First, if discovery returns an IRD with two Network Maps, how does the client know which map to use? Yes, we could add metadata to describe each map's properties, and the client software could search that. But if we can do that, why not associate that metadata with the IRD -- and hence the server -- and have discovery do the searching?
Second, I gather discovery is designed to find "the ALTO server recommended by your ISP". That's very useful, but that's not the only game it town. I think there will be plenty of ALTO servers which aren't discovered via that mechanism. For example, what happens if the client wants the "hopcount" metric, and "the ALTO server recommended by your ISP" doesn't offer it? Finally, I think the ALTO servers that participate in discovery will be simple "generic" servers. They'll offer the required services -- a network map and a cost map for "routingcost" -- but that¹s it. No one writing a client that uses an ALTO server obtained via discovery will count on the server offering anything more than the required services, and hence there will be no reason for those generic servers to provide anything more. - Wendy Roome From: Richard Alimi <[email protected]> Date: Fri, July 12, 2013 11:31 To: Wendy Roome <[email protected]> Cc: alto <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [alto] Clarifying Cost Map Dependencies on a Network Map Having two separate servers would require two separate entry-points into the alto server discovery. Then the client has to pick a server at discovery time. This implies that ALTO server discovery has to find multiple servers for a client, which I'm not sure it is prepared to handle (and it was hard enough as it was).
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