Subject: [alto] Benjamin Kaduk's No Objection on charter-ietf-alto-04-01: (with COMMENT)

From: Benjamin Kaduk via Datatracker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2021 06:34:49 -0700

Benjamin Kaduk has entered the following ballot position for
charter-ietf-alto-04-01: No Objection

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The document, along with other ballot positions, can be found here:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-alto/

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COMMENT:
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    o Support for modern transport protocols. ALTO only uses the
    capabilities of HTTP version 1. Since then, the IETF has developed
    HTTP/2 and HTTP/3.  The working group will develop any necessary
    protocol extensions and guidance to support the use of ALTO over HTTP/2
    and HTTP/3.

The IESG is reviewing on this same telechat a "bis" version of BCP56,
guidelines for applications using HTTP.  Let's discuss whether this
language is consistent with the guidance contained therein, which
includes:

   [...] Requiring a particular
   version of HTTP makes it difficult to use in these situations, and
   harms interoperability.  Therefore, it is NOT RECOMMENDED that
   applications using HTTP specify a minimum version of HTTP to be used.

   However, if an application's deployment would benefit from the use of
   a particular version of HTTP (for example, HTTP/2's multiplexing),
   this ought be noted.

My understanding is that typically it suffices to "just use HTTP", and
that there should be no need for ALTO extensions to support running the
protocol over HTTP/2 or HTTP/3.  Any HTTP-version-specific work would
then be about making more effective use of features that are available
in those later versions, without requiring them to be available, or
perhaps (hopefully not) fixing issues with the original ALTO specification
that caused it to not be HTTP-version-agnostic.

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From: Martin Duke <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2021 12:44:43 -0700

HI Ben,

I edited the H/2 and 3 bullet to read as follows:
o Support for modern transport protocols. ALTO only uses the capabilities
of HTTP version 1. While ALTO can operate successfully over any version of
HTTP, it would benefit from leveraging HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 capabilities such
as push. The WG will produce an ALTO extension that leverages these
capabilities if they can be shown to improve performance.

It more accurately states the current status.