ALTO Deployment Considerations
NEC Europe Ltd.
University of Stuttgart
Many Internet applications are used to access resources, such as pieces of information or server processes, which are available in several equivalent replicas on different hosts. This includes, but is not limited to, peer-to-peer file sharing applications. The goal of Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) is to provide guidance to these applications, which have to select one or several hosts from a set of candidates, that are able to provide a desired resource. The protocol is under specification in the ALTO working group. This memo discusses deployment related issues of ALTO for peer-to-peer and CDNs, some preliminary security considerations, and also initial guidance for application designers using ALTO.