Subject: [secdir] Secdir review of draft-ietf-alto-reqs

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:46:23 -0800

Greetings again. This is a security review of draft-ietf-alto-reqs, "Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) Requirements". An ALTO protocol would allow optimization of network resources when information is in multiple places; a client can ask a server where to get the information, and the server can give hopefully-intelligent answers based on what the server knows of the network load, server load, network topology, and so on.

This document does quite a good job of covering the many security issues with such a protocol. It lays out many of the competing security considerations, particularly the privacy of each party and, being a requirements document, doesn't answer any of the hard questions that will need to come in the upcoming protocol document.

--Paul Hoffman