RE: Proposed charter, please comment

["Mark Day" <markday@cisco.com>]

> >A content network is an architecture of Web-based network
> >elements, arranged
> >for efficient delivery of digital content.
>
> Why Web-based? Does that exclude non-HTTP objects? Actually, if you just
> remove the phrase "Web-based", this reads just fine (to me).

While technically correct, I worry that this moves us in the wrong direction
(increasing generality).  I consider it quite important that the working
group focus on the problems of delivering content within the frameworks of
DNS, HTTP, RTSP, etc. as they exist now.

For example, I think it would be a tremendous waste of time to use this
group to develop a system for interoperation of content networks that
required replacing the existing protocol infrastructure of the web. That
could well be a worthy and fun project, but it would be a research project
as opposed to a standards project.

Now, I'm pretty sure that you're not trying to get us to do that, but I want
to be sure that the charter rules it out.  I would be happy with more
careful phrasing, and perhaps we need to catalog the things that we will not
do instead of relying on the fuzzy phrase "Web-based." But I am wary of
broadening the scope to any arrangement of network elements that delivers
content efficiently.

--Mark