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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) W. Roome
Request for Comments: 9240 S. Randriamasy
Category: Standards Track Nokia Bell Labs
ISSN: 2070-1721 Y. Yang
Yale University
J. Zhang
Tongji University
K. Gao
Sichuan University
July 2022
An Extension for Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO): Entity
Property Maps
Abstract
This document specifies an extension to the base Application-Layer
Traffic Optimization (ALTO) Protocol that generalizes the concept of
"endpoint properties", which have been tied to IP addresses so far,
to entities defined by a wide set of objects. Further, these
properties are presented as maps, similar to the network and cost
maps in the base ALTO Protocol. While supporting the endpoints and
related Endpoint Property Service defined in RFC 7285, the ALTO
Protocol is extended in two major directions. First, from endpoints
restricted to IP addresses to entities covering a wider and
extensible set of objects; second, from properties for specific
endpoints to entire entity property maps. These extensions introduce
additional features that allow entities and property values to be
specific to a given information resource. This is made possible by a
generic and flexible design of entity and property types.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9240.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the
Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described
in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1. Terminology and Notation
2. Requirements Language
3. Basic Features of the Entity Property Map Extension
3.1. Entity
3.2. Entity Domain
3.2.1. Entity Domain Type
3.2.2. Entity Domain Name
3.3. Entity Property Type
3.4. New Information Resource and Media Type: ALTO Property Map
4. Advanced Features of the Entity Property Map Extension
4.1. Entity Identifier and Entity Domain Name
4.2. Resource-Specific Entity Domain Name
4.3. Resource-Specific Entity Property Value
4.4. Entity Hierarchy and Property Inheritance
4.4.1. Entity Hierarchy
4.4.2. Property Inheritance
4.4.3. Property Value Unicity
4.5. Supported Properties for Entity Domains in Property Map
Capabilities
4.6. Defining Information Resource for Resource-Specific Entity
Domains
4.6.1. Defining Information Resource and Its Media Type
4.6.2. Examples of Defining Information Resources and Their
Media Types
4.7. Defining Information Resources for Resource-Specific
Property Values
5. Protocol Specification: Basic Data Types
5.1. Entity Domain
5.1.1. Entity Domain Type
5.1.2. Entity Domain Name
5.1.3. Entity Identifier
5.1.4. Hierarchy and Inheritance
5.2. Entity Property
5.2.1. Entity Property Type
5.2.2. Entity Property Name
5.2.3. Format for Entity Property Value
6. Entity Domain Types Defined in This Document
6.1. Internet Address Domain Types
6.1.1. Entity Domain Type: IPv4
6.1.2. Entity Domain Type: IPv6
6.1.3. Hierarchy and Inheritance of Internet Address Domains
6.1.4. Defining Information Resource Media Type for Domain
Types IPv4 and IPv6
6.2. Entity Domain Type: PID
6.2.1. Entity Domain Type Identifier
6.2.2. Domain-Specific Entity Identifiers
6.2.3. Hierarchy and Inheritance
6.2.4. Defining Information Resource Media Type for Domain
Type PID
6.2.5. Relationship To Internet Addresses Domains
6.3. Internet Address Properties vs. PID Properties
7. Property Map
7.1. Media Type
7.2. HTTP Method
7.3. Accept Input Parameters
7.4. Capabilities
7.5. Uses
7.6. Response
8. Filtered Property Map
8.1. Media Type
8.2. HTTP Method
8.3. Accept Input Parameters
8.4. Capabilities
8.5. Uses
8.6. Filtered Property Map Response
8.7. Entity Property Type Defined in This Document
8.7.1. Entity Property Type: pid
9. Impact on Legacy ALTO Servers and ALTO Clients
9.1. Impact on Endpoint Property Service
9.2. Impact on Resource-Specific Properties
9.3. Impact on Other Properties
10. Examples
10.1. Network Map
10.2. Property Definitions
10.3. Information Resource Directory (IRD)
10.4. Full Property Map Example
10.5. Filtered Property Map Example #1
10.6. Filtered Property Map Example #2
10.7. Filtered Property Map Example #3
10.8. Filtered Property Map Example #4
10.9. Filtered Property Map for ANEs Example #5
11. Security Considerations
12. IANA Considerations
12.1. application/alto-propmap+json Media Type
12.2. alto-propmapparams+json Media Type
12.3. ALTO Entity Domain Types Registry
12.3.1. Consistency Procedure between ALTO Address Types
Registry and ALTO Entity Domain Types Registry
12.3.2. ALTO Entity Domain Type Registration Process
12.4. ALTO Entity Property Types Registry
13. References
13.1. Normative References
13.2. Informative References
Appendix A. Features Introduced with the Entity Property Maps
Extension
Acknowledgments
Authors' Addresses
1. Introduction
The ALTO Protocol [RFC7285] introduces the concept of "properties"
attached to "endpoint addresses". It also defines the Endpoint
Property Service (EPS) to allow ALTO clients to retrieve those
properties. While useful, the EPS as defined in [RFC7285] has at
least three limitations, which are elaborated here.
First, the EPS allows properties to be associated only with endpoints
that are identified by individual communication addresses like IPv4
and IPv6 addresses. It is reasonable to think that collections of
endpoints identified by Provider-Defined Identifiers (PIDs) may also
have properties. Furthermore, recent ALTO use cases show that
properties of entities such as Abstract Network Elements as defined
in [PATH-VECTOR] are also useful. However, the current EPS is
restricted to individual endpoints and cannot be applied to those
entities.
Second, the EPS only allows endpoints identified by global
communication addresses. However, an endpoint address may be a local
IP address or an anycast IP address that may not be globally unique.
Additionally, an entity such as a PID may have an identifier that is
not globally unique. That is, the same PID may be used in multiple
network maps, while in each network map, this PID points to a
different set of addresses.
Third, in Section 11.4 of [RFC7285], the EPS is only defined as a
POST-mode service. ALTO clients must request the properties for an
explicit set of endpoint addresses. By contrast, Section 11.2.3 of
[RFC7285] defines a GET-mode cost map resource that returns all
available costs, so an ALTO Client can retrieve a full set of costs
once and then process cost lookups without querying the ALTO server.
[RFC7285] does not define a similar service for endpoint properties.
At first, a map of endpoint properties might seem impractical because
it could require enumerating the property value for every possible
endpoint. In particular, the number of endpoint addresses involved
by an ALTO server can be quite large. To avoid enumerating a large
number of endpoint addresses inefficiently, the ALTO server might
define properties for a sufficiently large subset of endpoints and
then use an aggregation representation to reference endpoints in
order to allow efficient enumeration. This is particularly true if
blocks of endpoint addresses with a common prefix have the same value
for a property. Entities in other domains may very well allow
aggregated representation and hence be enumerable as well.
To address these three limitations, this document specifies an ALTO
Protocol extension for defining and retrieving ALTO properties:
* The first limitation is addressed by introducing a generic concept
called ALTO entity, which generalizes an endpoint and may
represent a PID, a network element, a cell in a cellular network,
an Abstract Network Element [PATH-VECTOR], or other physical or
logical objects involved in a network topology. Each entity is
included in a collection called an ALTO entity domain. Since each
ALTO entity domain includes only one type of entity, each entity
domain can be classified by the type of enclosed entities.
* The second limitation is addressed by using resource-specific
entity domains. A resource-specific entity domain contains
entities that are defined and identified with respect to a given
ALTO information resource, which provides scoping. For example,
an entity domain containing PIDs is identified with respect to the
network map in which these PIDs are defined. Likewise, an entity
domain containing local IP addresses may be defined with respect
to a local network map.
* The third limitation is addressed by defining two new types of
ALTO information resources: property map (Section 7) and filtered
property map (Section 8). The former is a resource that is
requested using the HTTP GET method, returns the property values
for all entities in one or more entity domains, and is analogous
to a network map or a cost map in Section 11.2 of [RFC7285]. The
latter is a resource that is requested using the HTTP POST method,
returns the values for sets of properties and entities requested
by the client, and is analogous to a filtered network map or a
filtered cost map.
The entity property maps extension described in this document
introduces a number of features that are summarized in Appendix A,
where Table 11 lists the features and references the sections in this
document that give their high-level and their normative descriptions.
The protocol extension defined in this document can be augmented.
New entity domain types can be defined without revising the present
specification. Similarly, new cost metrics and new endpoint
properties can be defined in other documents without revising the
protocol specification defined in [RFC7285].
1.1. Terminology and Notation
This document uses the following terms and abbreviations that will be
further defined in the document. While this document introduces the
feature "entity property map", it will use both the term "property
map" and "entity property map" to refer to this feature.
Transaction: A request/response exchange between an ALTO client and
an ALTO server.
Client: When used with a capital "C", this term refers to an ALTO
client. Note that expressions "ALTO client", "ALTO Client", and
"Client" are equivalent.
Server: When used with a capital "S", this term refers to an ALTO
server. Note that expressions "ALTO server", "ALTO Server", and
"Server" are equivalent.
EPS: An abbreviation for Endpoint Property Service.
This document uses the notation defined in Section 8.2 of [RFC7285].
2. Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
3. Basic Features of the Entity Property Map Extension
This section gives a high-level overview of the basic features
involved in ALTO entity property maps. It assumes the reader is
familiar with the ALTO Protocol [RFC7285]. The purpose of this
extension is to convey properties for objects that extend ALTO
endpoints and are called ALTO Entities, or entities for short.
The features introduced in this section can be used standalone.
However, in some cases, these features may depend on particular
information resources and need to be defined with respect to them.
To this end, Section 4 introduces additional features that extend the
ones presented in this section.
3.1. Entity
The concept of an ALTO entity generalizes the concept of an ALTO
endpoint defined in Section 2.1 of [RFC7285]. An entity is an object
that can be an endpoint defined by its network address, but it can
also be an object that has a defined mapping to a set of one or more
network addresses or an object that is not even related to any
network address. Thus, whereas all endpoints are entities, not all
entities are endpoints.
Examples of entities are:
* an ALTO endpoint that represents an application or a host
identified by a communication address (e.g., an IPv4 or IPv6
address) in a network,
* a PID, defined in [RFC7285], that has a provider-defined, human-
readable identifier specified by an ALTO network map, which maps a
PID to a set of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses,
* an Autonomous System (AS) that has an AS number (ASN) as its
identifier and maps to a set of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, which is
defined in [RFC9241],
* a country with a code specified in [ISO3166-1] to which
applications such as content delivery network (CDN) providers
associate properties and capabilities, which is defined in
[RFC9241],
* a TCP or UDP network flow that is identified by a 5-tuple
specifying its source and destination addresses and port numbers,
and the IP protocol (TCP or UDP),
* a routing element, as specified in [RFC7921], that is associated
with routing capabilities information, or
* an Abstract Network Element, as specified in [PATH-VECTOR], that
represents an abstraction of a network part such as a router, one
or more links, a network domain, or their aggregation.
Some of the example entities listed above have already been
documented as ALTO entities. The other examples are provided for
illustration as potential entities.
3.2. Entity Domain
An entity domain defines a set of entities of the same semantic type.
An entity domain is characterized by a type and identified by a name.
In this document, an entity is owned by exactly one entity domain
name. An entity identifier points to exactly one entity. If two
entities in two different entity domains refer to the same physical
or logical object, they are treated as different entities. For
example, if an end host has both an IPv4 and an IPv6 address, these
two addresses will be treated as two entities, defined respectively
in the "ipv4" and "ipv6" entity domains.
3.2.1. Entity Domain Type
The entity domain type defines the semantics of the type of entity
found in an entity domain. Entity domain types can be defined in
different documents. For example: the present document defines
entity domain types "ipv4" and "ipv6" in Section 6.1 and "pid" in
Section 6.2. The entity domain type "ane", which defines Abstract
Network Elements (ANEs), is introduced in [PATH-VECTOR]. The
"countrycode" entity domain type that defines country codes is
introduced in [RFC9241]. An entity domain type MUST be registered
with IANA, as specified in Section 12.3.2.
3.2.2. Entity Domain Name
In this document, the identifier of an entity domain is mostly called
"entity domain name". The identifier of an entity domain is scoped
to an ALTO server. An entity domain identifier can sometimes be
identical to the identifier of its relevant entity domain type. This
is the case when the entities of a domain have an identifier that
points to the same object throughout all the information resources of
the Server that are providing entity properties for this domain. For
example, a domain of type "ipv4" containing entities that are
identified by a public IPv4 address can be named "ipv4" because its
entities are uniquely identified by all the Server resources.
In some cases, the name of an entity domain cannot be simply its
entity domain type. Indeed, for some domain types, entities are
defined relative to a given information resource. This is the case
for entities of domain type "pid". A PID is defined relative to a
network map. For example, an entity "mypid10" of domain type "pid"
may be defined in a given network map and be undefined in other
network maps. The entity "mypid10" may even be defined in two
different network maps, and it may map in each of these network maps
to a different set of endpoint addresses. In this case, naming an
entity domain only by its type "pid" does not guarantee that its set
of entities is owned by exactly one entity domain.
Sections 4.2 and 5.1.2 describe how a domain is uniquely identified
across the ALTO server by a name that associates the domain type and
the related information resource.
3.3. Entity Property Type
An entity property defines a property of an entity. This is similar
to the endpoint property defined in Section 7.1 of [RFC7285]. An
entity property can convey either network-aware or network-agnostic
information. Similar to an entity domain, an entity property is
characterized by a type and identified by a name. An entity property
type MUST be registered with IANA, as specified in Section 12.4.
Below are listed some examples with real and fictitious entity domain
and property names:
* an entity in the "ipv4" domain type may have a property whose
value is an Autonomous System (AS) number indicating the AS to
which this IPv4 address belongs and another property named
"countrycode" indicating a country code mapping to this address,
* an entity identified by its country code in the entity domain type
"countrycode", defined in [RFC9241], may have a property
indicating what delivery protocol is used by a CDN, or
* an entity in the "netmap1.pid" domain may have a property that
indicates the central geographical location of the endpoints it
includes.
It should be noted that some identifiers may be used for both an
entity domain type and a property type. For example:
* the identifier "countrycode" may point to both the entity domain
type "countrycode" and the fictitious property type "countrycode".
* the identifier "pid" may point to both the entity domain type
"pid" and the property type "pid".
Likewise, the same identifier may point to both a domain name and a
property name. For example: the identifier "netmap10.pid" may point
to either the domain defined by the PIDs of network map "netmap10" or
to a property that returns, for an entity defined by its IPv4
address, the PID of "netmap10" that contains this entity. Such cases
are further explained in Section 4.
3.4. New Information Resource and Media Type: ALTO Property Map
This document introduces a new ALTO information resource named
property map. An ALTO property map provides a set of properties for
one or more sets of entities. A property may apply to different
entity domain types and names. For example, an ALTO property map may
define the "ASN" property for both "ipv4" and "ipv6" entity domains.
The present extension also introduces a new media type.
This document uses the same definition of an information resource as
Section 9.1 of [RFC7285]. ALTO uses media types to uniquely indicate
the data format used to encode the content to be transmitted between
an ALTO server and an ALTO client in the HTTP entity body. In the
present case, an ALTO property map resource is defined by the media
type "application/alto-propmap+json".
A property map can be queried as a GET-mode resource, thus conveying
all properties for all entities indicated in its capabilities. It
can also be queried as a POST-mode resource, thus conveying a
selection of properties for a selection of entities.
4. Advanced Features of the Entity Property Map Extension
This section gives a high-level overview of the advanced features
involved in ALTO entity property maps. Most of these features extend
the features defined in Section 3.
4.1. Entity Identifier and Entity Domain Name
In [RFC7285], an endpoint has an identifier that is explicitly
associated with the "ipv4" or "ipv6" address domain. Examples are
"ipv4:192.0.2.14" and "ipv6:2001:db8::12".
In this document, example IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and prefixes are
taken from the address ranges reserved for documentation by [RFC5737]
and [RFC3849].
In this document, an entity must be owned by exactly one entity
domain name, and an entity identifier must point to exactly one
entity. To ensure this, an entity identifier is explicitly attached
to the name of its entity domain, and an entity domain type
characterizes the semantics and identifier format of its entities.
The encoding format of an entity identifier is further specified in
Section 5.1.3 of this document.
For instance:
* if an entity is an endpoint with IPv4 address "192.0.2.14", its
identifier is associated with entity domain name "ipv4" and is
"ipv4:192.0.2.14";
* if an entity is a PID named "mypid10" in network map resource
"netmap2", its identifier is associated with entity domain name
"netmap2.pid" and is "netmap2.pid:mypid10".
4.2. Resource-Specific Entity Domain Name
Some entities are defined and identified uniquely and globally in the
context of an ALTO server. This is the case, for instance, when
entities are endpoints that are identified by a reachable IPv4 or
IPv6 address. The entity domain for such entities can be globally
defined and named "ipv4" or "ipv6". Those entity domains are called
resource-agnostic entity domains in this document, as they are not
associated with any specific ALTO information resources.
Some other entities and entity types are only defined relative to a
given information resource. This is the case for entities of domain
type "pid", which can only be understood with respect to the network
map where they are defined. For example, a PID named "mypid10" may
be defined to represent a set S1 of IP addresses in a network map
resource named "netmap1". Another network map "netmap2" may use the
same name "mypid10" and define it to represent another set S2 of IP
addresses. The identifier "pid:mypid10" may thus point to different
objects because the information on the originating information
resource is lost.
To solve this ambiguity, the present extension introduces the concept
of resource-specific entity domain. This concept applies to domain
types where entities are defined relative to a given information
resource. It can also apply to entity domains that are defined
locally, such as local networks of objects identified with a local
IPv4 address.
In such cases, an entity domain type is explicitly associated with an
identifier of the information resource where these entities are
defined. Such an information resource is referred to as the
"specific information resource". Using a resource-aware entity
domain name, an ALTO property map can unambiguously identify distinct
entity domains of the same type, on which entity properties may be
queried. Examples of resource-specific entity domain names may look
like "netmap1.pid" or "netmap2.pid". Thus, a name association such
as "netmap1.pid:mypid10" and "netmap2.pid:mypid10" distinguishes the
two abovementioned PIDs that are both named "mypid10" but in two
different resources, "netmap1" and "netmap2".
An information resource is defined in the scope of an ALTO Server and
so is an entity domain name. The format of a resource-specific
entity domain name is further specified in Section 5.1.2.
4.3. Resource-Specific Entity Property Value
Like entity domains, some types of properties are defined relative to
an information resource. That is, an entity may have a property of a
given type whose values are associated with different information
resources.
For example, suppose entity "192.0.2.34" defined in the "ipv4" domain
has a property of type "pid" whose value is the PID to which address
"192.0.2.34" is attached in a network map. The mapping of network
addresses to PIDs is specific to a network map and probably different
from one network map resource to another one. Thus, if a property
"pid" is defined for entity "192.0.2.34" in two different network
maps "netmap1" and "netmap2", the value for this property can be a
different value in "netmap1" and "netmap2".
To support information-resource-dependent property values, this
document uses the same approach as in Section 10.8.1
("Resource-Specific Endpoint Properties") of [RFC7285]. When a
property value depends on a given information resource, the name of
this property MUST be explicitly associated with the information
resource that defines it.
For example, the property "pid" queried on entity "ipv4:192.0.2.34"
and defined in both "netmap1" and "netmap2" can be named
"netmap1.pid" and "netmap2.pid". This allows a Client to get a
property of the same type but defined in different information
resources with a single query. Specifications for the property name
format are provided in Section 5.2.
4.4. Entity Hierarchy and Property Inheritance
For some domain types, there is an underlying structure that allows
entities to be efficiently grouped into a set and be defined by the
identifier of this set. This is the case for domain types "ipv4" and
"ipv6", where individual Internet addresses can be grouped in blocks.
When the same property value applies to a whole set, a Server can
define a property for the identifier of this set instead of
enumerating all the entities and their properties. This allows a
substantial reduction of transmission payload both for the Server and
the Client. For example, all the entities included in the set
defined by the address block "ipv6:2001:db8::1/64" share the same
properties and values defined for this block.
Additionally, entity sets sometimes are related by inclusion,
hierarchy, or other relations. This allows defining inheritance
rules for entity properties that propagate properties among related
entity sets. The Server and the Client can use these inheritance
rules for further payload savings. Entity hierarchy and property
inheritance rules are specified in the documents that define the
applicable domain types. The present document defines these rules
for the "ipv4" and "ipv6" domain types.
For applicable domain types, this document introduces entity property
inheritance rules with the following concepts: entity hierarchy,
property inheritance, and property value unicity. A detailed
specification of entity hierarchy and property inheritance rules is
provided in Section 5.1.4.
4.4.1. Entity Hierarchy
An entity domain may allow the use of a single identifier to identify
a set of related individual entities. For example, a Classless
Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) block can be used to identify a set of
IPv4 or IPv6 entities. A CIDR block is called a hierarchical entity
identifier, as it can reflect inclusion relations among entity sets.
That is, in an entity hierarchy, "supersets" are defined at upper
levels and include "subsets" defined at lower levels. For example,
the CIDR "ipv4:192.0.1.0/24" includes all the individual IPv4
entities identified by the CIDR "ipv4:192.0.1.0/26". This document
will sometimes use the term "hierarchical address" to refer to a
hierarchical entity identifier.
4.4.2. Property Inheritance
A property may be defined for a hierarchical entity identifier, while
it may be undefined for individual entities covered by this
identifier. In this case, these individual entities inherit the
property value defined for the identifier that covers them. For
example, suppose a property map defines a property P for which it
assigns value V1 only for the hierarchical entity identifier
"ipv4:192.0.1.0/24" but not for individual entities in this block.
Suppose also that inheritance rules are specified for CIDR blocks in
the "ipv4" domain type. When receiving this property map, a Client
can infer that entity "ipv4:192.0.1.1" inherits the property value V1
of block "ipv4:192.0.1.0/24" because the address "ipv4:192.0.1.1" is
included in the CIDR block "ipv4:192.0.1.0/24".
Property value inheritance rules also apply among entity sets. A
property map may define values for an entity set belonging to a
hierarchy but not for "subsets" that are covered by this set
identifier. In this case, inheritance rules must specify how
entities in "subsets" inherit property values from their "superset".
For instance, suppose a property P is defined only for the entity set
defined by address block "ipv4:192.0.1.0/24". We know that entity
set "ipv4:192.0.1.0/30" is included in "ipv4:192.0.1.0/24".
Therefore, the entities of "ipv4:192.0.1.0/30" may inherit the value
of property P from set "ipv4:192.0.1.0/24" if an inheritance rule
from "ipv4" CIDR blocks to included "ipv4" CIDR blocks is specified.
4.4.3. Property Value Unicity
The inheritance rules must ensure that an entity belonging to a
hierarchical set of entities inherits no more than one property
value, for the sake of consistency. Indeed, a property map may
define a property for a hierarchy of entity sets that inherits
property values from one or more supersets (located at upper levels).
On the other hand, a property value defined for a subset (located at
a lower level) may be different from the value defined for a
superset. In such a case, subsets may potentially end up with
different property values. This may be the case for address blocks
with increasing prefix length, on which a property value becomes
increasingly accurate and thus may differ. For example, a fictitious
property such as "geo-location" or "average transfer volume" may be
defined at a progressively finer grain for lower-level subsets of
entities defined with progressively longer CIDR prefixes. It seems
more interesting to have property values of progressively higher
accuracy. A unicity rule applied to the entity domain type must
specify an arbitration rule among the different property values for
an entity. An example illustrating the need for such rules is
provided in Section 6.1.3.
4.5. Supported Properties for Entity Domains in Property Map
Capabilities
A property type is not necessarily applicable to any domain type, or
an ALTO Server may choose not to provide a property for all
applicable domains. For instance, a property type reflecting link
bandwidth is likely not defined for entities of a domain of type
"countrycode". Therefore, an ALTO server providing property maps
needs to specify the properties that can be queried on the different
entity domains it supports.
This document explains how the Information Resource Directory (IRD)
capabilities of a property map resource unambiguously expose which
properties a Client can query on a given entity domain:
* a field named "mappings" lists the names of the entity domains
supported by the property map, and
* for each listed entity domain, a list of the names of the
applicable properties is provided.
An example is provided in Section 10.3. The "mappings" field
associates entity domains and properties that can be resource-
agnostic or resource-specific. This allows a Client to formulate
compact and unambiguous entity property queries, possibly relating to
one or more information resources. In particular:
* it prevents a Client from querying a property for entity domains
for which it is not defined;
* it allows a Client to query, for an entity E, values for a
property P that are defined in several information resources; and
* it allows a Client to query a property P on entities that are
defined in several information resources.
Further details are provided in Section 7.4.
4.6. Defining Information Resource for Resource-Specific Entity Domains
A Client willing to query entity properties belonging to a domain
needs to know how to retrieve these entities. To this end, the
Client can look up the "mappings" field exposed in IRD capabilities
of a property map; see Section 4.5. This field, in its keys, exposes
all the entity domains supported by the property map. The syntax of
the entity domain identifier specified in Section 5.1.2 allows the
client to infer whether the entity domain is resource-specific or
not. The Client can extract, if applicable, the identifier of the
specific resource, query the resource, and retrieve the entities.
For example:
* an entity domain named "netmap1.ipv4" includes the IPv4 addresses
that appear in the "ipv4" field of the endpoint address group of
each PID in the network map "netmap1" and that have no meaning
outside "netmap1" because, for instance, these are local addresses
not reachable outside some private network;
* an entity domain named "netmap1.pid" includes the PIDs listed in
network map "netmap1"; and
* an entity domain named "ipv4" is resource-agnostic and covers all
the reachable IPv4 addresses.
Besides, it is not possible to prevent a Server from mistakenly
exposing inappropriate associations of information resources and
entity domain types. To prevent failures due to invalid queries, it
is necessary to inform the Client which associations are allowed. An
informed Client will just ignore inappropriate associations exposed
by a Server and avoid error-prone transactions with the Server.
For example, the association "costmap3.pid" is not allowed for the
following reason: although a cost map exposes PID identifiers, it
does not define the set of addresses included in this PID. Neither
does a cost map list all the PIDs on which properties can be queried
because a cost map only exposes PID pairs on which a queried cost
type is defined. Therefore, the resource "costmap3" does not enable
a Client to extract information on the existing PID entities or on
the addresses they contain.
Instead, the cost map uses a network map where all the PIDs used in a
cost map are defined together with the addresses contained by the
PIDs. This network map is qualified in this document as the defining
information resource for the entity domain of type "pid", and this
concept is explained in Section 4.6.1.
4.6.1. Defining Information Resource and Its Media Type
For the reasons explained in Section 4.6, this document introduces
the concept of "Defining Information Resource and its Media Type".
A defining information resource for an entity domain D is the
information resource where entities of D are defined. That is, all
the information on the entities of D can be retrieved in this
resource. A defining information resource is defined for resource-
specific entity domains. It does not exist for entity domains that
are not resource-specific such as "ipv4" or "ipv6". Neither does it
exist for entity domains that are covering entity identifiers already
defined in other standardization documents, as is the case for
country code identifiers standardized in [ISO3166-1] or AS numbers
allocated by IANA. This is useful for entity domain types that are
by essence domain-specific, such as the domain type "pid". It is
also useful for resource-specific entity domains constructed from
resource-agnostic domain types, such as network-map-specific domains
of local IPv4 addresses.
The defining information resource of a resource-specific entity
domain D, when it exists, is unique and has the following
characteristics:
* it has an entry in the IRD;
* it defines the entities of D;
* it does not use another information resource that defines these
entities;
* it defines and exposes entity identifiers that are all persistent;
and
* its media type is equal to the one that is specified for the
defining information resource of an entity domain type.
A fundamental characteristic of a defining information resource is
its media type. There is a unique association between an entity
domain type and the media type of its defining information resource.
When an entity domain type allows associations with defining
information resources, the media type of the potential defining
information resource MUST be specified:
* in the document that defines this entity domain type, and
* in the "ALTO Entity Domain Types" IANA registry.
When the Client wants to use a resource-specific entity domain, it
needs to be cognizant of the media type of its defining information
resource. If the Server exposes a resource-specific entity domain
with a noncompliant media type for the defining resource, the Client
MUST ignore the entities from that entity domain to avoid errors.
4.6.2. Examples of Defining Information Resources and Their Media Types
Here are examples of defining information resource types and their
media types associated with different entity domain types:
* For entity domain type "pid", the media type of the specific
resource is "application/alto-networkmap+json" because PIDs are
defined in network map resources.
* For entity domain types "ipv4" and "ipv6", the media type of the
specific resource is "application/alto-networkmap+json" because
IPv4 and IPv6 addresses covered by the Server are defined in
network map resources.
* For entities of domain type "ane"; [PATH-VECTOR] defines entities
named "ANE", where ANE stands for Abstract Network Element, and
the entity domain type "ane". An ANE may have a persistent
identifier, say, "entity-4", that is provided by the Server as a
value of the "persistent-entity-id" property of this ANE. Further
properties may then be queried on an ANE by using its persistent
entity identifier. These properties are available from a
persistent property map that defines properties for a specific
"ane" domain. Together with the persistent identifier, the Server
also provides the property map resource identifier where the "ane"
domain containing "entity-4" is defined. The definition of the
"ane" entity domain containing "entity-4" is thus specific to the
property map. Therefore, for entities of domain type "ane" that
have a persistent identifier, the media type of the defining
information resource is "application/alto-propmap+json".
* Last, the entity domain types "asn" and "countrycode" defined in
[RFC9241] do not have a defining information resource. Indeed,
the entity identifiers in these two entity domain types are
already standardized in documents that the Client can use.
4.7. Defining Information Resources for Resource-Specific Property
Values
As explained in Section 4.3, a property type may take values that are
resource-specific. This is the case for property type "pid", whose
values are by essence defined relative to a specific network map.
That is, the PID value returned for an IPv4 address is specific to
the network map defining this PID and may differ from one network map
to another one.
Another example is provided in [RFC9241], which defines property type
"cdni-capabilities". The value of this property is specific to a
Content Delivery Network Interconnection (CDNI) Advertisement
resource, which provides a list of CDNI capabilities. The property
is provided for entity domain types "ipv4", "ipv6", "asn", and
"countrycode". However, a CDNI Advertisement resource does not
define PID values for IPv4 addresses, while a network map does not
define CDNI capabilities for IPv4 addresses.
Similar to resource-specific entity domains, the Client needs to be
cognizant of appropriate associations of information resource and
property types. Therefore, when specifying and registering a
property type whose values are resource-specific, the media type of
its defining information resource needs to be specified. For
example:
* The media type of the defining information resource for property
type "pid" is "application/alto-networkmap+json".
* The media type of the defining information resource for property
type "cdni-capabilities" defined in [RFC9241] is "application/
alto-cdni+json".
5. Protocol Specification: Basic Data Types
5.1. Entity Domain
5.1.1. Entity Domain Type
An entity domain has a type, which is uniquely identified by a string
that MUST be no more than 64 characters, and MUST NOT contain
characters other than US-ASCII alphanumeric characters
(U+0030-U+0039, U+0041-U+005A, and U+0061-U+007A), the hyphen-minus
('-', U+002D), the colon (':', U+003A), or the low line ('_',
U+005F).
The usage of colon (':', U+003A) MUST obey the rules below:
* The colon (':', U+003A) character MUST NOT appear more than once;
* The colon character MUST NOT be used unless within the string
"priv:";
* The string "priv:" MUST NOT be used unless it starts the string
that identifies an entity domain type; and
* For an entity domain type identifier with the "priv:" prefix, an
additional string (e.g., company identifier or random string) MUST
follow "priv:" to reduce potential collisions.
For example, the strings "ipv4", "ipv6", "pid", and "priv:example-
test-edt", are valid entity domain types. "ipv4.anycast",
"pid.local", and "priv:" are invalid.
Although "_", "-", "__--" are valid entity domain types, it is
desirable to add characters, such as alphanumeric ones, for better
intelligibility.
The type EntityDomainType is used in this document to denote a JSON
string meeting the preceding requirements.
An entity domain type defines the semantics of a type of entity,
independently of any specifying resource. All entity domain types
that are not prefixed with "priv:" MUST be registered with IANA in
the "ALTO Entity Domain Types" registry, defined in Section 12.3,
following the procedure specified in Section 12.3.2 of this document.
The format of the entity identifiers (see Section 5.1.3) in that
entity domain type, as well as any hierarchical or inheritance rules
(see Section 5.1.4) for those entities, MUST be specified in the IANA
registration.
Entity domain type identifiers prefixed with "priv:" are reserved for
Private Use (see [RFC8126]) without a need to register with IANA.
The definition of a private-use entity domain type MUST apply the
same way in all property maps of an IRD where it is present.
5.1.2. Entity Domain Name
As discussed in Section 3.2, an entity domain is characterized by a
type and identified by a name.
This document distinguishes three categories of entity domains:
resource-specific entity domains, resource-agnostic entity domains,
and self-defined entity domains. Their entity domain names are
constructed as specified in the following subsections.
Each entity domain is identified by a unique entity domain name.
Borrowing the symbol "::=" from the Backus-Naur Form notation
[RFC5511], the format of an entity domain name is defined as follows:
EntityDomainName ::= [ [ ResourceID ] '.' ] EntityDomainType
The presence and construction of the component
"[ [ ResourceID ] '.' ]"
depends on the category of entity domain.
Note that the '.' separator is not allowed in EntityDomainType, and
hence there is no ambiguity on whether an entity domain name refers
to a resource-agnostic entity domain or a resource-specific entity
domain.
Note also that Section 10.1 of [RFC7285] specifies the format of the
PID name, which is the format of the resource identifier including
the following specification:
| The '.' separator is reserved for future use and MUST NOT be used
| unless specifically indicated in this document, or an extension
| document.
The present extension keeps the format specification of [RFC7285],
hence the '.' separator MUST NOT be used in an information resource
identifier.
5.1.2.1. Resource-Specific Entity Domain
A resource-specific entity domain is identified by an entity domain
name constructed as follows. It MUST start with a resource
identifier using the ResourceID type defined in Section 10.2 of
[RFC7285], followed by the '.' separator (U+002E), followed by a
string of the type EntityDomainType specified in Section 5.1.1.
For example, if an ALTO server provides two network maps "netmap-1"
and "netmap-2", these network maps can define two resource-specific
domains of type "pid", respectively identified by "netmap-1.pid" and
"netmap-2.pid".
5.1.2.2. Resource-Agnostic Entity Domain
A resource-agnostic entity domain contains entities that are
identified independently of any information resource. The identifier
of a resource-agnostic entity domain is simply the identifier of its
entity domain type. For example, "ipv4" and "ipv6" identify the two
resource-agnostic Internet address entity domains defined in
Section 6.1.
5.1.2.3. Self-Defined Entity Domain
A property map can define properties for entities that are specific
to a unique information resource, which is the property map itself.
This may be the case when an ALTO Server provides properties for a
set of entities that are defined only in this property map, are not
relevant to another one, and do not depend on another specific
resource.
For example: a specialized property map may define a domain of type
"ane", defined in [PATH-VECTOR], that contains a set of ANEs
representing data centers that each have a persistent identifier and
are relevant only to this property map.
In this case, the entity domain is qualified as "self-defined". The
identifier of a self-defined entity domain can be of the format:
EntityDomainName ::= '.' EntityDomainType
where '.' indicates that the entity domain only exists within the
property map resource using it.
A self-defined entity domain can be viewed as a particular case of
resource-specific entity domain, where the specific resource is the
current resource that uses this entity domain. In that case, for the
sake of simplification, the component ResourceID MUST be omitted in
its entity domain name.
5.1.3. Entity Identifier
Entities in an entity domain are identified by entity identifiers
(EntityID) of the following format:
EntityID ::= EntityDomainName ':' DomainTypeSpecificEntityID
Examples from the Internet address entity domains include individual
IP addresses such as "net1.ipv4:192.0.2.14" and
"net1.ipv6:2001:db8::12", as well as address blocks such as
"net1.ipv4:192.0.2.0/26" and "net1.ipv6:2001:db8::/48".
The format of the second part of an entity identifier,
DomainTypeSpecificEntityID, depends on the entity domain type and
MUST be specified when defining a new entity domain type and
registering it with IANA. Identifiers MAY be hierarchical, and
properties MAY be inherited based on that hierarchy. The rules
defining any hierarchy or inheritance MUST be defined when the entity
domain type is registered.
The type EntityID is used in this document to denote a JSON string
representing an entity identifier in this format.
Note that two entity identifiers with different, valid textual
representations may refer to the same entity, for a given entity
domain. For example, the strings "net1.ipv6:2001:db8::1" and
"net1.ipv6:2001:db8:0:0:0:0:0:1" refer to the same entity in the
"ipv6" entity domain. Such equivalences should be established by the
object represented by DomainTypeSpecificEntityID. For example,
[RFC5952] establishes equivalence for IPv6 addresses, while [RFC4632]
does so for IPv4 addresses.
5.1.4. Hierarchy and Inheritance
To simplify the representation, some types of entity domains allow
the ALTO Client and Server to use a hierarchical entity identifier
format to represent a block of individual entities. For instance, in
an IPv4 domain "net1.ipv4", a CIDR "net1.ipv4:192.0.2.0/26" covers 64
individual IPv4 entities. In this case, the corresponding property
inheritance rule MUST be defined for the entity domain type. The
hierarchy and inheritance rule MUST have no ambiguity.
5.2. Entity Property
Each entity property has a type to indicate the encoding and the
semantics of the value of this entity property, and has a name to
identify it.
5.2.1. Entity Property Type
The type EntityPropertyType is used in this document to indicate a
string denoting an entity property type. The string MUST be no more
than 32 characters, and it MUST NOT contain characters other than US-
ASCII alphanumeric characters (U+0030-U+0039, U+0041-U+005A, and
U+0061-U+007A), the hyphen-minus ('-', U+002D), the colon (':',
U+003A), or the low line ('_', U+005F). Note that the '.' separator
is not allowed because it is reserved to separate an entity property
type and an information resource identifier when an entity property
is resource-specific.
While Section 5.1.1 allows the use of the character ":" with
restrictions on entity domain identifiers, it can be used without
restrictions on entity property type identifiers. This relates to
[RFC7285], where a Server can define properties for endpoints "ipv4"
and "ipv6". In the present extension, there is a mapping of ALTO
entity domain types "ipv4" and "ipv6" to ALTO address types "ipv4"
and "ipv6". Properties defined for "ipv4" and "ipv6" endpoints
should be reusable on "ipv4" and "ipv6" entities. Forbidding the
usage of ":" in a non-private entity property type identifier would
not allow the use of properties previously defined for "ipv4" and
"ipv6" endpoints because their identifiers would be invalid.
Although ":" or "_::-" are valid entity domain types, it is desirable
to add characters, such as alphanumeric ones, for better
intelligibility.
Identifiers prefixed with "priv:" are reserved for Private Use
[RFC8126] without a need to register with IANA. All other
identifiers for entity property types MUST be registered in the "ALTO
Entity Property Types" registry, which is defined in Section 12.4.
The intended semantics of the entity property type MUST be specified
in the IANA registration.
For an entity property identifier with the "priv:" prefix, an
additional string (e.g., company identifier or random string) MUST
follow the prefix to reduce potential collisions, that is, the string
"priv:" alone is not a valid entity property identifier. The
definition of a private-use entity property type must apply the same
way in all property maps of an IRD where it is present.
To distinguish from the endpoint property type, the entity property
type has the following characteristics:
* Some entity property types are applicable only to entities in
particular entity domain types. For example, the property type
"pid" is applicable to entities in the entity domain types "ipv4"
or "ipv6", while it is not applicable to entities in an entity
domain of type "pid".
* The intended semantics of the value of an entity property may also
depend on the entity domain type. For example, suppose that a
property named "geo-location" is defined as the coordinates of a
point and is encoded as: "latitude longitude [altitude]." When
applied to an entity that represents a specific host computer and
identified by an address in an entity domain of type "ipv4" or
"ipv6", the "geo-location" property would define the host's
location. However, when applied to an entity in a domain of type
"pid", the property would indicate a location representative of
all hosts in this "pid" entity.
5.2.2. Entity Property Name
Each entity property is identified by an entity property name, which
is a string of the following format:
EntityPropertyName ::= [ [ ResourceID ] '.' ] EntityPropertyType
Similar to the endpoint property type defined in Section 10.8 of
[RFC7285], each entity property may be defined by either the property
map itself (self-defined) or some other specific information resource
(resource-specific).
The entity property name of a resource-specific entity property
starts with a string of the type ResourceID defined in [RFC7285],
followed by the '.' separator (U+002E) and an EntityDomainType typed
string. For example, the "pid" properties of an "ipv4" entity
defined by two different maps "net-map-1" and "net-map-2" are
identified by "net-map-1.pid" and "net-map-2.pid" respectively.
The specific information resource of an entity property may be the
current information resource itself, that is, the property map
defining the property. In that case, the ResourceID in the property
name SHOULD be omitted. For example, the property name ".ASN"
applied to an entity identified by its IPv4 address indicates the AS
number of the AS that "owns" the entity, where the returned AS number
is defined by the property map itself.
5.2.3. Format for Entity Property Value
Section 11.4.1.6 of [RFC7285] specifies that an implementation of the
Endpoint Property Service specified in [RFC7285] SHOULD assume that
the property value is a JSONString and fail to parse if it is not.
This document extends the format of a property value by allowing it
to be a JSONValue instead of just a JSONString.
6. Entity Domain Types Defined in This Document
The definition of each entity domain type MUST include the entity
domain type name and the domain-specific entity identifiers. The
definition of an entity domain type MAY include hierarchy and
inheritance semantics. This document defines three initial entity
domain types as follows.
6.1. Internet Address Domain Types
The document defines two entity domain types (IPv4 and IPv6) for
Internet addresses. Both types are resource-agnostic entity domain
types and hence define corresponding resource-agnostic entity domains
as well. Since the two domains use the same hierarchy and
inheritance semantics, we define the semantics together, instead of
repeating for each.
6.1.1. Entity Domain Type: IPv4
6.1.1.1. Entity Domain Type Identifier
The identifier for this entity domain type is "ipv4".
6.1.1.2. Domain-Specific Entity Identifiers
Individual addresses are strings as specified by the IPv4address rule
in Section 3.2.2 of [RFC3986]; hierarchical addresses are strings as
specified by the prefix notation in Section 3.1 of [RFC4632]. An
individual Internet address and the corresponding full-length prefix
are considered aliases for the same entity on which to define
properties. Thus, "ipv4:192.0.2.0" and "ipv4:192.0.2.0/32" are
equivalent.
6.1.2. Entity Domain Type: IPv6
6.1.2.1. Entity Domain Type Identifier
The identifier for this Entity Domain Type is "ipv6".
6.1.2.2. Domain-Specific Entity Identifiers
Individual addresses are strings as specified by Section 4 of
[RFC5952]; hierarchical addresses are strings as specified by IPv6
address prefixes notation in Section 2.3 of [RFC4291]. To define
properties, an individual Internet address and the corresponding
128-bit prefix are considered aliases for the same entity. That is,
"ipv6:2001:db8::1" and "ipv6:2001:db8::1/128" are equivalent and have
the same set of properties.
6.1.3. Hierarchy and Inheritance of Internet Address Domains
Both Internet address domains allow property values to be inherited.
Specifically, if a property P is not defined for a specific Internet
address I, but P is defined for a hierarchical Internet address C
that represents a set of addresses containing I, then the address I
inherits the value of P defined for the hierarchical address C. If
more than one such hierarchical addresses define a value for P, I
inherits the value of P in the hierarchical address with the longest
prefix. Note that this longest prefix rule ensures no multiple value
inheritances, and hence no ambiguity.
Hierarchical addresses can also inherit properties. For instance, if
a property P:
* is not defined for the hierarchical address C,
* but is defined for a set of hierarchical addresses where:
- each address C' in the set contains all IP addresses in C, and
- C' has a shorter prefix length than C,
then C MUST inherit the property P from the C' having the longest
prefix length.
As an example, suppose that a server defines a property P for the
following entities:
+--------------------+------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.0/26: | P=v1 |
+--------------------+------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.0/28: | P=v2 |
+--------------------+------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.0/30: | P=v3 |
+--------------------+------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.0: | P=v4 |
+--------------------+------+
Table 1: Defined Property
Values
Then the following entities have the indicated values:
+--------------------+---------------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.0: | P=v4 |
+--------------------+---------------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.1: | P=v3 |
+--------------------+---------------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.16: | P=v1 |
+--------------------+---------------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.32: | P=v1 |
+--------------------+---------------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.64: | (not defined) |
+--------------------+---------------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.0/32: | P=v4 |
+--------------------+---------------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.0/31: | P=v3 |
+--------------------+---------------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.0/29: | P=v2 |
+--------------------+---------------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.0/27: | P=v1 |
+--------------------+---------------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.0/25: | (not defined) |
+--------------------+---------------+
Table 2: Inherited Property Values
An ALTO server MAY explicitly indicate a property as not having a
value for a particular entity. That is, a server MAY say that
property P of entity X is "defined to have no value" instead of
"undefined". To indicate "no value", a server MAY perform different
behaviors:
* If entity X would inherit a value for property P, and if the ALTO
server decides to say that "X has no value for P", then the ALTO
server MUST return a "null" value for that property on X. In this
case, the ALTO client MUST recognize the JSON "null" value as "no
value" and interpret it as "do not apply the inheritance rules for
this property on X".
* If the entity would not inherit a value, then the ALTO server MAY
return "null" or just omit the property. In this case, the ALTO
client cannot infer the value for this property of this entity
from the Inheritance rules. Thus, the client MUST interpret that
this property has no value.
If the ALTO server does not define any properties for an entity, then
the server MAY omit that entity from the response.
6.1.4. Defining Information Resource Media Type for Domain Types IPv4
and IPv6
Entity domain types "ipv4" and "ipv6" both allow the definition of
resource-specific entity domains. When resource-specific domains are
defined with entities of domain type "ipv4" or "ipv6", the defining
information resource for an entity domain of type "ipv4" or "ipv6"
MUST be a network map. The media type of a defining information
resource is therefore:
application/alto-networkmap+json
6.2. Entity Domain Type: PID
The PID entity domain associates property values with the PIDs in a
network map. Accordingly, this entity domain always depends on a
network map.
6.2.1. Entity Domain Type Identifier
The identifier for this Entity Domain Type is "pid".
6.2.2. Domain-Specific Entity Identifiers
The entity identifiers are the PID names of the associated network
map.
6.2.3. Hierarchy and Inheritance
There is no hierarchy or inheritance for properties associated with
PIDs.
6.2.4. Defining Information Resource Media Type for Domain Type PID
The entity domain type "pid" allows the definition of resource-
specific entity domains. When resource-specific domains are defined
with entities of domain type "pid", the defining information resource
for entity domain type "pid" MUST be a network map. The media type
of a defining information resource is therefore:
application/alto-networkmap+json
6.2.5. Relationship To Internet Addresses Domains
The PID domain and the Internet address domains are completely
independent; the properties associated with a PID have no relation to
the properties associated with the prefixes or endpoint addresses in
that PID. An ALTO server MAY choose to assign all the properties of
a PID to the prefixes in that PID or only some of these properties.
For example, suppose "PID1" consists of the prefix
"ipv4:192.0.2.0/24" and has the property P with value v1. The
Internet address entities "ipv4:192.0.2.0" and "ipv4:192.0.2.0/24" in
the IPv4 domain MAY have a value for the property P, and if they do,
it is not necessarily v1.
6.3. Internet Address Properties vs. PID Properties
Because the Internet address and PID domains relate to completely
distinct domain types, the question may arise as to which entity
domain type is the best for a property. In general, the Internet
address domain types are RECOMMENDED for properties that are closely
related to the Internet address or are associated with, and inherited
through, hierarchical addresses.
The PID domain type is RECOMMENDED for properties that arise from the
definition of the PID, rather than from the Internet address prefixes
in that PID.
For example, because Internet addresses are allocated to service
providers by blocks of prefixes, an "ISP" property would be best
associated with Internet address domain types. On the other hand, a
property that explains why a PID was formed, or how it relates to a
provider's network, would best be associated with the PID domain
type.
7. Property Map
A property map returns the properties defined for all entities in one
or more domains, e.g., the "location" property of entities in a
domain of type "pid", and the "ASN" property of entities in domains
of types "ipv4" and "ipv6". Section 10.4 gives an example of a
property map request and its response.
Downloading the whole property map is a way for the Client to obtain
the entity identifiers that can be used as input for a filtered
property map request. However, a whole property map may be too
voluminous for a Client that only wants the list of applicable entity
identifiers. How to obtain the list of entities of a filtered
property map in a simplified response is specified in Section 8.
7.1. Media Type
The media type of a property map is "application/alto-propmap+json".
7.2. HTTP Method
The property map is requested using the HTTP GET method.
7.3. Accept Input Parameters
A property map has no Accept Input parameters.
7.4. Capabilities
The capabilities are defined by an object of type
PropertyMapCapabilities:
object {
EntityPropertyMapping mappings;
} PropertyMapCapabilities;
object-map {
EntityDomainName -> EntityPropertyName<1..*>;
} EntityPropertyMapping
with fields:
mappings: A JSON object whose keys are names of entity domains and
values are the supported entity properties of the corresponding
entity domains.
7.5. Uses
The "uses" field of a property map resource in an IRD entry specifies
the resources in this same IRD on which this property map directly
depends. It is an array of resource identifier(s). This array
identifies the defining information resources associated with the
resource-specific entity domains and properties that are indicated in
this resource.
7.6. Response
If the entity domains in this property map depend on other resources,
the "dependent-vtags" field in the "meta" field of the response MUST
be an array that includes the version tags of those resources, and
the order MUST be consistent with the "uses" field of this property
map resource. The data component of a property map response is named
"property-map", which is a JSON object of type PropertyMapData,
where:
object {
PropertyMapData property-map;
} InfoResourceProperties : ResponseEntityBase;
object-map {
EntityID -> EntityProps;
} PropertyMapData;
object {
EntityPropertyName -> JSONValue;
} EntityProps;
The ResponseEntityBase type is defined in Section 8.4 of [RFC7285].
Specifically, a PropertyMapData object has one member for each entity
in the property map. The entity's properties are encoded in the
corresponding EntityProps object. EntityProps encodes one name/value
pair for each property, where the property names are encoded as
strings of type PropertyName. A protocol implementation SHOULD
assume that the property value is either a JSONString or a JSON
"null" value, and fail to parse if it is not, unless the
implementation is using an extension to this document that indicates
when and how property values of other data types are signaled.
For each entity in the property map:
* If the entity is in a resource-specific entity domain, the ALTO
server MUST only return self-defined properties and resource-
specific properties that depend on the same resource as the entity
does. The ALTO client MUST ignore any resource-specific property
for this entity if the mapping between this resource-specific
property and this entity is not indicated, in the IRD, in the
"mappings" capability of the property map resource.
* If the entity identifier is resource-agnostic, the ALTO server
SHOULD return the self-defined properties and all the resource-
specific properties defined in the property-defining information
resources that are indicated, in the IRD, in the "mappings"
capability of the property map resource, unless property values
can be omitted upon some inheritance rules.
The ALTO server MAY omit property values that are inherited rather
than explicitly defined in order to achieve more compact encoding.
As a consequence, the ALTO Client MUST NOT assume inherited property
values will all be present. If the Client needs inherited values, it
MUST use the entity domain's inheritance rules to deduce those
values.
8. Filtered Property Map
A filtered property map returns the values of a set of properties for
a set of entities selected by the client.
Sections 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8 give examples of filtered
property map requests and responses.
While the IRD lists all the names of the supported properties, it
only lists the names of the supported entity domains and not the
entity identifiers. Sometimes a client only wants to know what
entity identifiers it can provide as input to a filtered property map
request but does not want to download the full property map, or it
may want to check whether some given entity identifiers are eligible
for a query. To support these cases, the filtered property map
supports a lightweight response with empty property values.
8.1. Media Type
The media type of a property map resource is "application/alto-
propmap+json".
8.2. HTTP Method
The filtered property map is requested using the HTTP POST method.
8.3. Accept Input Parameters
The input parameters for a filtered property map request are supplied
in the entity body of the POST request. This document specifies the
input parameters with a data format indicated by the media type
"application/alto-propmapparams+json", which is a JSON object of type
ReqFilteredPropertyMap. ReqFilteredPropertyMap is designed to
support the following cases of client requests:
* The client wants the value of a selected set of properties for a
selected set of entities;
* The client wants all property values on all the entities;
* The client wants all entities for which a property is defined but
is not interested in their property values; or
* The client wants to cross-check whether some entity identifiers
are present in the filtered property map but is not interested in
their property values.
The third case is equivalent to querying the whole unfiltered
property map, which can also be achieved with a GET request. Some
Clients, however, may prefer to systematically make filtered property
map queries, where filtering parameters may sometimes be empty.
The JSON object ReqFilteredPropertyMap is specified as follows:
object {
EntityID entities<0..*>;
[EntityPropertyName properties<0..*>;]
} ReqFilteredPropertyMap;
with fields:
entities: A list of entity identifiers for which the specified
properties are to be returned. If the list is empty, the ALTO
Server MUST interpret the list as if it contained a list of all
entities currently defined in the filtered property map. The
domain of each entity MUST be included in the list of entity
domains in this resource's "capabilities" field (see Section 8.4).
The ALTO server MUST interpret entries appearing multiple times as
if they appeared only once.
properties: A list of properties to be returned for each entity. If
the list is empty, the ALTO Sever MUST interpret the list as if it
contained a list of all properties currently defined in the
filtered property map. Each specified property MUST be included
in the list of properties in this resource's "capabilities" field
(see Section 8.4). The ALTO server MUST interpret entries
appearing multiple times as if they appeared only once. This
field is optional. If it is absent, the Server returns a property
value equal to the literal string "{}" for all the entity
identifiers of the "entities" field for which at least one
property is defined.
Note that the field "properties" is optional. In addition, when the
"entities" field is an empty list, it corresponds to a query for all
applicable entity identifiers of the filtered property map, with no
current interest on any particular property. When the "entities"
field is not empty, it allows the Client to check whether the listed
entity identifiers can be used as input to a filtered property map
query.
8.4. Capabilities
The capabilities are defined by an object of type
PropertyMapCapabilities, as defined in Section 7.4.
8.5. Uses
This is the same as the "uses" field of the property map resource
(see Section 7.5).
8.6. Filtered Property Map Response
The response MUST indicate an error, using ALTO Protocol error
handling, as defined in Section 8.5 of [RFC7285], if the request is
invalid.
Specifically, a filtered property map request can be invalid in the
following cases:
* The input field "entities" is absent from the Client request. In
this case, the Server MUST return an "E_MISSING_FIELD" error as
defined in Section 8.5.2 of [RFC7285].
* An entity identifier in the "entities" field of the request is
invalid. This occurs when:
- The domain of this entity is not defined in the "mappings"
capability of this resource in the IRD, or
- The entity identifier is not valid for the entity domain.
A valid entity identifier never generates an error, even if the
filtered property map resource does not define any properties for
it.
If an entity identifier in the "entities" field of the request is
invalid, the ALTO server MUST return an "E_INVALID_FIELD_VALUE"
error defined in Section 8.5.2 of [RFC7285], and the "value" field
of the error message SHOULD indicate the provided invalid entity
identifier.
* A property name in the "properties" field of the request is
invalid. This occurs when this property name is not defined in
the "properties" capability of this resource in the IRD.
When a filtered property map resource does not define a value for
a property requested for a particular entity, it is not an error.
In this case, the ALTO server MUST omit that property from the
response for that endpoint.
If a property name in the "properties" field in the request is
invalid, the ALTO server MUST return an "E_INVALID_FIELD_VALUE"
error defined in Section 8.5.2 of [RFC7285]. The "value" field of
the error message SHOULD indicate the property name.
Some identifiers can be interpreted as both an entity name and a
property name, as is the case for "pid" if it were erroneously used
alone. In such a case, the Server SHOULD follow Section 8.5.2 of
[RFC7285], which says:
| For an E_INVALID_FIELD_VALUE error, the server may include an
| optional field named "field" in the "meta" field of the response,
| to indicate the field that contains the wrong value.
The response to a valid request is the same as for the property map
(see Section 7.6) except that:
* If the requested entities include entities with a resource-
agnostic identifier, the "dependent-vtags" field in its "meta"
field MUST include version tags of all dependent resources
appearing in the "uses" field.
* If the requested entities only include entities in resource-
specific entity domains, the "dependent-vtags" field in its "meta"
field MUST include the version tags of the resources on which the
requested resource-specific entity domains and the requested
resource-specific properties are dependent.
* The response only includes the entities and properties requested
by the client. If an entity in the request is identified by a
hierarchical identifier (e.g., a "ipv4" or "ipv6" prefix), the
response MUST return all properties that are present for any
address covered by the prefix, even though some of those
properties may not be present for all addresses covered by the
prefix.
* When the input member "properties" is absent from the client
request, the Server returns a property map containing all the
requested entity identifiers for which one or more properties are
defined. For all the entities of the returned map, the returned
property value is equal to "{}".
The filtered property map response MUST include all the inherited
property values for the requested entities and all the entities that
are able to inherit property values from the requested entities. To
achieve this goal, the ALTO server MAY follow two rules:
* If a property for a requested entity is inherited from another
entity not included in the request, the response MUST include this
property for the requested entity. For example, a full property
map may skip a property P for an entity A (e.g.,
"ipv4:192.0.2.0/31") if P can be derived using inheritance from
another entity B (e.g., "ipv4:192.0.2.0/30"). A filtered property
map request may include only A but not B. In such a case, the
property P MUST be included in the response for A.
* If there are entities covered by a requested entity but they have
different values for the requested properties, the response MUST
include all those entities and the different property values for
them. For example, consider a request for property P of entity A
(e.g., "ipv4:192.0.2.0/31"): if P has value v1 for
"A1=ipv4:192.0.2.0/32" and v2 for "A2=ipv4:192.0.2.1/32", then the
response SHOULD include A1 and A2.
For the sake of response compactness, the ALTO server SHOULD obey the
following rule:
* If an entity identifier in the response is already covered by
other entities identifiers in the same response, it SHOULD be
removed from the response. In the previous example, the entity
"A=ipv4:192.0.2.0/31" SHOULD be removed because A1 and A2 cover
all the addresses in A.
An ALTO client should be aware that the entities in the response may
be different from the entities in its request.
8.7. Entity Property Type Defined in This Document
This document defines the entity property type "pid". This property
type extends the ALTO endpoint property type "pid" defined in
Section 7.1.1 of [RFC7285] as follows: the property has the same
semantics and applies to IPv4 and IPv6 addresses; the difference is
that the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses have evolved from the status of
endpoints to the status of entities.
The defining information resource for property type MUST be a network
map.
8.7.1. Entity Property Type: pid
Identifier: pid
Semantics: the intended semantics are the same as in [RFC7285] for
the ALTO endpoint property type "pid".
Media type of defining information resource: application/alto-
networkmap+json
Security considerations: for entity property type "pid" are the same
as documented in [RFC7285] for the ALTO endpoint property type
"pid".
9. Impact on Legacy ALTO Servers and ALTO Clients
9.1. Impact on Endpoint Property Service
Since the property map and the filtered property map defined in this
document provide a functionality that covers the EPS defined in
Section 11.4 of [RFC7285], ALTO servers may prefer to provide
property map and filtered property map in place of EPS. However, for
the legacy endpoint properties, it is recommended that ALTO servers
also provide EPS so that legacy clients can still be supported.
9.2. Impact on Resource-Specific Properties
Section 10.8 of [RFC7285] defines two categories of endpoint
properties: "resource-specific" and "global". Resource-specific
property names are prefixed with the identifier of the resource they
depend on, while global property names have no such prefix. The
property map and the filtered property map specified in this document
define similar categories of entity properties. The difference is
that entity property maps do not define "global" entity properties.
Instead, they define self-defined entity properties as a special case
of "resource-specific" entity properties, where the specific resource
is the property map itself. This means that self-defined properties
are defined within the scope of the property map.
9.3. Impact on Other Properties
In the present extension, properties can be defined for sets of
entity addresses, rather than just individual endpoint addresses as
initially defined in [RFC7285]. This might change the semantics of a
property. These sets can be, for example, hierarchical IP address
blocks. For instance, a property such as the fictitious "geo-
location" defined for a set of IP addresses would have a value
corresponding to a location representative of all the addresses in
this set.
10. Examples
In this document, the HTTP message bodies of all the examples use
Unix-style line-ending character (%x0A) as the line separator.
10.1. Network Map
The examples in this section use a very simple default network map:
+-------------+--------------------------+
| defaultpid: | ipv4:0.0.0.0/0 ipv6:::/0 |
+-------------+--------------------------+
| pid1: | ipv4:192.0.2.0/25 |
+-------------+--------------------------+
| pid2: | ipv4:192.0.2.0/27 |
+-------------+--------------------------+
| pid3: | ipv4:192.0.3.0/28 |
+-------------+--------------------------+
| pid4: | ipv4:192.0.3.16/28 |
+-------------+--------------------------+
Table 3: Example Default Network Map
And another simple alternative network map:
+-------------+--------------------------+
| defaultpid: | ipv4:0.0.0.0/0 ipv6:::/0 |
+-------------+--------------------------+
| pid1: | ipv4:192.0.2.0/27 |
+-------------+--------------------------+
| pid2: | ipv4:192.0.3.0/27 |
+-------------+--------------------------+
Table 4: Example Alternative Network Map
10.2. Property Definitions
Beyond "pid", the examples in this section use four additional,
fictitious property types for entities of domain type "ipv4":
"countrycode", "ASN", "ISP", and "state". These properties are
assumed to be resource-agnostic so their name is identical to their
type. The entities have the following values:
+=====================+=========+=======+=============+=======+
| | ISP | ASN | countrycode | state |
+=====================+=========+=======+=============+=======+
| ipv4:192.0.2.0/23: | BitsRus | - | us | - |
+---------------------+---------+-------+-------------+-------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.0/28: | - | 65543 | - | NJ |
+---------------------+---------+-------+-------------+-------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.16/28: | - | 65543 | - | CT |
+---------------------+---------+-------+-------------+-------+
| ipv4:192.0.2.1: | - | - | - | PA |
+---------------------+---------+-------+-------------+-------+
| ipv4:192.0.3.0/28: | - | 65544 | - | TX |
+---------------------+---------+-------+-------------+-------+
| ipv4:192.0.3.16/28: | - | 65544 | - | MN |
+---------------------+---------+-------+-------------+-------+
Table 5: Example Property Values for Internet Address Domains
The examples in this section use the property "region" for the PID
domain of the default network map with the following values:
+=================+==========+
| | region |
+=================+==========+
| pid:defaultpid: | - |
+-----------------+----------+
| pid:pid1: | us-west |
+-----------------+----------+
| pid:pid2: | us-east |
+-----------------+----------+
| pid:pid3: | us-south |
+-----------------+----------+
| pid:pid4: | us-north |
+-----------------+----------+
Table 6: Example Property
Values for Default Network
Map's PID Domain
Note that "-" means the value of the property for the entity is
"undefined". So the entity would inherit a value for this property
by the inheritance rule if possible. For example, the value of the
"ISP" property for "ipv4:192.0.2.1" is "BitsRus" because of
"ipv4:192.0.2.0/24". But the "region" property for "pid:defaultpid"
has no value because there is no entity from which it can inherit.
Similar to the PID domain of the default network map, the examples in
this section use the property "ASN" for the PID domain of the
alternative network map with the following values:
+=================+=======+
| | ASN |
+=================+=======+
| pid:defaultpid: | - |
+-----------------+-------+
| pid:pid1: | 65543 |
+-----------------+-------+
| pid:pid2: | 65544 |
+-----------------+-------+
Table 7: Example
Property Values for
Alternative Network
Map's PID Domain
10.3. Information Resource Directory (IRD)
The following IRD defines ALTO Server information resources that are
relevant to the Entity Property Service. It provides a property map
for the "ISP" and "ASN" properties. The server could have provided a
single property map for all four properties, but it does not,
presumably because the organization that runs the ALTO server
believes that a client is not necessarily interested in getting all
four properties.
The server provides several filtered property maps. The first
returns all four properties, and the second returns only the "pid"
property for the default network map and the "alt-network-map".
The filtered property maps for the "ISP", "ASN", "countrycode", and
"state" properties do not depend on the default network map (it does
not have a "uses" capability) because the definitions of those
properties do not depend on the default network map. The filtered
property map providing the "pid" property does have a "uses"
capability for the default network map because the default network
map defines the values of the "pid" property.
Note that for legacy clients, the ALTO server provides an Endpoint
Property Service for the "pid" property defined for the endpoints of
the default network map and the "alt-network-map".
The server provides another filtered Property map resource, named
"ane-dc-property-map", that returns fictitious properties named
"storage-capacity", "ram", and "cpu" for ANEs that have a persistent
identifier. The entity domain to which the ANEs belong is self-
defined and valid only within the property map.
The other property maps in the returned IRD are shown here for
purposes of illustration.
GET /directory HTTP/1.1
Host: alto.example.com
Accept: application/alto-directory+json,application/alto-error+json
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 2713
Content-Type: application/alto-directory+json
{
"meta" : {
"default-alto-network-map" : "default-network-map"
},
"resources" : {
"default-network-map" : {
"uri" : "http://alto.example.com/networkmap/default",
"media-type" : "application/alto-networkmap+json"
},
"alt-network-map" : {
"uri" : "http://alto.example.com/networkmap/alt",
"media-type" : "application/alto-networkmap+json"
},
"ia-property-map" : {
"uri" : "http://alto.example.com/propmap/full/inet-ia",
"media-type" : "application/alto-propmap+json",
"capabilities" : {
"mappings": {
"ipv4": [ ".ISP", ".ASN" ],
"ipv6": [ ".ISP", ".ASN" ]
}
}
},
"iacs-property-map" : {
"uri" : "http://alto.example.com/propmap/lookup/inet-iacs",
"media-type" : "application/alto-propmap+json",
"accepts": "application/alto-propmapparams+json",
"capabilities" : {
"mappings": {
"ipv4": [ ".ISP", ".ASN", ".countrycode", ".state" ],
"ipv6": [ ".ISP", ".ASN", ".countrycode", ".state" ]
}
}
},
"region-property-map": {
"uri": "http://alto.example.com/propmap/lookup/region",
"media-type": "application/alto-propmap+json",
"accepts": "application/alto-propmapparams+json",
"uses" : [ "default-network-map", "alt-network-map" ],
"capabilities": {
"mappings": {
"default-network-map.pid": [ ".region" ],
"alt-network-map.pid": [ ".ASN" ]
}
}
},
"ip-pid-property-map" : {
"uri" : "http://alto.example.com/propmap/lookup/pid",
"media-type" : "application/alto-propmap+json",
"accepts" : "application/alto-propmapparams+json",
"uses" : [ "default-network-map", "alt-network-map" ],
"capabilities" : {
"mappings": {
"ipv4": [ "default-network-map.pid",
"alt-network-map.pid" ],
"ipv6": [ "default-network-map.pid",
"alt-network-map.pid" ]
}
}
},
"legacy-endpoint-property" : {
"uri" : "http://alto.example.com/legacy/eps-pid",
"media-type" : "application/alto-endpointprop+json",
"accepts" : "application/alto-endpointpropparams+json",
"capabilities" : {
"properties" : [ "default-network-map.pid",
"alt-network-map.pid" ]
}
},
"ane-dc-property-map": {
"uri" : "http://alto.example.com/propmap/lookup/ane-dc",
"media-type" : "application/alto-propmap+json",
"accepts": "application/alto-propmapparams+json",
"capabilities": {
"mappings": {
".ane" : [ "storage-capacity", "ram", "cpu" ]
}
}
}
}
}
Figure 1: Example IRD
10.4. Full Property Map Example
The following example uses the properties and IRD defined in
Section 10.3 to retrieve a property map for entities with the "ISP"
and "ASN" properties.
Note that, to be compact, the response does not include the entity
"ipv4:192.0.2.1" because values of all those properties for this
entity are inherited from other entities.
Also note that the entities "ipv4:192.0.2.0/28" and
"ipv4:192.0.2.16/28" are merged into "ipv4:192.0.2.0/27" because they
have the same value of the "ASN" property. The same rule applies to
the entities "ipv4:192.0.3.0/28" and "ipv4:192.0.3.16/28". Both
"ipv4:192.0.2.0/27" and "ipv4:192.0.3.0/27" omit the value for the
"ISP" property because it is inherited from "ipv4:192.0.2.0/23".
GET /propmap/full/inet-ia HTTP/1.1
Host: alto.example.com
Accept: application/alto-propmap+json,application/alto-error+json
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 418
Content-Type: application/alto-propmap+json
{
"meta": {
"dependent-vtags": [
{"resource-id": "default-network-map",
"tag": "3ee2cb7e8d63d9fab71b9b34cbf764436315542e"},
{"resource-id": "alt-network-map",
"tag": "c0ce023b8678a7b9ec00324673b98e54656d1f6d"}
]
},
"property-map": {
"ipv4:192.0.2.0/23": {".ISP": "BitsRus"},
"ipv4:192.0.2.0/27": {".ASN": "65543"},
"ipv4:192.0.3.0/27": {".ASN": "65544"}
}
}
10.5. Filtered Property Map Example #1
The following example uses the filtered property map resource to
request the "ISP", "ASN", and "state" properties for several IPv4
addresses.
Note that the value of "state" for "ipv4:192.0.2.1" is the only
explicitly defined property; the other values are all derived from
the inheritance rules for Internet address entities.
POST /propmap/lookup/inet-iacs HTTP/1.1
Host: alto.example.com
Accept: application/alto-propmap+json,application/alto-error+json
Content-Length: 158
Content-Type: application/alto-propmapparams+json
{
"entities" : [ "ipv4:192.0.2.0",
"ipv4:192.0.2.1",
"ipv4:192.0.2.17" ],
"properties" : [ ".ISP", ".ASN", ".state" ]
}
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 540
Content-Type: application/alto-propmap+json
{
"meta": {
"dependent-vtags": [
{"resource-id": "default-network-map",
"tag": "3ee2cb7e8d63d9fab71b9b34cbf764436315542e"},
{"resource-id": "alt-network-map",
"tag": "c0ce023b8678a7b9ec00324673b98e54656d1f6d"}
]
},
"property-map": {
"ipv4:192.0.2.0":
{".ISP": "BitsRus", ".ASN": "65543", ".state": "NJ"},
"ipv4:192.0.2.1":
{".ISP": "BitsRus", ".ASN": "65543", ".state": "PA"},
"ipv4:192.0.2.17":
{".ISP": "BitsRus", ".ASN": "65543", ".state": "CT"}
}
}
10.6. Filtered Property Map Example #2
The following example uses the filtered property map resource to
request the "ASN", "countrycode", and "state" properties for several
IPv4 prefixes.
Note that the property values for both entities "ipv4:192.0.2.0/26"
and "ipv4:192.0.3.0/26" are not explicitly defined. They are
inherited from the entity "ipv4:192.0.2.0/23".
Also note that some entities like "ipv4:192.0.2.0/28" and
"ipv4:192.0.2.16/28" in the response are not explicitly listed in the
request. The response includes them because they are refinements of
the requested entities and have different values for the requested
properties.
The entity "ipv4:192.0.4.0/26" is not included in the response
because there are neither entities from which it is inherited, nor
entities inherited from it.
POST /propmap/lookup/inet-iacs HTTP/1.1
Host: alto.example.com
Accept: application/alto-propmap+json,application/alto-error+json
Content-Length: 174
Content-Type: application/alto-propmapparams+json
{
"entities" : [ "ipv4:192.0.2.0/26",
"ipv4:192.0.3.0/26",
"ipv4:192.0.4.0/26" ],
"properties" : [ ".ASN", ".countrycode", ".state" ]
}
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 774
Content-Type: application/alto-propmap+json
{
"meta": {
"dependent-vtags": [
{"resource-id": "default-network-map",
"tag": "3ee2cb7e8d63d9fab71b9b34cbf764436315542e"},
{"resource-id": "alt-network-map",
"tag": "c0ce023b8678a7b9ec00324673b98e54656d1f6d"}
]
},
"property-map": {
"ipv4:192.0.2.0/26": {".countrycode": "us"},
"ipv4:192.0.2.0/28": {".ASN": "65543",
".state": "NJ"},
"ipv4:192.0.2.16/28": {".ASN": "65543",
".state": "CT"},
"ipv4:192.0.2.1": {".state": "PA"},
"ipv4:192.0.3.0/26": {".countrycode": "us"},
"ipv4:192.0.3.0/28": {".ASN": "65544",
".state": "TX"},
"ipv4:192.0.3.16/28": {".ASN": "65544",
".state": "MN"}
}
}
10.7. Filtered Property Map Example #3
The following example uses the filtered property map resource to
request the "default-network-map.pid" property and the "alt-network-
map.pid" property for a set of IPv4 addresses and prefixes.
Note that the entity "ipv4:192.0.3.0/27" is decomposed into two
entities: "ipv4:192.0.3.0/28" and "ipv4:192.0.3.16/28", as they have
different "default-network-map.pid" property values.
POST /propmap/lookup/pid HTTP/1.1
Host: alto.example.com
Accept: application/alto-propmap+json,application/alto-error+json
Content-Length: 222
Content-Type: application/alto-propmapparams+json
{
"entities" : [
"ipv4:192.0.2.128",
"ipv4:192.0.2.0/27",
"ipv4:192.0.3.0/27" ],
"properties" : [ "default-network-map.pid",
"alt-network-map.pid" ]
}
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 774
Content-Type: application/alto-propmap+json
{
"meta": {
"dependent-vtags": [
{"resource-id": "default-network-map",
"tag": "3ee2cb7e8d63d9fab71b9b34cbf764436315542e"},
{"resource-id": "alt-network-map",
"tag": "c0ce023b8678a7b9ec00324673b98e54656d1f6d"}
]
},
"property-map": {
"ipv4:192.0.2.128": {"default-network-map.pid": "defaultpid",
"alt-network-map.pid": "defaultpid"},
"ipv4:192.0.2.0/27": {"default-network-map.pid": "pid2",
"alt-network-map.pid": "pid1"},
"ipv4:192.0.3.0/28": {"default-network-map.pid": "pid3",
"alt-network-map.pid": "pid2"},
"ipv4:192.0.3.16/28": {"default-network-map.pid": "pid4",
"alt-network-map.pid": "pid2"}
}
}
10.8. Filtered Property Map Example #4
Here is an example of using the filtered property map to query the
regions for several PIDs in "default-network-map". The "region"
property is specified as a self-defined property, i.e., the values of
this property are defined by this property map resource.
POST /propmap/lookup/region HTTP/1.1
Host: alto.example.com
Accept: application/alto-propmap+json,application/alto-error+json
Content-Length: 132
Content-Type: application/alto-propmapparams+json
{
"entities" : ["default-network-map.pid:pid1",
"default-network-map.pid:pid2"],
"properties" : [ ".region" ]
}
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 326
Content-Type: application/alto-propmap+json
{
"meta" : {
"dependent-vtags" : [
{"resource-id": "default-network-map",
"tag": "7915dc0290c2705481c491a2b4ffbec482b3cf62"}
]
},
"property-map": {
"default-network-map.pid:pid1": {
".region": "us-west"
},
"default-network-map.pid:pid2": {
".region": "us-east"
}
}
}
10.9. Filtered Property Map for ANEs Example #5
The following example uses the filtered property map resource "ane-
dc-property-map" to request properties "storage-capacity" and "cpu"
on several ANEs defined in this property map.
POST /propmap/lookup/ane-dc HTTP/1.1
Host: alto.example.com
Accept: application/alto-propmap+json,application/alto-error+json
Content-Length: 155
Content-Type: application/alto-propmapparams+json
{
"entities" : [".ane:dc21",
".ane:dc45-srv9",
".ane:dc6-srvcluster8"],
"properties" : [ "storage-capacity", "cpu"]
}
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 295
Content-Type: application/alto-propmap+json
{
"meta" : {
},
"property-map": {
".ane:dc21":
{"storage-capacity" : 40000, "cpu" : 500},
".ane:dc45-srv9":
{"storage-capacity" : 100, "cpu" : 20},
".ane:dc6-srvcluster8":
{"storage-capacity" : 6000, "cpu" : 100}
}
}
11. Security Considerations
Both property map and filtered property map defined in this document
fit into the architecture of the ALTO base protocol, and hence the
Security Considerations (Section 15 of [RFC7285]) of the base
protocol fully apply: authenticity and integrity of ALTO information
(i.e., authenticity and integrity of property maps), potential
undesirable guidance from authenticated ALTO information (e.g.,
potentially imprecise or even wrong value of a property such as geo-
location), confidentiality of ALTO information (e.g., exposure of a
potentially sensitive entity property such as geo-location), privacy
for ALTO users, and availability of ALTO services should all be
considered.
ALTO clients using this extension should in addition be aware that
the entity properties they require may convey more details than the
endpoint properties conveyed by using [RFC7285]. Client requests may
reveal details of their activity or plans thereof such that a
malicious Server, which is in a position to do so, may monetize or
use for attacks or undesired surveillance. Likewise, ALTO Servers
expose entities and properties related to specific parts of the
infrastructure that reveal details of capabilities, locations, or
resource availability. These details may be maliciously used for
competition purposes, or to cause resource shortage or undesired
publication.
To address these concerns, the property maps provided by this
extension require additional attention to two security considerations
discussed in: Section 15.2 ("Potential Undesirable Guidance from
Authenticated ALTO Information") of [RFC7285] and Section 15.3
("Confidentiality of ALTO Information") of [RFC7285]. Threats to the
availability of the ALTO service caused by highly demanding queries
should be addressed as specified in Section 15.5 of [RFC7285].
* Potential undesirable guidance from authenticated ALTO
information: this can be caused by Property values that change
over time and thus lead to performance degradation or system
rejection of application requests.
To avoid these consequences, a more robust ALTO client should
adopt and extend protection strategies specified in Section 15.2
of [RFC7285]. For example, to be notified immediately when a
particular ALTO value that the Client depends on changes, it is
RECOMMENDED that both the ALTO Client and ALTO Server using this
extension implement "Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO)
Incremental Updates Using Server-Sent Events (SSE)" [RFC8895].
* Confidentiality of ALTO information: as discussed in Section 15 of
[RFC7285], properties may have sensitive customer-specific
information. If this is the case, an ALTO Server may limit access
to those properties by providing several different property maps.
For a nonsensitive properties, the ALTO Server would provide a URI
that accepts requests from any client. Sensitive properties, on
the other hand, would only be available via a secure URI that
would require client authentication. Another way is to expose
highly abstracted, coarse-grained property values to all Clients
while restricting access to URIs that expose more fine-grained
values to authorized Clients. Restricted access URIs may be
gathered in delegate IRDs as specified in Section 9.2.4 of
[RFC7285].
Also, while technically this document does not introduce any
security risks not inherent in the Endpoint Property Service
defined by [RFC7285], the GET-mode property map resource defined
in this document does make it easier for a client to download
large numbers of property values. Accordingly, an ALTO Server
should limit GET-mode property maps to properties that do not
contain sensitive data.
Section 12 of this document specifies that the ALTO service
provider MUST be aware of the potential sensitivity of exposed
entity domains and properties. Section 12.3.2 (ALTO Entity Domain
Type Registration Process) of this document specifies that when
the registration of an entity domain type is requested of IANA,
the request MUST include security considerations that show
awareness of how the exposed entity addresses may be related to
private information about an ALTO client or an infrastructure
service provider. Likewise, Section 12.4 (ALTO Entity Property
Types Registry) of this document specifies that when the
registration of a property type is requested of IANA, the request
MUST include security considerations that explain why this
property type is required for ALTO-based operations.
The risk of ALTO information being leaked to malicious Clients or
third parties is addressed similarly to Section 7 of [RFC8896].
ALTO clients and servers SHOULD support TLS 1.3 [RFC8446].
12. IANA Considerations
This document defines additional application/alto-* media types,
which are listed in Table 8. It defines the "ALTO Entity Domain
Types" registry that extends the "ALTO Address Types" registry
defined in [RFC7285]. It also defines the "ALTO Entity Property
Types" registry that extends the "ALTO Endpoint Property Types"
registry defined in [RFC7285].
+=============+=========================+===============+
| Type | Subtype | Specification |
+=============+=========================+===============+
| application | alto-propmap+json | Section 7.1 |
+-------------+-------------------------+---------------+
| application | alto-propmapparams+json | Section 8.3 |
+-------------+-------------------------+---------------+
Table 8: Additional ALTO Media Types
12.1. application/alto-propmap+json Media Type
Type name:
application
Subtype name:
alto-propmap+json
Required parameters:
n/a
Optional parameters:
n/a
Encoding considerations:
Encoding considerations are identical to those specified for the
"application/json" media type. See [RFC8259].
Security considerations:
Security considerations related to the generation and consumption
of ALTO Protocol messages are discussed in Section 15 of [RFC7285]
and Section 11 of this document.
Interoperability considerations:
n/a
Published specification:
This document is the specification for this media type. See
Section 7.1.
Applications that use this media type:
ALTO servers and ALTO clients [RFC7285], either standalone or
embedded within other applications, when the queried resource is a
property map, whether filtered or not.
Fragment identifier considerations:
n/a
Additional information:
Magic number(s): n/a
File extension(s): n/a
Macintosh file type code(s): n/a
Person & email address to contact for further information:
See Authors' Addresses section.
Intended usage:
COMMON
Restrictions on usage:
n/a
Author:
See Authors' Addresses section.
Change controller:
Internet Engineering Task Force (iesg@ietf.org).
12.2. alto-propmapparams+json Media Type
Type name:
application
Subtype name:
alto-propmapparams+json
Required parameters:
n/a
Optional parameters:
n/a
Encoding considerations:
Encoding considerations are identical to those specified for the
"application/json" media type. See [RFC8259].
Security considerations:
Security considerations related to the generation and consumption
of ALTO Protocol messages are discussed in Section 15 of [RFC7285]
and Section 11 of this document.
Interoperability considerations:
n/a
Published specification:
This document is the specification for this media type. See
Section 8.3.
Applications that use this media type:
ALTO servers and ALTO clients [RFC7285], either standalone or
embedded within other applications, when the queried resource is a
filtered property map. This media type indicates the data format
used by the ALTO client to supply the property map filtering
parameters.
Fragment identifier considerations:
n/a
Additional information:
Magic number(s): n/a
File extension(s): n/a
Macintosh file type code(s): n/a
Person & email address to contact for further information:
See Authors' Addresses section.
Intended usage:
COMMON
Restrictions on usage:
n/a
Author:
See Authors' Addresses section.
Change controller:
Internet Engineering Task Force (iesg@ietf.org).
12.3. ALTO Entity Domain Types Registry
IANA has created and will maintain the "ALTO Entity Domain Types"
registry listed in Table 9. The first row lists information items
that must be provided with each registered entity domain type.
Section 12.3.2 specifies how to document these items and in addition
provides guidance on the security considerations item that must be
documented.
+==========+===========+=============+======================+=======+
|Identifier|Entity |Hierarchy and|Media Type of Defining|Mapping|
| |Identifier |Inheritance |Resource |to ALTO|
| |Encoding | | |Address|
| | | | |Type |
+==========+===========+=============+======================+=======+
|ipv4 |See Section|See |application/alto- |true |
| |6.1.1 |Section 6.1.3|networkmap+json | |
+----------+-----------+-------------+----------------------+-------+
|ipv6 |See Section|See |application/alto- |true |
| |6.1.2 |Section 6.1.3|networkmap+json | |
+----------+-----------+-------------+----------------------+-------+
|pid |See |None |application/alto- |false |
| |Section 6.2| |networkmap+json | |
+----------+-----------+-------------+----------------------+-------+
Table 9: ALTO Entity Domain Types
This registry serves two purposes. First, it ensures uniqueness of
identifiers referring to ALTO entity domain types. Second, it states
the requirements for allocated entity domain types.
As specified in Section 5.1.1, identifiers prefixed with "priv:" are
reserved for Private Use without a need to register with IANA
12.3.1. Consistency Procedure between ALTO Address Types Registry and
ALTO Entity Domain Types Registry
One potential issue of introducing the "ALTO Entity Domain Types"
registry is its relationship with the "ALTO Address Types" registry
already defined in Section 14.4 of [RFC7285]. In particular, the
entity identifier of a type of an entity domain registered in the
"ALTO Entity Domain Types" registry MAY match an address type defined
in "ALTO Address Types" registry. It is necessary to precisely
define and guarantee the consistency between "ALTO Address Types"
registry and "ALTO Entity Domain Types" registry.
We define that the "ALTO Entity Domain Types" registry is consistent
with "ALTO Address Types" registry if two conditions are satisfied:
* When an address type is already registered or is able to be
registered in the "ALTO Address Types" registry [RFC7285], the
same identifier MUST be used when a corresponding entity domain
type is registered in the "ALTO Entity Domain Types" registry.
* If an ALTO entity domain type has the same identifier as an ALTO
address type, their address encodings MUST be compatible.
To achieve this consistency, the following items MUST be checked
before registering a new ALTO entity domain type in a future
document:
* Whether the "ALTO Address Types" registry contains an address type
that can be used as an identifier for the candidate entity domain
type identifier. This has been done for the identifiers "ipv4"
and "ipv6" of Table 9.
* Whether the candidate entity domain type identifier can
potentially be an endpoint address type, as defined in Sections
2.1 and 2.2 of [RFC7285].
When a new ALTO entity domain type is registered, the consistency
with the "ALTO Address Types" registry MUST be ensured by the
following procedure:
* Test: Do corresponding entity domain type identifiers match a
known "network" address type?
- If yes (e.g., cell, MAC, or socket addresses):
o Test: Is such an address type present in the "ALTO Address
Types" registry?
+ If yes: Set the new ALTO entity domain type identifier to
be the found ALTO address type identifier.
+ If no: Define a new ALTO entity domain type identifier
and use it to register a new address type in the "ALTO
Address Types" registry following Section 14.4 of
[RFC7285].
o Use the new ALTO entity domain type identifier to register a
new ALTO entity domain type in the "ALTO Entity Domain
Types" registry following Section 12.3.2 of this document.
- If no (e.g., PID name, ANE name, or "countrycode"): Proceed
with the ALTO Entity Domain Type registration as described in
Section 12.3.2.
12.3.2. ALTO Entity Domain Type Registration Process
New ALTO entity domain types are assigned after IETF Review [RFC8126]
to ensure that proper documentation regarding the new ALTO entity
domain types and their security considerations has been provided.
RFCs defining new entity domain types MUST indicate how an entity in
a registered type of domain is encoded as an EntityID and, if
applicable, provide the rules for defining the entity hierarchy and
property inheritance. Updates and deletions of ALTO entity domains
types follow the same procedure.
Registered ALTO entity domain type identifiers MUST conform to the
syntactical requirements specified in Section 5.1.2. Identifiers are
to be recorded and displayed as strings.
Requests to IANA to add a new value to the "ALTO Entity Domain Types"
registry MUST include the following information:
Identifier: The name of the desired ALTO entity domain type.
Entity Identifier Encoding: The procedure for encoding the
identifier of an entity of the registered domain type as an
EntityID (see Section 5.1.3). If corresponding entity identifiers
of an entity domain type match a known "network" address type, the
Entity Identifier Encoding of this domain identifier MUST include
both Address Encoding and Prefix Encoding of the same identifier
registered in the "ALTO Address Types" registry [RFC7285]. To
define properties, an individual entity identifier and the
corresponding full-length prefix MUST be considered aliases for
the same entity.
Hierarchy: If the entities form a hierarchy, the procedure for
determining that hierarchy.
Inheritance: If entities can inherit property values from other
entities, the procedure for determining that inheritance.
Media type of defining information resource: Some entity domain
types allow an entity domain name to be combined with an
information resource name to define a resource-specific entity
domain. Such an information resource is called a "defining
information resource" and is defined in Section 4.6. For each
entity domain type, the potential defining information resources
have one common media type. This unique common media type is
specific to the entity domain type and MUST be specified.
Mapping to ALTO Address Type: A boolean value to indicate if the
entity domain type can be mapped to the ALTO address type with the
same identifier.
Security Considerations: In some usage scenarios, entity identifiers
carried in ALTO Protocol messages may reveal information about an
ALTO client or an ALTO service provider. Applications and ALTO
service providers using addresses of the registered type should be
cognizant of how (or if) the addressing scheme relates to private
information and network proximity.
IANA has registered the identifiers "ipv4", "ipv6", and "pid", as
shown in Table 9.
12.4. ALTO Entity Property Types Registry
IANA has created and will maintain the "ALTO Entity Property Types"
registry, which is listed in Table 10.
This registry extends the "ALTO Endpoint Property Types" registry,
defined in [RFC7285], in that a property type is defined for one or
more entity domains, rather than just for IPv4 and IPv6 Internet
address domains. An entry in this registry is an ALTO entity
property type defined in Section 5.2.1. Thus, a registered ALTO
entity property type identifier MUST conform to the syntactical
requirements specified in that section.
As specified in Section 5.2.1, identifiers prefixed with "priv:" are
reserved for Private Use without a need to register with IANA.
The first row of Table 10 lists information items that must be
provided with each registered entity property type.
+============+====================+=================================+
| Identifier | Intended Semantics | Media Type of |
| | | Defining Resource |
+============+====================+=================================+
| pid | See Section 7.1.1 | application/alto- |
| | of [RFC7285] | networkmap+json |
+------------+--------------------+---------------------------------+
Table 10: ALTO Entity Property Types
New ALTO entity property types are assigned after IETF Review
[RFC8126] to ensure that proper documentation regarding the new ALTO
entity property types and their security considerations has been
provided. RFCs defining new entity property types SHOULD indicate
how a property of a registered type is encoded as a property name.
Updates and deletions of ALTO entity property types follow the same
procedure.
Requests to IANA to add a new value to the registry MUST include the
following information:
Identifier: The identifier for the desired ALTO entity property
type. The format MUST be as defined in Section 5.2.1 of this
document.
Intended Semantics: ALTO entity properties carry with them semantics
to guide their usage by ALTO clients. Hence, a document defining
a new type SHOULD provide guidance to both ALTO service providers
and applications utilizing ALTO clients as to how values of the
registered ALTO entity property should be interpreted.
Media type of defining information resource: when the property type
allows values to be defined relative to a given information
resource, the latter is referred to as the "defining information
resource"; see the description in Section 4.7. For each property
type, the potential defining information resources have one common
media type. This unique common media type is specific to the
property type and MUST be specified.
Security Considerations: ALTO entity properties expose information
to ALTO clients. ALTO service providers should be cognizant of
the security ramifications related to the exposure of an entity
property.
In security considerations, the request should also discuss the
sensitivity of the information and why it is required for ALTO-based
operations. Regarding this discussion, the request SHOULD follow the
recommendations of the "ALTO Endpoint Property Types" registry in
Section 14.3 of [RFC7285].
IANA has registered the identifier "pid", which is listed in
Table 10. Semantics for this property are documented in
Section 7.1.1 of [RFC7285]. No security issues related to the
exposure of a "pid" identifier are considered, as it is exposed with
the Network Map Service defined and mandated in [RFC7285].
13. References
13.1. Normative References
[ISO3166-1]
International Organization for Standardization, "Codes for
the representation of names of countries and their
subdivisions -- Part 1: Country codes", ISO 3166-1:2020,
August 2020.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3986>.
[RFC4291] Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "IP Version 6 Addressing
Architecture", RFC 4291, DOI 10.17487/RFC4291, February
2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4291>.
[RFC4632] Fuller, V. and T. Li, "Classless Inter-domain Routing
(CIDR): The Internet Address Assignment and Aggregation
Plan", BCP 122, RFC 4632, DOI 10.17487/RFC4632, August
2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4632>.
[RFC5952] Kawamura, S. and M. Kawashima, "A Recommendation for IPv6
Address Text Representation", RFC 5952,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5952, August 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5952>.
[RFC7285] Alimi, R., Ed., Penno, R., Ed., Yang, Y., Ed., Kiesel, S.,
Previdi, S., Roome, W., Shalunov, S., and R. Woundy,
"Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) Protocol",
RFC 7285, DOI 10.17487/RFC7285, September 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7285>.
[RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8126>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8259] Bray, T., Ed., "The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data
Interchange Format", STD 90, RFC 8259,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8259, December 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8259>.
[RFC8446] Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8446>.
[RFC8895] Roome, W. and Y. Yang, "Application-Layer Traffic
Optimization (ALTO) Incremental Updates Using Server-Sent
Events (SSE)", RFC 8895, DOI 10.17487/RFC8895, November
2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8895>.
13.2. Informative References
[PATH-VECTOR]
Gao, K., Lee, Y., Randriamasy, S., Yang, Y. R., and J. J.
Zhang, "An ALTO Extension: Path Vector", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-alto-path-vector-25, 20 March
2022, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-
alto-path-vector-25>.
[RFC3849] Huston, G., Lord, A., and P. Smith, "IPv6 Address Prefix
Reserved for Documentation", RFC 3849,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3849, July 2004,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3849>.
[RFC5511] Farrel, A., "Routing Backus-Naur Form (RBNF): A Syntax
Used to Form Encoding Rules in Various Routing Protocol
Specifications", RFC 5511, DOI 10.17487/RFC5511, April
2009, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5511>.
[RFC5737] Arkko, J., Cotton, M., and L. Vegoda, "IPv4 Address Blocks
Reserved for Documentation", RFC 5737,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5737, January 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5737>.
[RFC7921] Atlas, A., Halpern, J., Hares, S., Ward, D., and T.
Nadeau, "An Architecture for the Interface to the Routing
System", RFC 7921, DOI 10.17487/RFC7921, June 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7921>.
[RFC8896] Randriamasy, S., Yang, R., Wu, Q., Deng, L., and N.
Schwan, "Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO)
Cost Calendar", RFC 8896, DOI 10.17487/RFC8896, November
2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8896>.
[RFC9241] Seedorf, J., Yang, Y., Ma, K., Peterson, J., and J. Zhang,
"Content Delivery Network Interconnection (CDNI) Footprint
and Capabilities Advertisement Using Application-Layer
Traffic Optimization (ALTO)", RFC 9241,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9241, July 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9241>.
Appendix A. Features Introduced with the Entity Property Maps Extension
The entity property maps extension described in this document
introduces a number of features that are summarized in table below.
The first column provides the name of the feature. The second column
provides the section number of this document that gives a high-level
description of the feature. The third column provides the section
number of this document that gives a normative description relating
to the feature, when applicable.
+=======================+=============+======================+
| Feature | High-Level | Related Normative |
| | Description | Description |
+=======================+=============+======================+
| Entity | Section 3.1 | Section 5.1.3 |
+-----------------------+-------------+----------------------+
| Entity domain | Section 3.2 | |
+-----------------------+-------------+----------------------+
| Entity domain type | Section | Section 5.1.1 |
| | 3.2.1 | |
+-----------------------+-------------+----------------------+
| Entity domain name | Section | Section 5.1.2 |
| | 3.2.2 | |
+-----------------------+-------------+----------------------+
| Entity property type | Section 3.3 | Sections 5.2, 5.2.1, |
| | | 5.2.2, and 5.2.3 |
+-----------------------+-------------+----------------------+
| Entity property map | Section 3.4 | Sections 7 and 8 |
+-----------------------+-------------+----------------------+
| Resource-specific | Section 4.2 | Sections 5.1.2 and |
| entity domain name | | 5.1.2.1 |
+-----------------------+-------------+----------------------+
| Resource-specific | Section 4.3 | Section 5.2.3 |
| entity property value | | |
+-----------------------+-------------+----------------------+
| Entity Hierarchy and | Section 4.4 | Section 5.1.4 |
| property inheritance | | |
+-----------------------+-------------+----------------------+
| Defining information | Sections | Sections 12.3.2 and |
| resource | 4.6 and 4.7 | 12.4 |
+-----------------------+-------------+----------------------+
Table 11: Features Introduced with ALTO Entity Property Maps
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dawn Chen and Shenshen Chen for their
contributions to earlier drafts. Thank you also to Qiao Xiang, Shawn
Lin, and Xin Wang for fruitful discussions. Last, big thanks to
Danny Perez and Luis Contreras for their substantial working group
review feedback and suggestions for improving this document, to Vijay
Gurbani, ALTO WG Chair, and Martin Duke, Transport Area Director, for
their thorough review, discussions, guidance, and shepherding, which
further helped to enrich this document.
Authors' Addresses
Wendy Roome
Nokia Bell Labs (Retired)
124 Burlington Rd
Murray Hill, NJ 07974
United States of America
Phone: +1-908-464-6975
Email: wendy@wdroome.com
Sabine Randriamasy
Nokia Bell Labs
Route de Villejust
91460 NOZAY
France
Email: Sabine.Randriamasy@nokia-bell-labs.com
Y. Richard Yang
Yale University
51 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
United States of America
Phone: +1-203-432-6400
Email: yry@cs.yale.edu
Jingxuan Jensen Zhang
Tongji University
4800 Cao'An Hwy
Shanghai
201804
China
Email: jingxuan.n.zhang@gmail.com
Kai Gao
Sichuan University
No.24 South Section 1, Yihuan Road
Chengdu
610000
China
Email: kaigao@scu.edu.cn