An Architecture for Internet Data Transfer

This paper describes an architecture to separate data transfer mechanism and the setup of the transfer, and thus enable the use of innovative transfer methods such as multipath and peer to peer protocols.

Overall a fairly straightforward idea, essentially a level of indirection to transfer large amounts of data using an asynchronous I/O model (receiver pull) . It uses plugins to add new transfer mechanisms to the system while maintaining backwards compatibility. It also divides data into chunks so that optimizations such as caching are more effective.

I think the main advantage is that this architecture allows features such as multipath and caching to be added hidden behind a very general interface. This is very powerful, but it allows little application control over caching and multipath policies. These plugins are ultimately shared resources between different application and I don't think the current design expose any application control over this. For example, if a bulk transfer happens between US and UK millitary , they probably don't want their data cached in intermediate nodes in other countries or want to control the multiple path selection process.