An Architecture for Internet Data Transfer

The authors in this paper propose DOT architecture that separates content negotiation from data transfer. The main idea is to provide a transfer service that can be used by applications for bulk point-to-point transfer. The advantages of providing a transfer service include:

• re-use available transfer service
• ease in adopting new transfer techniques

Instead of iterating how the authors design DOT I would list my views about the paper. I do not have any specific negative points to the proposed scheme. The main motivation is to provide a general data transfer service that anybody can use without spending time re-implementing the same service. It is good to provide general implementations that anybody can use but along with such implementations comes a drawback. The disadvantage is to be unable to add optimizations specific to the application that is using the transfer service.