Subject: The Future of AAP

From: Steve Hanna <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 May 2001 17:28:34 -0400

The Address Allocation Protocol (AAP) was designed to fill Layer 2 in
the Internet Multicast Address Allocation Architecture (RFC 2908),
allowing Multicast Address Allocation Servers (MAAS's) within an
allocation domain to coordinate their allocations. The latest AAP
specification is available from:

   http://www.aciri.org/malloc/draft-ietf-malloc-aap-04.txt

Last summer, this specification passed Working Group Last Call in the
MALLOC Working Group and was sent to the IESG for consideration as a
Proposed Standard. Since that time, several issues have been raised with
the protocol, especially scaling concerns. An alternative
protocol (ZMAAP) has been developed for use within Zero Configuration
networks. At this time, there seems to be little interest in updating
the AAP protocol specification to address the issues that have been
raised. Several people have stated that if multiple MAAS's need to
coordinate, they can use a proprietary mechanism (as is often done
with DHCP servers).

The MALLOC Working Group Chairs would like to ask the multicast
community:

1) Do people think that the AAP protocol is still needed?

2) If so, are there any volunteers to help revise the document and
   address the issues that have been raised?

Unless we receive an affirmative answer to both of these questions, we
will withdraw the document from IESG consideration.

Steve Hanna
Dave Thaler
MALLOC WG Chairs