[ih] "Gateway Issue": End-Middle Interactions

[Karl Auerbach]

On 10/6/24 11:55 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:

> ---------------------
> Issue: End-Middle Interactions
>
In the mid/late 1990's Fred Baker and I worked on the router and client 
halves of the path resource reservation protocol, RSVP. That was a kind 
of end-to-middle interaction.  RSVP never caught on. But I do think that 
the idea ought to be resurrected in a modern form, but I have a nagging 
feel that even if we got the tech to work it would not be something that 
would be practical given the competitive nature of today's providers.

A bit later when I was trying to figure out how to do very fast and 
cheap discovery and binding of video clients to video services I came up 
with the beginnings of a protocol to evaluate hither-to-yon paths 
(including routing branches) in a bit more than one round trip time and 
with low priority processing in the routers along those paths.  I called 
it a "Fast Path Characterization Protocol" or FPCP.  (This was part of a 
contest I had with Bruce Mah - I wanted to see what information I could 
squeeze out of a position inside the routers and switches along the way 
while Bruce was seeing what he could get from the outside.  He was more 
successful than I was, partially because I tend to over-design and end 
up sinking myself into a swamp of code.)

The very sketchy draft of FPCP is at the URL below.  Although this work 
was done at Cisco I got permission to publish it.

https://www.cavebear.com/archive/fpcp/fpcp-sept-19-2000.html

         --karl--