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rfc:rfc2768

Network Working Group B. Aiken Request for Comments: 2768 J. Strassner Category: Informational Cisco Systems

                                                         B. Carpenter
                                                                  IBM
                                                            I. Foster
                                          Argonne National Laboratory
                                                             C. Lynch
                                  Coalition for Networked Information
                                                         J. Mambretti
                                                                ICAIR
                                                             R. Moore
                                                                 UCSD
                                                        B. Teitelbaum
                                   Advanced Networks & Services, Inc.
                                                        February 2000
                   Network Policy and Services:
               A Report of a Workshop on Middleware

Status of this Memo

 This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
 not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
 memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

 An ad hoc middleware workshop was held at the International Center
 for Advanced Internet Research in December 1998.  The Workshop was
 organized and sponsored by Cisco, Northwestern University's
 International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR), IBM, and
 the National Science Foundation (NSF). The goal of the workshop was
 to identify existing middleware services that could be leveraged for
 new capabilities as well as identifying additional middleware
 services requiring research and development.  The workshop
 participants discussed the definition of middleware in general,
 examined the applications perspective, detailed underlying network
 transport capabilities relevant to middleware services, and then
 covered various specific examples of middleware components. These
 included APIs, authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA)
 issues, policy framework, directories, resource management, networked
 information discovery and retrieval services, quality of service,

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 1] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 security, and operational tools.  The need for a more organized
 framework for middleware R&D was recognized, and a list of specific
 topics needing further work was identified.

Table of Contents

 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
 1.0   Contextual Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
 2.0   What is Middleware?  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
 3.0   Application Perspective  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
 4.0   Exemplary Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
 5.0   Application Programming Interfaces and Signaling . . . . . .  8
 6.0   IETF AAA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
 7.0   Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
 8.0   Directories  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
 9.0   Resource Management  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
 10.0  Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval Services . . . 17
 11.0  Network QOS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
 12.0  Authentication, authorization, and access management . . . . 21
 13.0  Network Management, Performance, and Operations  . . . . . . 22
 14.0  Middleware to support multicast applications . . . . . . . . 23
 15.0  Java and Jini TM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
 16.0  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
 17.0  Summary  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
 18.0  Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
 19.0  URLs/references  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
 20.0  Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
 21.0  Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Introduction

 This document describes the term "middleware" as well as its
 requirements and scope. Its purpose is to facilitate communication
 between developers of both collaboration based and high-performance
 distributed computing applications and developers of the network
 infrastructure. Generally, in advanced networks, middleware consists
 of services and other resources located between both the applications
 and the underlying packet forwarding and routing infrastructure,
 although no consensus currently exists on the precise lines of
 demarcation that would define those domains. This document is being
 developed within the context of existing standards efforts.
 Consequently, this document defines middleware core components within
 the framework of the current status of middleware-related standards
 activities, especially within the IETF and the Desktop Management
 Task Force (DMTF). The envisioned role of the IETF is to lead the
 work in defining the underlying protocols that could be used to
 support a middleware infrastructure. In this context, we will
 leverage the information modeling work, as well as the advanced XML

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 2] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 and CIM/DEN-LDAP mapping work, being done in the DMTF. (The recently
 constituted Grid Forum is also pursuing relevant activities.)
 This document also addresses the impact of middleware on Internet
 protocol development. As part of its approach to describing
 middleware, this document has initially focused on the intersections
 among middleware components and application areas that already have
 well defined activities underway.
 This document is a product of an ad hoc Middleware Workshop held on
 December 4-5 1998. The Workshop was organized and sponsored by Cisco,
 Northwestern University's International Center for Advanced Internet
 Research (iCAIR), IBM, and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
 The goal of the workshop was to define the term middleware and its
 requirements on advanced network infrastructures as well as on
 distributed applications. These definitions will enable a set of core
 middleware components to subsequently be specified, both for
 supporting advanced application environments as well as for providing
 a basis for other middleware services.
 Although this document is focused on a greater set of issues than
 just Internet protocols, the concepts and issues put forth here are
 extremely relevant to the way networks and protocols need to evolve
 as we move into the implementation stage of "the network is the
 computer". Therefore, this document is offered to the IETF, DMTF,
 Internet2, Next Generation Internet (NGI), NSF Partnerships for
 Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI), the interagency
 Information Technology for the 21st Century (IT2) program, the Grid
 Forum, the Worldwide Web Consortium, and other communities for their
 consideration.
 This document is organized as follows: Section 1 provides a
 contextual framework. Section 2 defines middleware. Section 3
 discusses application requirements. Subsequent sections discuss
 requirements and capabilities for middleware as defined by
 applications and middleware practitioners. These sections will also
 discuss the required underlying transport infrastructure,
 administrative policy and  management, exemplary core middleware
 components, provisioning issues, network environment and
 implementation issues, and research areas.

1.0 Contextual Framework

 Middleware can be defined to encompass a large set of services. For
 example, we chose to focus initially on the services needed to
 support a common set of applications based on a distributed network
 environment.  A consensus of the Workshop was that there was really
 no core set of middleware services in the sense that all applications

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 3] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 required them.  This consensus does not diminish the importance of
 application domain-specific middleware, or the flexibility needed in
 determining customized approaches. Many communities  (e.g.,
 Internet2, NGI, and other advanced Internet constituencies) may
 decide on their own set of common middleware services and tools;
 however, they should strive for interoperability whenever possible.
 The topics in this workshop were chosen to encourage discussion about
 the nature and scope of middleware per se as distinct from specific
 types of applications; therefore, many relevant middleware topics
 were not discussed.
 Another consensus of the Workshop that helped provide focus was that,
 although middleware could be conceptualized as hierarchical, or
 layered, such an approach was not helpful, and indeed had been
 problematic and unproductive in earlier efforts.
 The better approach would be to consider middleware as an
 unstructured, often orthogonal, collection of components (such as
 resources and services) that could be utilized either individually or
 in various subsets.  This working assumption avoided extensive
 theological modeling discussions, and enables work to proceed on
 various middleware issues independently.
 An important goal of the Workshop was to identify any middleware or
 network-related research or development that would be required to
 advance the state of the art to support advanced application
 environments, such as those being developed and pursued by NGI and
 Internet2.  Consequently, discussion focused on those areas that had
 the maximum opportunity for such advances.

2.0 What is Middleware?

 The Workshop participants agreed on the existence of middleware, but
 quickly made it clear that the definition of middleware was dependent
 on the subjective perspective of those trying to define it. Perhaps
 it was even dependent on when the question was asked, since the
 middleware of yesterday (e.g., Domain Name Service, Public Key
 Infrastructure, and Event Services) may become the fundamental
 network infrastructure of tomorrow.  Application environment users
 and programmers see everything below the API as middleware.
 Networking gurus see anything above IP as middleware. Those working
 on applications, tools, and mechanisms between these two extremes see
 it as somewhere between TCP and the API, with some even further
 classifying middleware into application-specific upper middleware,
 generic middle middleware, and resource-specific lower middleware.
 The point was made repeatedly that middleware often extends beyond
 the "network" into the compute, storage, and other resources that the
 network connects.  For example, a video serving application will want

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 4] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 to access resource discovery and allocation services not just for
 networks but also for the archives and computers required to serve
 and process the video stream.  Through the application of general set
 theory and rough consensus, we roughly characterize middleware as
 those services found above the transport (i.e., over TCP/IP) layer
 set of services but below the application environment (i.e., below
 application-level APIs).
 Some of the earliest conceptualizations of middleware originated with
 the distributed operating research of the late 1970s and early 1980s,
 and was further advanced by the I-WAY project at SC'95.  The I-WAY
 linked high performance computers nation-wide over high performance
 networks such that the resulting environment functioned as a single
 high performance environment. As a consequence of that experiment,
 the researchers involved re-emphasized the fact that effective high
 performance distributed computing required distributed common
 computing and networking resources, including libraries and utilities
 for resource discovery, scheduling and monitoring, process creation,
 communication and data transport.
 Subsequent research and development through the Globus project of
 such middleware resources demonstrated that their capabilities for
 optimizing advanced application performance in distributed domains.
 In May 1997, a Next Generation Internet (NGI) workshop on NGI
 research areas resulted in a publication, "Research Challenges for
 the Next Generation Internet", which yields the following description
 of middleware. "Middleware can be viewed as a reusable, expandable
 set of services and functions that are commonly needed by many
 applications to function well in a networked environment". This
 definition could further be refined to include persistent services,
 such as those found within an operating system, distributed operating
 environments (e.g., JAVA/JINI), the network infrastructure (e.g.,
 DNS), and transient capabilities (e.g., run time support and
 libraries) required to support client software on systems and hosts.
 In summary, there are many views of what is middleware. The consensus
 of many at the workshop was that given the dynamic morphing nature of
 middleware, it was more important to identify some core middleware
 services and start working on them than it was to come to a consensus
 on a dictionary-like definition of the term.
 Systems involving strong middleware components to support networked
 information discovery have also been active research areas since at
 least the late 1980s. For example, consider Archie or the Harvest
 project, to cite two examples. One could easily argue that the site
 logs used by Archie or the broker system and harvest agents were an
 important middleware tool, and additional work in this area is

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 5] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 urgently needed in order to improve the efficiency and scope of web-
 based indexing services.
 "As long ago" as 1994, the Internet Architecture Board held a
 workshop on "Information Infrastructure for the Internet" reported in
 RFC 1862, which in many ways covered similar issues. Although its
 recommendations were summarized as follows:
  1. increased focus on a general caching and replication architecture
  2. a rapid deployment of name resolution services, and
  3. the articulation of a common security architecture for information

applications."

 it is clear that this work is far from done.
 Finally, this workshop noted that there is a close linkage between
 middleware as a set of standards and protocols and the infrastructure
 needed to make the middleware meaningful. For example, the DNS
 protocol would be of limited significance without the system of DNS
 servers, and indeed the administrative infrastructure of name
 registry; NTP, in order to be useful, requires the existence of time
 servers; newer middleware services such as naming, public key
 registries and certificate authorities, will require even more
 extensive server and administrative infrastructure in order to become
 both useful and usable services.

3.0 Application Perspective

 From an applications perspective, the network is just another type of
 resource that it needs to use and manage.  The set of middleware
 services and requirements necessary to support advanced applications
 are defined by a vision that includes and combines applications in
 areas such as: distributed computing, distributed data bases,
 advanced video services, teleimmersion (i.e., a capability for
 providing a compelling real-life experience in a virtual environment
 based for example on CAVE technologies), extensions with haptics,
 electronic commerce, distance education, interactive collaborative
 research, high-rate instrumentation (60 MByte/s and above sustained),
 including use of online scientific facilities (e.g. microscopes,
 telescopes, etc.), effectively managing large amounts of data,
 computation and information Grids, adaptable and morphing network
 infrastructure, proxies and agents, and electronic persistent
 presence (EPP). Many of these applications are "bleeding edge" with
 respect to currently deployed applications on the commodity Internet
 and hence have unique requirements. Just as the Web was an advanced
 application in the early 1990s, many of the application areas defined
 above will not become commonplace in the immediate future.  However,
 they all possess the capability to change the way the network is used

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 6] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 as well as our definition of infrastructure, much as the Web and
 Mosaic changed it in the early 90s. A notable recent trend in
 networks is the increasing amount of HTTP, voice, and video traffic,
 and it was noted that voice and video particularly need some form of
 QoS and associated middleware to manage it.
 A quick review of the requirements for teleimmersion highlight the
 requirement for multiple concurrent logical network channels, each
 with its own latency, jitter, burst, and bandwidth QoS; yet all being
 coordinated through a single middleware interface to the application.
 For security and efficiency those using online instruments require
 the ability to steer the devices and change parameters as a direct
 result of real-time analysis performed on the data as it is received
 from the instruments. Therefore, network requirements encompass high
 bandwidth, low latency, and security, which must all be coordinated
 through middleware.  Large databases, archives, and digital libraries
 are becoming a mainstay for researchers and industry. The
 requirements they will place on the network and on middleware will be
 extensive, including support of authentication, authorization, access
 management, quality of service, networked information discovery and
 retrieval tools, naming and service location, to name only a few.
 They also require middleware to support collection building and
 self-describing data.  Distributed computing environments (e.g.,
 Globus, Condor, Legion, etc.) are quickly evolving into the computing
 and information Grids of the future. These Grids not only require
 adaptive and manageable network services but also require a
 sophisticated set of secure middleware capabilities to provide easy-
 to-use APIs to the application.
 Many application practitioners were adamant that they also required
 the capability for "pass through" services.  This refers to the
 ability to bypass the middleware and directly access the underlying
 infrastructure such as the operating system or network), even though
 they were eager to make use of middleware services and see more of it
 developed to support their own applications.  In addition,
 authentication and access control, as well as security, are required
 for all of the applications mentioned above, albeit at different
 levels.

4.0 Exemplary Components

 In an attempt to describe middleware and discuss pertinent issues
 relating to its development and deployment, an exemplary set of
 services were selected for discussion. These services were chosen to
 stimulate discussion and not as an attempt to define an exclusive set
 of middleware services. Also, it is the intent of this effort not to
 duplicate existing IETF efforts or those of other standards bodies
 (e.g., the DMTF), but rather to leverage those efforts, and indeed to

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 7] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 highlight areas where work was already advanced to a stage that might
 be approaching deployment.

5.0 Application Programming Interfaces and Signaling

 Applications require the ability to explicitly request resources
 based on their immediate usage needs. These requests have associated
 network management controls and network resource implications;
 however, fulfillment of these requests may require multiple
 intermediate steps. Given the preliminary state of middleware
 definition, there currently is no common framework, much less a
 method, for an application to signal its need for a set of desired
 network services, including quality and priority of service as well
 as attendant resource requirements. However, given the utility of
 middleware, especially with regard to optimization for advanced
 applications, preliminary models for both quality and priority of
 service and resource management exist and continue to evolve.
 however, without an agreed-to framework for standards in this area,
 there is the risk of multiple competing standards that may further
 delay the deployment of a middleware-rich infrastructure. This
 framework should probably include signaling methods, access/admission
 controls, and a series of defined services and resources. In
 addition, it should include service levels, priority considerations,
 scheduling, a Service-Level-Agreement (SLA) function, and a feedback
 mechanism for notifying applications or systems when performance is
 below the SLA specification or when an application violates the SLA.
 Any such mechanism implies capabilities for: 1) an interaction with
 some type of policy implementation and enforcement, 2) dynamic
 assessment of available network resources, 3) policy monitoring, 4)
 service guarantees, 5) conflict resolution, and 6) restitution for
 lack of performance.
 Application programmers are concerned with minimizing the interfaces
 that they must learn to access middleware services.  Thus the
 unification of common services behind a single API is of great
 interest to middleware users.  Examples of common APIs that may be
 achievable are:
  • Environmental discovery interface, whether for discovering hardware

resources, network status and capabilities, data sets,

   applications, remote services, or user information.
 * Remote execution interface, whether for distributed metacomputing
   applications, or for access to a digital library presentation
   service, or a Java analysis service.
 * Data management interface, whether for manipulating data within
   distributed caches, or replication of data between file systems, or
   archival storage of data.

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 8] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

  • Process management interface, whether for composing data movement

with remote execution, or for linking together multiple processing

   steps.

6.0 IETF AAA

 The IETF AAA (authentication, authorization, and accounting) effort
 is but one of many IETF security initiatives. It depends heavily on a
 Public key infrastructure, which is intended to provide a framework
 which will support a range of trust/hierarchy environments and a
 range of usage environments (RFC1422 is an example of one such
 model).
 The IETF AAA working group has recently been formed. IETF AAA working
 group efforts are focused on many issues pertaining to middleware,
 including defining processes for access/admission control and
 identification (process for determining a unique entity),
 authentication (process for validating that identity), authorization
 (process for determining an eligibility for resource
 requests/utilization) and accounting (at least to the degree that
 resource utilization is recorded). To some degree, AAA provides for
 addressing certain levels of security, but only at a preliminary
 level. Currently, AAA protocols exist, although not as an integrated
 model or standard. One consideration for AAA is to provide for
 various levels of granularity. Even if we don't yet have an
 integrated model, it is currently possible to provide for basic AAA
 mechanisms that can be used as a basis to support SLAs.  Any type of
 AAA implementation requires a policy management framework, to which
 it must be linked. Currently, a well-formulated linking mechanism has
 not been defined.
 Middleware AAA requirements are also driven by the distributed
 interoperation that can occur between middleware services.  The
 distribution of application support across multiple autonomous
 systems will require self-consistent third-party mechanisms for
 authentication as well as data movement.  Conceptually, an
 application may need access to data that is under control of a remote
 collection, to support the execution of a procedure at a third site.
 The data flow needs to be directly from the collection to the
 execution platform for efficiency.  At the same time, the procedure
 will need access permission to the data set while it is acting on
 behalf of the requestor.  How the authentication is done between the
 remote procedure and the remote data collection entities raises
 significant issues related to transitivity of trust, and will require
 establishment of a trust policy for third-party mechanisms. This is
 exacerbated when a collection of entities, such as is required for
 visualization applications, is involved.

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 9] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

7.0 Policy

 The IETF Policy Framework working group is addressing a policy
 framework definition language, a policy architecture model, policy
 terminology and, specifically, a policy model that can be used for
 signaled as well as provisioned QoS. The policy meta-model links
 high-level business requirements, such as those that can be specified
 in an SLA, to low-level device implementation mechanisms, ranging
 from specific access control and management of services, objects and
 other resources to configuration of mechanisms necessary to provide a
 given service.
 Polices are an integral component of all middleware services, and
 will be found within most middleware services in one form or another.
 Policies are often represented as an "if condition then action"
 tuple. Policies can be both complex and numerous; therefore, policy
 management services must be able to identify and resolve policy
 conflicts.  They also need to support both static (i.e. loaded at
 boot time via a configuration file) and dynamic (i.e. the
 configuration of a policy enforcing device may change based on an
 event) modes.
 A generalized policy management architecture (as suggested by the
 IETF policy architecture draft) includes a policy management service,
 a dedicated policy repository, at least one policy decision point
 (PDP), and at least one policy enforcement point (PEP). The policy
 management service supports the specification, editing, and
 administration of policy, through a graphical user interface as well
 as programmatically. The policy repository provides storage and
 retrieval of policies as well as policy components. These policy
 components contain definitional information, and may be used to build
 more complex policies, or may be used as part of the policy decision
 and/or enforcement process. The PDP (e.g. resource manager, such as a
 bandwidth broker or an intra-domain policy server) is responsible for
 handling events and making decisions based on those events (e.g., at
 time x do y) and updating the PEP configuration appropriately. In
 addition, it may be responsible for providing the initial
 configuration of the PEP. The PEP (e.g., router, firewall or host)
 enforces policy based on the "if condition then action" rule sets it
 has received from the PDP.
 Policy information may be communicated from the PDP to the PEP
 through a variety of protocols, such as COPS or DIAMETER. A proxy may
 be used to translate information contained in these protocols to
 forms that devices can consume (e.g., command line interface commands
 or SNMP sets). Additional information, contained in Policy
 Information Bases (PIBs), may also be used to translate from an
 intermediate specification to specific functions and capabilities of

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 10] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 a device. For example, a policy may specify "if source IP address is
 198.10.20.132, then remark traffic with a DSCP of 5". The PIB would
 be used to translate the device-specific meaning of the conditioning
 specified by the DiffServ code point of 5 (e.g., a specific set of
 queue and threshold settings).
 Policy requires AAA functions, not only for access control, but also
 to establish the trust relationships that will enable distributed
 policy interactions.  PDPs may require the requesting end systems and
 applications to be authenticated before the PDP will honor any
 requests. The PDP and PEP must be authenticated to each other to
 reduce the probability of spoofing. This will be true whichever
 protocol is utilized for supporting communications between these
 entities. Audit trails are essential for all of these transactions.
 In addition, trust management policies will need to be developed as
 well as the supporting middleware mechanisms to enable inter-domain
 policy negotiation.
 Ultimately, many policy processes link entities to resources, And
 therefore require interactions with entity identification mechanisms,
 resource identification mechanisms, and allocation mechanisms. The
 distributed computing community has already started efforts
 developing policy definition languages and systems.  Globus uses its
 Resource Services Language (RSL) to define the resources and policies
 associated with them. Condor uses a matchmaking bidding technique to
 match those providing and those acquiring services. Similarly, the
 IETF has several policy definition languages in varying stages of
 development, including RPSL, RPCL, SPSL, PFDL, PAX, and Keynote.
 Ultimately, these efforts should be merged into a single
 specification (or at least a smaller group of specifications) to
 enable distributed computing applications to be able to effectively
 communicate and utilize network resources and services.
 Directories play a crucial role in policy systems. Directories are
 ideally suited for storing and retrieving policy information, due to
 their exceptionally high read rates, ability to intelligently
 replicate all or part of their information, per-attribute access
 control, and use of containment.  To this end, the IETF Policy
 Framework working group (in conjunction with the DMTF) is developing
 a core information model and LDAP schema that can be used to
 represent policy information that applications can use. This core
 model is used to provide common representation and structure of
 policy information. Applications can then subclass all or part of the
 classes in this core schema to meet their own specific needs, while
 retaining the ability to communicate and interoperate with each
 other.

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 11] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

8.0 Directories

 Directories are critical resource components that provide support to
 many other elements in the middleware environment, especially policy.
 As network-based environment evolves, it will no longer be viable to
 encode policy information directly into each individual application.
 The prevailing model in use today is for each application to store
 its view of a device's data (e.g., configuration) in its own private
 data store.These data include relevant information concerning network
 resources and services as well as clients wanting to use those
 resources (e.g., people, processes, and applications). The same
 resource (or aspects of that resource, such as its physical vs.
 logical characteristics) may be represented in several data stores.
 Even if the device is modeled the same way in each data store, each
 application only has access to its own data. This leads to
 duplication of data and data synchronization problems.
 The promise of technologies like CIM and DEN is to enable each
 application to store data describing the resources that they manage
 in a single directory using a common format and access protocol. This
 results in the data describing the resource being represented only
 once. Defining a logically centralized common repository, where
 resources and services are represented in a common way, enables
 applications of different types to utilize and share information
 about resources and services that they use.
 Not only does this solve the data duplication and synchronization
 problems, it also provides inherent extensibility in describing the
 characteristics of an object - a single entity can be represented by
 multiple directory objects, each representing a different aspect of
 the entity. Different applications can be responsible for managing
 the different objects that together make up a higher-level object,
 even if the applications themselves can not communicate with each
 other. This enables these applications to effectively share and reuse
 data.  This provides significant benefits for users and applications.
 In the short term, users and applications will benefit from having
 all of the data in one place. In the long term, users and
 applications will be able to take advantage of data managed by other
 applications.
 Directories are key to supporting advanced network-based application
 environments. Directory purists say that the directory is not
 middleware; rather, it is a dumb storage device that is made into an
 intelligent repository by encapsulating it within middleware.
 Although a directory associates attributes with objects, what makes
 it different from a database are four key things:

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 12] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

  1. directory objects are essentially independent of each other,

whereas database objects are related to each other (sometimes in

    very complex ways)
 -  directories organize their information using the notion of
    containment, which is not naturally implemented in databases
 -  directory objects can have specific access controls assigned to an
    object and even attributes of an object
 -  directories, unlike databases, are optimized to perform a high
    number of reads vs. writes.
 Directories use a common core schema, supporting a common set of
 syntaxes and matching rules, that defines the characteristics of
 their data. This enables a common access protocol to be used to store
 and retrieve data.
 Containment can be used for many purposes, including associating
 roles with objects. This is critical in order to support a real world
 environment, where people and elements may assume different roles
 based on time or other context.Containment may also be used to
 provide different naming scopes for a given set of data.
 Directories use attribute inheritance - subclasses inherit the
 attributes of their superclasses. This enables one to define
 generalized access control at a container (e.g., a group) and then
 refine the access control on an individual basis for objects that are
 inside that container (e.g., different objects have different access
 privileges).
 Currently, directories are used mostly to represent people, servers,
 printers, and other similar objects. CIM, DEN, and other similar
 efforts have encouraged directories to be used to contain common
 objects in a managed environment. For networked applications, this
 enables clients of the network (e.g., users and applications) to be
 bound to services available in the network in a transparent manner.
 The "Grid" community is making extensive use of directory services
 for this purpose, using them to maintain information about the
 structure and state of not only networks but also computers, storage
 systems, software, and people. The DMTF is using directories to
 contain CIM and DEN information, which enables a common information
 model to be applied to objects in a managed environment. The IETF is
 using directories for many different purposes, not the least of which
 is to contain common policy information for users and applications of
 an environment, as well as services and configuration information of
 network devices.

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 13] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 CIM and DEN are conceptual information models for describing the
 management of entities ranging from network elements to protocols to
 hosts and services. CIM and DEN are platform- and technology-
 independent. DEN is an extension of CIM that, among other things,
 describes how to map CIM data into a form usable by LDAP.
 The CIM Specification describes the meta schema, information model,
 language, naming, and mapping techniques to other management models,
 such as SNMP MIBs and DMTF MIFs.  DEN provides a good start on a
 model that addresses the management of the network and its elements;
 DEN is an extension of CIM to include the management of networks as a
 whole and not just the individual elements. DEN addresses the
 requirements for abstracting a complex entity, such as a router, into
 multiple components that can be used to manage individual aspects of
 that complex entity. The DEN information model, like CIM,
 incorporates both static and dynamic information. DEN provides a
 mapping to directories for the storage and retrieval of data. DEN
 will also rely heavily on the use of AAA services in order to
 maintain the integrity of the directory and its policies as well as
 to manage the distribution of policies among the policy repositories,
 PDPs and PEPs.  Resource managers and applications will also rely
 heavily on directories for the storage of policy and security
 information necessary for the management and allocation of resources.
 Since much of the information associated with a person, agent or
 element is stored in a directory, and access to that information will
 be controlled with appropriate security mechanisms, many voiced the
 need for a single user/process sign on.
 Future advanced applications (e.g., NGI, Internet2, PACI, Grids) may
 require a variety of PDPs to manage a variety of resource types
 (i.e., QOS, security, etc.).  In this case, a general model would
 have to be developed that defines the protocols and mechanisms used
 by cooperating resource managers (i.e., PDPs) of different domains
 and different genres of resource (i.e., network, security, storage,
 proxy agents, online facility, etc.). For policies to be implemented
 in a coherent fashion, it is necessary to have a mechanism that
 discovers and tracks resources and utilization.
 There is an architectural issue of central importance, which has most
 recently surfaced in the directory area. Many applications, and many
 middleware components, need what is essentially a highly scalable,
 distributed database service. In other words, people want to take the
 best of what directories and databases have to offer. This would
 result in a distributed, replicated database that can use containment
 to effectively organize and scope its information. It would be able
 to have exceptional read response time, and also offer transactional
 and relational integrity. It would support simple and complex

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 14] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 queries. Such a service has never been defined as a middleware
 component; the complexities involved in specifying and implementing
 such a service are certainly formidable. However, in the absence of
 such a general service, many middleware components have attempted to
 use the closest service available, which is deployed - historically
 first using DNS, and more recently, directory services.
 It will be important to clarify the limitations of the appropriate
 use of directory services, and to consider whether a more general
 data storage and retrieval service may be required, or whether
 directory services can be seamlessly integrated (from the point-of-
 view of the applications using them) with other forms of storage and
 retrieval (such as relational databases) in order to provide an
 integrated directory service with these capabilities.

9.0 Resource Management

 Policy implementation processes need to be linked to Resource
 Managers in a more sophisticated way than those that currently exist.
 Such processes must be dynamic, and able to reflect changes in their
 environment (e.g., adjust the quality of service provided to an
 application based on environmental changes, such as congestion or new
 users with higher priorities logging onto the system). We need to
 determine how different types of resource managers learn about one
 another and locate each other - as well as deal with associated
 cross-domain security issues.  Another aspect of this problem is
 developing a resource definition language that can describe the
 individual elements of the resource being utilized, whether that is a
 network, processor, agent, memory or storage. This will require
 developing an appropriate metadata representation and underlying meta
 schema that can be applied to multiple resource types.
 Some models of resource managers are currently being used to provide
 for the management of distributed computing and Grid environments
 (e.g., Condor, Globus, and Legion).  These resource managers provide
 languages, clients, and servers to support accessing various types of
 distributed computing resources (e.g. processors, memory, storage and
 network access).  There is a broad interest in the distributed and
 parallel computing communities in developing an automated access
 control architecture, using policies, to support the evolving IETF
 differentiated services architecture. However, this work has not yet
 been incorporated into any IETF working group charter. The term
 "bandwidth broker" has been used to refer to the agents that will
 implement this functionality through network resource management,
 policy control, and automated edge device configuration.  The IETF
 Policy Framework working group is currently working on a policy
 architecture framework, information model, and policy definition
 language that is targeted initially at policy management within a

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 15] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 single domain. However, this work is fundamental in defining inter-
 domain policy management issues, such as those that are required in
 implementing a network resource manager / bandwidth broker.  Many
 resource managers being deployed today rely on directory services for
 storing policy information as well as X.509 for certificate-based
 authentication and authorization to these resources. Middleware will
 be required to translate the needs of distributed and parallel
 computing applications within and across different policy domains. It
 is crucial that a standard means for representing and using resource
 management be developed.
 Advance reservation of resources, as well as dynamic requests for
 resources, is a crucial aspect of any resource management system.
 Advance reservations are more of a policy issue than a provisioning
 issue; however, the mechanisms for exchanging and propagating such
 requests between resource managers located within different
 administrative domains is a currently unsolved problem that needs to
 be addressed. In addition, it is important to address the issue of
 possible deadlock and/or the inefficient use of resources (i.e., the
 time period between a request, or set of requests, being initiated
 and honored and resources being allocated). There is also a need for
 rendezvous management in resource allocation services, where an
 application must gather resource reservations involving multiple
 sites and services.
 A mesh of cooperating resource managers, which interact with each
 other using standards based protocols (e.g. COPS), could be the model
 for a resource management infrastructure. Each of these may manage
 different sets of resources. For example, one may be a bandwidth
 broker that only manages network bandwidth, while another may be a
 general-purpose resource manager that manages security, IP address
 allocation, storage, processors, agents, and other network resources.
 There are already plans for middleware resource managers that not
 only allocate the resources but also manage the composition of a
 group of services that may include security services, billing
 services, shaping of multimedia composite images, etc.). Another form
 of resource manager may provide mapping between a set of related
 services (i.e., mapping an IP based RSVP request to an ATM SVC, as
 was demonstrated in a pilot project on the vBNS).
 Resource managers depend on the use of locator services to find other
 resource managers as well as to locate the AAA server(s) for the
 requestor and the associated directories containing applicable policy
 information. They may also need to query the network to determine if
 a policy request for bandwidth can be satisfied. It is essential that
 these (and other) different uses of resource management be integrated
 to provide an end-to-end service for applications and users alike.

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 16] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

10.0 Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval Services

 There are a wide range of middleware services broadly related to the
 discovery and retrieval of networked information. Because such a
 broad range of applications (and not just high-performance,
 distributed, or parallel applications) requires these services, this
 area is under very active development and new requirements are
 constantly emerging.
 Perhaps the most basic service in this area is persistent naming and
 location services (and infrastructure) that can resolve names to
 locations (i.e., URLs). The IETF has done considerable work in
 defining a syntax for Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), which are
 intended to be persistent name spaces administered by a wide range of
 agencies. URIs are resolved to URLs using resolver services; there
 are a number of different proposals for such resolver services, and
 some implementations exist such as the CNRI Handler Service.  Many
 organizations are beginning to establish and manage URI namespaces,
 notably the publishing community with their Digital Object Identifier
 (DOI). however, there are many unresolved questions, such as how to
 most effectively deal with the situation where the resource named by
 a URI exists in multiple places on the network (e.g., find the
 "closest" mirror in terms of network connectivity and resource
 availability). There is a need for an extensive set of infrastructure
 around resolvers, including how resources are registered and
 identifiers are assigned, the ongoing management of data about the
 current location of resources that are identified by a specific URI,
 and the operation of sets of resolvers for various name spaces.
 Finally, given a URI, one needs to locate the resolver services that
 are connected with that namespace; the IETF has done initial work on
 resolution service location for URI namespaces.
 URIs are intended to be processed primarily by machines; they are not
 intended to necessarily be easy to remember, though they are intended
 to be robust under transcription (not sensitive to whitespace, for
 example). More recently, the IETF has begun work on defining
 requirements for human friendly identifier systems that might be used
 to register and resolve mnemonic names.
 Another set of issues revolves around various types of metadata -
 descriptive, ratings, provenance, rights management, and the like,
 that may be associated with objects on the network. The Resource
 Description Framework (RDF) from the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C)
 provides a syntax for attaching such descriptions to network objects
 and for encoding  the descriptions; additional middleware work is
 needed to locate metadata associated with objects that may be stored
 in repositories, and to retrieve such  metadata. Validation of
 metadata is a key issue, and both IETF and W3C are working on XML

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 17] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 canonicalization algorithms that can be used in conjunction with
 public key infrastructure to sign metadata assertions. However, such
 an approach implies a complex set of trust relationships and
 hierarchies that will need to be managed, and policies that will need
 to be specified for the use of these trust relationships in
 retrieval.
 There is specific work going on in defining various types of metadata
 for applications such as rights management; ultimately this will
 imply the development of middleware services. It will also impact the
 use of directory, database, and similar services in the storage,
 access, and retrieval of this information. Similarly, there will be a
 need for services to connect descriptive metadata and identifiers
 (URNs).
 (See also the NSF/ERCIM report on metadata research issues at
 http://www.ercim.org/publication/ws-proceedings/EU-NSF/metadata.html
 http://www.ercim.org/publication/ws-proceedings/EU-NSF/metadata.ps
 http://www.ercim.org/publication/ws-proceedings/EU-NSF/metadata.pdf
 Finally, there is a need for a set of middleware services which build
 upon the research work already integrated into services such as
 Archie and Harvest. These services permit the efficient extraction of
 metadata about the contents of network information objects and
 services without necessarily retrieving and inspecting those
 services.  This includes the ability to dispatch "indexing agents" or
 "knowbots" that can run at a site to compute such indexing, under
 appropriate security and authentication constraints.  In addition, a
 set of "push-based" broker services which aggregate, filter and
 collect metadata from multiple sites and provide them to interested
 applications are also required.  Such services can provide a massive
 performance, quality, comprehensiveness and timeliness improvement
 for today's webcrawler-based indexing services.

11.0 Network QoS

 As noted earlier, applications may need to explicitly request
 resources available in the network to meet their requirements for
 certain types of communication, or in order to provide service with
 an appropriate guarantee of one or metrics, such as bandwidth,
 jitter, latency, and loss. One type of request that has been the
 focus of much effort recently is for services beyond best effort,
 particularly with respect to services running over IP. This is
 particularly important for the advanced applications noted previously
 (e.g., visualization and teleimmersion) as well as the emerging
 importance of voice and video, especially voice and video operating
 with lower bandwidth or voice and video co-mingled with data. One
 perspective on this issue is to consider the effect of multiple drops

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 18] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 in a single RTT, which is catastrophic for TCP applications but may
 be of no special significance for real-time traffic. Providing for
 improved services can be accomplished through a variety of quality of
 service (QoS) and class of service (CoS) mechanisms.  The first IETF
 model was the Integrated Services (IntServ) model, which used RSVP as
 the signaling mechanism. Since this model requires state in every
 router for every session and to manage the traffic flows, it is
 generally recognized to have scaling limits.  However, it is very
 appropriate for certain situations.
 Differentiated Services, or DiffServ, grew out of a reaction against
 the perceived scalability problems with the IETF IntServ model.
 DiffServ is an architecture for implementing scalable service
 differentiation in the Internet. Scalability is achieved by
 aggregating traffic through the use of IP-layer packet marking.
 Packets are classified and marked to receive a particular per-hop
 forwarding behavior on nodes along their path.  Sophisticated
 classification, marking, policing, and shaping operations need only
 be implemented at network boundaries or hosts.  Network resources are
 allocated to traffic streams by service provisioning policies which
 govern how traffic is marked and conditioned upon entry to a
 differentiated services-capable network, and how that traffic is
 forwarded within that network. These simple PHBs are combined with a
 much larger number of policing policies enforced at the network edge
 to provide a broad and flexible range of services, without requiring
 state or complex forwarding decisions to be performed in the core and
 distribution layers.
 Recently, the idea of "tunneling" RSVP over a DiffServ-capable
 network has generated significant interest. This attempts to combine
 the best features of both IntServ and DiffServ while mitigating the
 disadvantages of each. This in turn has led the IETF to study ways to
 ensure that Differv and Inteserv can not only coexist, but are also
 interoperable.
 The practical realization of either or both architectures depends on
 many middleware components, some of which are described in this
 document. The workshop discussion mainly focused on DiffServ
 mechanisms and on what effect such mechanisms would have on
 middleware and its ability to monitor and manage the network
 infrastructure for the benefit of the applications. Both IntServ and
 DiffServ only fully make sense if linked to a policy mechanism. This
 mechanism must be able to make policy decisions, detect and resolve
 conflicts in policies, and enforce and monitor policies.
 Workshop participants almost unanimously agreed that they also
 required a scalable inter-domain resource manager (e.g., a bandwidth
 broker). Currently, if an RSVP session is run, each router along a

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 19] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 path becomes involved, with flow policing at each hop. Bandwidth
 Broker models include the bandwidth broker, a policy decision point
 (which makes admission control and policy decisions) and the policy
 enforcement points (i.e., edge routers) which provide for policing at
 the first hop and for remarking aggregate flows so that subsequent
 routers need only deal with the aggregate flows.
 IETF protocols that could be used to implement a Bandwidth Broker
 model (e.g., COPS, Diameter, and others) were also discussed.  The
 Diameter protocol is interesting in this context, because it provides
 set up mechanisms for basic network resource allocations and
 reallocations, as well as optional allocations.- All of these can be
 used for various types of bandwidth broker implementations, including
 those directed at QoS, using RSVP type information. Diameter
 currently does not provide path information, but instead relies on
 network pathway information established at ingress and egress nodes.
 However, the status of Diameter is still open in the IETF.
 COPS was initially developed as a mechanism for establishing RSVP
 policy within a domain and remains intra-domain centric. It is a
 useful intra-domain mechanism for allocating bandwidth resources
 within a policy context. Work is now being conducted to use COPS for
 establishing policy associated with a DiffServ-capable network. COPS
 is designed to facilitate communication between the PDP and the PEP,
 carrying policy decisions and other information.
 To implement any type of Bandwidth Broker model, it is necessary to
 establish a mechanism for policy exchanges.  The Internet2's Qbone
 working group is currently working to define a prototype inter-domain
 bandwidth broker signaling protocol. This work is being coordinated
 with IETF efforts.
 Another mechanism is required for traffic shaping and SLA policing
 and enforcement.  One mechanism is fair queuing in its various forms,
 which has been described as TDM emulation without the time and space
 components. Techniques have been used for several years for fair
 queuing for low speed lines. For DS-3 with 40 byte packets and OC-3c
 speeds with 200-byte packets, weighted fair queuing uses a deficit
 round-robin algorithm that allows it to scale. It is capable of flow
 discrimination based on stochastically hashing the flows. An
 additional expansion of this technique is to preface this technique
 with class indicators. Currently, classification techniques are based
 on IP precedence. However, classification will soon be achieved in
 many routers using Diffserv code points (DSCPs) to specify the type
 of conditioning to be applied.  The complete requirements of policing
 for DiffServ implementations, e.g., via bandwidth brokers, have not
 yet been fully explored or defined.

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 20] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 Network monitoring capabilities (i.e., querying the network for state
 information on a micro and macro level) that support middleware and
 application services were identified as a core requirement. In fact,
 a network instrumentation and measurement infrastructure, upon which
 a set of intelligent network management middleware services can be
 built, is absolutely critical.
 Current mechanisms (e.g. ICMP, SNMP) were not deemed robust enough
 for middleware and applications developers to determine the state of
 the network, or to verify that they were receiving the specific type
 of treatment they had requested.  This was judged especially true of
 a network providing QoS or CoS. Indeed, it is not at all clear that
 SNMP, for example, is even the right architectural model for
 middleware to use to enable applications to determine the state of
 the network. Other capabilities, such as OcxMon, RTFM, new MIBs, and
 active measurement techniques (e.g., IPPM one-way delay metrics) need
 to be made available to middleware services and applications.
 The provisioning of differentiated services takes the Internet one
 step away from its "dumb" best effort status.  As the complexity of
 the network increases (e.g. VPNs, QoS, CoS, VoIP, etc.), more
 attention must be paid to providing the end-user/customer or network
 administrator with the tools they require to securely and dynamically
 manage an adaptable network infrastructure. Differentiated services
 means that theoretically some traffic gets better service than other
 traffic; subsequently, one can expect to pay for better service,
 which means that accounting and billing services will be one of the
 important middleware core components that others will rely upon. The
 model and protocols necessary to accomplish this are not developed
 yet.

12.0 Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting

 The IETF's AAA working group is focusing on the requirements for
 supporting authentication, authorization, accounting, and auditing of
 access to and services provided by network resource managers (e.g.,
 bandwidth brokers). These processes constitute an important security
 infrastructure that will be relied upon by middleware and
 applications. However, these components are only basic security
 components. A public key infrastructure (PKI) was identified as a
 crucial security service infrastructure component. For example, the
 PKI will be required to support the transitivity of authentication,
 authorization, and access control and, where appropriate, accounting
 and billing.  It was noted that, except for issues dealing with group
 security and possibly more efficient and simple management, there are
 no real technical challenges preventing the wide scale deployment of
 a PKI support structure at this time. Instead, the main obstacles to
 overcome are mostly political and economic in nature. However,

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 21] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 additional middleware may be required to better facilitate a PKI.
 That being said, some people believe that we do have some large
 technical security challenges, revocation lists and security with
 respect to changing group memberships being two examples.
 Middleware and security support is also required for newer
 applications (e.g., proxy agents that would act on a process or
 application's behalf and gather the necessary certificates for access
 and using resources). A particularly difficult example is remote
 collaboration. Accessing a particular resource may require a user
 and/or application to gather certificates from more than one policy-
 controlling agent. It is also true that an entity may have various
 identities that are dependent on the task they are performing (usage
 or role based) or the context of the application.  In order for the
 PKI to become truly functional on a ubiquitous level, there needs to
 exist a set of independent signing authorities that can vouch for the
 top-level certificate authorities.
 There are also higher-level middleware services which will build on
 public key infrastructure, notary services and provenance
 verification.  As we move from a relatively dumb network (e.g. best
 effort IP) to an Internet with embedded intelligence (e.g., DiffServ,
 IntServ, bandwidth brokers, directory-enabled networks, etc.), the
 secure exchange of information will become even more important.  In
 addition, as we start to provide differentiated services, accounting
 and statistics gathering will become much more important. We also
 need to provide for the integrity and security of collecting,
 analyzing, and transporting network management and monitoring
 information.  And the issues of data privacy and integrity, along
 with addressing denial of service and non-repudiation, cannot be
 ignored.

13.0 Network Management, Performance, and Operations

 Network management capabilities were identified as being paramount to
 the success of middleware deployment, and subsequently to the success
 of the application. Many of the issues addressed here are not part of
 standard NOC operations. In a more complex world of QoS, CoS, and
 micro prioritization, reactions to network failures must be handled
 differently than current procedures. Allocations are more dynamic,
 especially additions, deletions, and changes with additional sets of
 requirements, such as priorities and new types of inter-domain
 interactions. These will inevitably increase the complexity of
 network management.
 There are many microscopic and macroscopic network management
 projects focusing on making both active and passive network
 statistics and information available to end-users. Current visual

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 22] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 debugging and analysis capabilities (e.g., those developed by
 NLANR/CAIDA) are crucial tools for network administrators and
 designers for understanding their networks. In addition, current
 network management techniques and mechanisms, which were designed for
 network designers and managers, need to be adapted to provide a
 dynamic and relevant set of information to the middleware or
 application service software. This will allow the programs to
 dynamically adapt to the changing state of the network infrastructure
 while ensuring the integrity and security of the network and other
 resources.
 Another aspect of network management that has not received the
 necessary attention, is the need for modeling and analysis tools for
 network and middleware designers. CIM and DEN show great promise in
 providing a common framework for modeling the management of network
 elements and services as well as users, applications, and other
 resources of the network. Undoubtedly, middleware designers will
 place new requirements on CIM and DEN that will cause these
 approaches to evolve.

14.0 Middleware to support multicast applications

 IP multicast - that is, the routing and forwarding of mutlicast
 packets in an IP-based network, is in the view of the workshop part
 of the basic network infrastructure. The Internet Group Multicast
 Protocol, which manages the joining and leaving of multicast groups,
 could also be considered a basic network service. However, there is a
 tremendous need for middleware services to make multicast useable for
 various applications, much like TCP played a key role in making IP
 applications useable. Specifically, one might reasonably want
 middleware services to provide authenticated control of multicast
 services. Examples of these services include the creation and joining
 of multicast groups, multicast address management, multicast channel
 directories (there has already been considerable work in this area),
 various forms of reliable multicast services (this has been an IRTF
 research area), and to secure multicast groups through various
 cryptographic strategies. In addition, because of the large impact
 that multicast can have on a network, multicast management middleware
 services, particularly in conjunction with QoS, will be needed, as
 will services to link together multicasting within various networks
 that do not directly interchange multicast routing information. It
 should be noted, however, that several security issues with
 multicast, especially groups with dynamic membership policies, still
 need to be resolved.

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 23] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

15.0 Java and Jini

 Java was chosen as an example of a heterogeneous runtime support
 system for the sake of discussion as to whether it could be qualified
 as a development language particularly suitable for the development
 of middleware. The consensus was that the Java language and compilers
 are important in the current distributed model of the Internet and
 for the support of middleware (i.e., middleware written using Java).
 Also, a virtual Java machine located on a system can be considered
 middleware as much as any operating system or network operating
 systems would be considered middleware. Jini middleware technology
 not only defines a set of protocols for discovery, join, and lookup,
 but also a leasing and transaction mechanism to provide resilience in
 a dynamic networked environment.  Java and Jini will be dependent on
 a functioning PKI, especially for signed applets. That being said,
 there are security concerns with both Java and Jini that need to be
 addressed, such as allowing the downloading of applets and servlets.

16.0 Security Considerations

 This document is a report of a workshop in which security was a
 common theme, as can be seen by the references to security through
 out the document; but the workshop did not reach any specific
 recommendations for new security-related terminology.

17.0 Summary

 Middleware may have components and services that only exist in the
 persistent infrastructure, but it will also have components that
 enable and support end-to-end (i.e. application to application or
 host to host) interaction across multiple autonomous administrative
 domains. A set of core persistent middleware services is required to
 support the development of a richer set of middleware services which
 can be aggregated or upon which applications will be based (e.g., an
 onion or layered model). This set of core middleware services will
 help applications leverage the services and capabilities of the
 underlying network infrastructure, along with enabling applications
 to adjust in changes to the network. The particular set of such
 services utilized by an application or process will be a function of
 the requirements of the application field or affinity group (e.g.,
 network management or high energy physics applications) wishing to
 utilize the network or distributed data/computation infrastructure.
 This document discusses some of the basic and core middleware
 services, which include, but are not limited to: directories,
 name/address resolution services, security services (i.e.,
 authentication, authorization, accounting, and access control),
 network management, network monitoring, time servers, and accounting.
 Network level capabilities, such as multicast and DiffServ, are not

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 24] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 classified as middleware; rather, they are enabling infrastructure
 services upon which middleware will be built or which middleware may
 use and manage.  A second level of important middleware services,
 which builds upon these core set of services, may include
 accounting/billing, resource managers, single sign-on services,
 globally unique names, metadata servers, and locators.
 A recognized goal is to provide a set of middleware services that
 enable access to and management of the underlying network
 infrastructure and support applications wishing to make use of that
 network-based infrastructure. It appears necessary to agree to a
 framework of services for the support, provisioning and operations,
 and management of the network. Today, we have piecemeal activities
 already being pursued in various standards organizations. These
 include efforts in the IETF and DMTF (e.g., AAA, Policy Framework,
 DiffServ, DEN, CIM, etc.), as well as in the advanced application
 environments (e.g., Grid Forum, the PACIs, NGI, Internet2, etc.).
 Both of these efforts require the integration and management of many
 infrastructure components, not just networks; however, we have no
 overall framework that pulls all of these together, or a mechanism to
 coordinate all of these activities.  We are just embarking on the
 development of a rich plan of middleware services. Consequently, we
 have a lot of work yet to be done. For instance, as we move into an
 electronic persistent presence (EPP) environment where multiple
 instances of an identity or person (or even their proxy agents) are
 supported, we will require enhanced locator and brokering services.
 The directory (e.g., DNS or X.500) and locator services of today may
 not be appropriate for this task.
 One goal of the workshop was to identify research and development
 areas in middleware that federal agencies and industry may choose to
 support. The workshop highlighted a few areas that may benefit from
 additional R&D support.  These areas include, but are not limited to:
  1. inter-domain resource management architecture and protocols (e.g.,

inter-domain bandwidth brokers)

  1. resource languages that describe and enable the management of a

wide variety of resources (e.g., networks, data bases, storage,

    online facilities, etc.
 -  avoiding deadlock and ensuring efficiency with resource managers
 -  network management tools and APIs that provide macroscopic and
    microscopic real-time infrastructure
 -  information to middleware services and applications (not just MIBs
    and SNMP access)
 -  domain and inter-domain accounting and billing
 -  monitoring and verification services of contracted infrastructure
    services
 -  enhanced locators that can locate resources and resource managers

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 25] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

  1. cross administrative policy negotiation and authentication
  2. middleware bypass (i.e. access to raw system or network resources

metadata (i.e., data that is used to describe data found in

    directories or exchanged between services such as resource
    managers, PDPs, PEPs, directories, accounting and billing
    services, etc.)
 -  middleware support for mobile or nomadic use
 -  support for availability of resources (i.e. replication and load
    balancing
 This workshop was just one small step in identifying relevant
 middleware topics, technologies and players.  Even though this
 workshop did not arrive at a consensual definition of middleware, it
 did identify the need for additional work. Specifically, further work
 is needed to identify and qualify middleware services for specific
 affinity groups (e.g. Internet2, Education, the PACIs, Grids, etc.)
 as well as to define a macroscopic framework that incorporates the
 middleware work of the IETF, DMTF and other relevant organizations
 such as the Grid Forum.

18.0 Participants

 Deb Agarwal <deba@george.lbl.gov>, Bob Aiken <raiken@cisco.com>, Guy
 Almes <almes@internet2.edu>, Chase Bailey <chase@cisco.com>, Fred
 Baker <fred@cisco.com>, Pete Beckman <beckman@lanl.gov>, Javad
 Boroumand <jborouma@nsf.gov>, Scott Bradner <sob@harvard.edu>, George
 Brett <ghbrett@mindspring.com>, Rich Carlson <racarlson@anl.gov>,
 Brian Carpenter <bcarpent@uk.ibm.com>, Charlie Catlett
 <catlett@ncsa.uiuc.edu>, Bill Cheng <wtcheng@us.ibm.com>, Kim Claffy
 <kc@caida.org>, Bill Decker <Wdecker@nsf.gov>, Christine Falsetti
 <cfalsetti@arc.nasa.gov>, Ian Foster <foster@mcs.anl.gov>, Andrew
 Grimshaw <grimshaw@cs.virginia.edu>, Ed Grossman
 <egrossma@ncsa.uiuc.edu>, Ted Hanss <ted@internet2.edu>, Ron Hutchins
 <ron@oit.gatech.edu>, Larry Jackson <jackson@ncsa.uiuc.edu>, Bill
 Johnston <Wejohnston@lbl.gov>, Juerg von Kaenel <jvk@us.ibm.com>,
 Miron Livny <miron@cs.wisc.edu>, Cliff Lynch <cliff@cni.org>, Joel
 Mambretti <j-mambretti@nwu.edu>, Reagan Moore <moore@sdsc.edu>, Klara
 Nahstedt <klara@cs.uiuc.edu>, Mike Nelson <mrn@us.ibm.com>, Bill
 Nitzberg <nitzberg@nas.nasa.gov>, Hilarie Orman <ho@darpa.mil>, John
 Schnizlein <jschnizl@cisco.com>, Rick Stevens <stevens@mcs.anl.gov>,
 John Strassner <johns@cisco.com>, Ben Teitelbaum <ben@advanced.org>,
 George Vanecek <g.vanecek@att.com>, Ken Klingenstein
 <Ken.Klingenstein@Colorado.EDU>, Arvind Krishna
 <akrishna@us.ibm.com>, Dilip Kandlur <kandlur@us.ibm.com

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 26] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

19.0 URLs/references

 Please see http://www.mcs.anl.gov/middleware98  for copies of the
 slides presented at the workshop as well as a list of related URLs on
 applications, middleware and network services.

20.0 Authors' Addresses

 Editor:  Bob Aiken
          EMail: raiken@cisco.com
 Authors:
 Bob Aiken
 Cisco Systems, Inc.
 6519 Debold Rd.
 Sabillasville, Md.  21780 USA
 Phone: +1 301 271 2919
 EMail: raiken@cisco.com
 John Strassner
 Cisco Systems, Inc.
 170 West Tasman Drive
 San Jose, CA  95134
 Phone: +1 408 527 1069
 EMail: johns@cisco.com
 Brian E. Carpenter
 IBM United Kingdom Laboratories
 MP 185, Hursley Park
 Winchester, Hampshire SO21 2JN, UK
 EMail: brian@hursley.ibm.com
 Ian Foster
 Argonne National Laboratory
 The University of Chicago
 Argonne, IL 60439  USA
 Phone: +1 630 252 4619
 EMail: foster@mcs.anl.gov

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 27] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

 Clifford Lynch
 Coalition for Networked Information
 21 Dupont Circle
 Washington, DC  20036
 Phone: +1 202 296 5098
 EMail: cliff@cni.org
 Joe Mambretti
 International Center for Advanced Internet Research
 1890 Maple, Suite 150
 Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60201
 Phone: +1 847 467 3911
 EMail: j-mambretti@nwu.edu
 Reagan Moore
 University of California, San Diego
 NPACI/SDSC, MC 0505
 9500 Gilman Drive
 La Jolla, CA 92093-0505   USA
 EMail: moore@sdsc.edu
 Benjamin Teitelbaum
 Advanced Networks & Services, Inc.
 EMail: ben@internet2.edu

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 28] RFC 2768 A Report of a Workshop on Middleware February 2000

21.0 Full Copyright Statement

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.
 This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
 and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
 kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
 developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
 copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
 followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
 English.
 The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
 This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
 "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
 TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
 BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
 HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
 MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Acknowledgement

 Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
 Internet Society.

Aiken, et al. Informational [Page 29]

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