Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) Problem Statement

Peer-to-peer applications, such as file sharing, real-time communication, and live media streaming, use a significant amount of Internet resources. Such applications often transfer large amounts of data in direct peer-to-peer connections. However, they usually have little knowledge of the underlying network topology. As a result, they may choose their peers based on measurements and statistics that, in many situations, may lead to suboptimal choices. This document describes problems related to optimizing traffic generated by peer-to-peer applications and associated issues such optimizations raise in the use of network-layer information.

A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-alto-problem-statement-01.txt

Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/