[I left the usual boilerplace text off the top and left the WG description.
Transparent caching is ARET, IMNSHO. Hijacking is still an international
offence, last time it checked, NATS notwithstanding. Also, NATS has a
denumerable number of border conditions. I'm not sure that's the case with
TC. But I digress...]
Description of Working Group:
-----------------------------
The World Wide Web (WWW) employs the HTTP protocol between the client and
the server. HTTP makes allowances with respect to intermediate
infrastructure which may exist between the client and servers, such as
caching proxies, gateway proxies, and other "servers". Typically, the
interaction between the client and RFC 2068 "servers" is manually
configured. There exist less than orthodox techniques which redirect the
client's HTTP requests into the intermediate infrastructure, such as
"transparent caching". While many opinions exist about the tradeoffs with
respect to request redirection, it is clear that such solutions wouldn't be
necessary if a better interface between the web client and intermediate
infrastructure existed.
The intermediate infrastructure is designed to augment web content
dissemination in a number of ways. For example, a gateway proxy provides a
security element to an enterprise. Typically, but not necessarily, the
gateway proxies serve as an ingress to a web caching infrastructure such as
Harvest and Squid. One proposal suggests augmenting DNS in order for
clients or the intermediate infrastructure to locate mirroring and
replication servers. Another proposal suggests using compression while
disseminating data between caching infrastructures. The general problem of
which all of these proposals are components is asks the question "How will
hereogenous pieces of the intermediate infrastructure interface?"
The goal of this working group is to define and produce protocol
specifiations in the following areas:
- Intermediate structure architecture and requirements,
- Client autodiscovery protocols and mechansims,
- Security scenarios for intermediate infrastructure components.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Nov 18 2004 - 11:21:25 MST