Emerging Internet Protocols A and B
Term Paper Proposal
Ima K.U. Student
ikus@eecs.ku.edu
EECS 780 Term Paper – Prof. James P.G. Sterbenz
24 March 2008
Emerging Internet Protocols A and B
Protocols A and B are competing to replace protocol H in the future Internet. I plan to
first review the historical development of protocol H. Protocol H has become the
dominant mechanism and de-facto standard for delivering content in the Internet [Estrada
1987]. It allows flexible user specification of QoS (quality of service) parameters and a
flexible user interface for content selection and viewing. Protocol H has two major
modes of operation: client-serer and peer-to-peer.
In client-server mode, users either get content indexed from their ISP (Internet
service provider), or must subscribe to a third party service. In either case, a session is
established that allows the user to browse indexed content using a standard Web browser.
Once a user selects the desired content, a UDP-port-9898 flow is established over which
the content is streamed. In peer-to-peer mode, users join an overlay session using the
join-overlay command to port 9899. This requires the location of one of the overlay
managers, typically by searching the Web for “protocol h p2p content manager”. It
is important to note that a number of ISPs block ports 9898 and 9899 in an attempt to
force users to subscribe to their own content in client-server mode. A number of out-ofband mechanisms have been used to dynamically negotiate other high port numbers to
subvert these restrictions. Furthermore, users have been TOSsed1 for serving content in
this manner, as well as for excessive bandwidth usage when not subscribing to the ISPsanctioned service. There have also been concerns expressed that as the fraction of UDP
traffic devoted to Protocol H increases, the Internet will be in danger of severe congestion
since Protocol H over UDP does not perform congestion control.
Recently, there have been detailed evaluations with the problems of increasing
Protocol H usage, and a number of competing proposal for replacements have emerged
[Smith 2007]. In an attempt to define architectural requirements, the prot-h IETF
working group has issued an architectural framework for evolution [Ramanathan 2007].
A number of these early proposals have merged, and there are now two major
proposals: Protocols A and B [Tanaka 2006]. While providing similar functionality to
the user, the implementation and operation of A and B are quite different. Protocol A is
being developed through the IETF [Doe 2007], and there are several early open-source
implementations for a variety of operating system platforms. Protocol B is backed by a
consortium led by Monopolies-Я-Us and BTI (Big Telco Inc.). While there has been
some limited information available on its operation [Monopolies 2006], the only
1
TOSsed refers to termination of service for violation of the terms of service (TOS) contract.
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implementation to date is a closed-source client distributed by BTI for the Monopolies-ЯUs OS.
performance
A
B
parameter x
Figure 1: Performance Comparison: Protocol A and B [Tanaka 2006]
In this term paper I plan to describe Protocols A and B in more detail and describe their
differences. While it appears that Protocol A is technically superior with continued
performance enhancements (as shown in Figure 1), the industrial forces behind Protocol
B make it unclear which will win in the market place.
References
[Doe 2007] Jane Doe and John Doe, Protocol A Specification, IETF Internet Draft (work
in progress), Feb. 2007, www.ietf.org/draft-prota-spec-05.txt.
[Estrada 1997] Franco Estrada, et al., Protocol H Content Delivery, Internet RFC 7000
(standard), May 1987.
[Smith 2007] Susan Smith and John Jones, “Emerging Protocol Options for the
Internet”, IEEE Internet Protocols, vol. 2 no. 3, Mar. 2007, pp. 7 – 15.
[Ramanathan 2007] S. Ramanathan, An Architectural Framework for Protocol H
Evolution, Internet RFC 9999 (informational), IETF, Feb. 2007.
[Tanaka 2006] Akira Tanaka and Georg Müller “A Survey of Proposed Enhancements to
Protocol H”, Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Protocol Enhancements (ProtEnh
2006), Bangalore, June 2006, pp. 205–215.
[Monopolies 2006] Protocol B: The Future of Content Delivery, industry white paper,
www.monopolies-r-us.example.com/protb/White%20Paper.asp.
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