ietf-openproxy
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Re: WG Review: Open Pluggable Edge Services (opes)

2001-06-20 07:09:11

There have been and will continue to be experiments in the "best" way to
construct distributed applications.  There are many ways to implement
distributed applications already and, over time, the paradigm may well
change.  But for the foreseeable future the way that has been endorsed by
the companies that will deliver the products to their customers is web
services.  And that endorsement isn't just in the form of a set of emerging
standards, it's in the form of many millions of dollars invested in
software, in infrastructure and in marketing.  There's a whole industry out
there!  And it's not a dot com bubble.

In my personal opinion, icap is a flash in the pan done in isolation and
seeking a standards body, any standards body (although I'm sure they'd like
to have "RFCnnnn" somewhere in their marketing literature).  But the OPES
framework of a rule-based platform for providers to distribute and users to
customize applications is an important problem with interesting and
significant technical challenges.  The iterative approach outlined in the
OPES charter seems perfectly reasonable to me and in keeping with the IETF
strategy for success.

The IETF can defer to other standards bodies if it so chooses, but I believe
the Application Area will eventually become irrelevent in the web arena and
the W3C will take over all of that protocol work. (A current example: where
do we do cache invalidation protocol work and how scalable is the solution?)
I don't think it would be good for the industry, but it's reasonable to
abdicate that responsibility.  But let's make the decision consciously.  The
IETF has been the standards body of choice for protocol work because of the
networking expertise.  Sacred models do not serve a fast paced industry;
informed thought and engineering work do.  That thought and work occur in
the WG, not in a meta-discussion.

We're not going to change any business models, the market will, in it's own
stumbling way, take its course.  We're also not going to make interception
proxies go away no matter what we do.  But we can contribute to providing
Internet-level scalability and improved user experience for the web
applications that are the current and future Internet.

If people have specific suggestions for improving the charter, I personally
welcome them.  If not, I'd like the IETF leadership to make the decision
about whether we're in the business of doing web application protocol work
or not and then decide what to do with the OPES charter request.

Lee M. Rafalow
Voice: 1-919-254-4455, Fax: 1-919-254-6243
IBM Internet Technology Management
IBM Corporation
P.O. Box 12195, BRQA/502
RTP, NC 27709 USA
Alternate email: rafalow(_at_)us(_dot_)ibm(_dot_)com
Personal email: lrafalow(_at_)mindspring(_dot_)com


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