness) under certain network conditions (e.g., where the routing and ANE properties are stable), an ALTO client must be aware that this behavior may be considered as a denial-of-service attack on the server and may lead to the rejection of further requests from the client.¶
On the other hand, this risk can also be mitigated from the server side. While the implementation of an ALTO server is beyond the scope of this document, implementations of ALTO servers involving reduction or obfuscation of the Path Vector information should consider reduction/obfuscation mechanisms that can preserve the integrity of ALTO information, for example, by using minimal feasible region compression algorithms [TON2019] or obfuscation protocols [SC2018][JSAC2019].¶
For availability of ALTO service, an ALTO server should be cognizant that using Path Vector extension might have a new risk: frequent requesting for Path Vectors might consume intolerable amounts of the server-side computation and storage, which can break the ALTO server. For example, if an ALTO server implementation dynamically computes the Path Vectors for each request, the service providing Path Vectors may become an entry point for denial-of-service attacks on the availability of an ALTO server.¶
To mitigate this risk, an ALTO server may consider using optimizations such as precomputation-and-projection mechanisms [JSAC2019] to reduce the overhead for processing each query. Also, an ALTO server may also protect itself from malicious clients by monitoring the behaviors of clients and stopping serving clients with suspicious behaviors (e.g., sending requests at a high frequency).¶
This document registers a new entry to the ALTO Domain Entity Type Registry, as instructed by Section 12.2 of [I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new]. The new entry is as shown below in Table 1.¶
Identifier | Entity Address Encoding | Hierarchy & Inheritance |
---|---|---|
ane | See Section 6.2.2 | None |
See Section 6.2.1.¶
See Section 6.2.2.¶
None¶
None¶
See Section 6.2.4.¶
In some usage scenarios, ANE addresses carried in ALTO Protocol messages may reveal information about an ALTO client or an ALTO service provider. Applications and ALTO service providers using addresses of ANEs will be made aware of how (or if) the addressing scheme relates to private information and network proximity, in further iterations of this document.¶
Two initial entries are registered to the ALTO Domain ane
in the ALTO Entity
Property Type Registry
, as instructed by Section 12.3 of
[I-D.ietf-alto-unified-props-new]. The two new entries are shown below in
Table 2.¶
Identifier | Intended Semantics |
---|---|
max-reservable-bandwidth | See Section 6.4.1 |
persistent-entity-id | See Section 6.4.2 |
The authors would like to thank discussions with Andreas Voellmy, Erran Li, Haibin Song, Haizhou Du, Jiayuan Hu, Qiao Xiang, Tianyuan Liu, Xiao Shi, Xin Wang, and Yan Luo. The authors thank Greg Bernstein (Grotto Networks), Dawn Chen (Tongji University), Wendy Roome, and Michael Scharf for their contributions to earlier drafts.¶
Revision -16¶
Revision -15¶
Revision -14¶
Revision -13¶
Revision -12¶
Revision -11¶
persistent-entities
to persistent-entity-id
;¶
application/alto-propmap+json
as the media type of defining resources
for the ane
domain;¶
Revision -10¶
revises the introduction which¶
This revision¶
We emphasize the importance of the path vector extension in two aspects:¶