The 36th IPP Symposium
Data-Oriented Transfer
Dave Andersen, CMU
I will present the design and implementation of DOT, a flexible architecture for data transfer. This architecture separates content negotiation from the data transfer itself. Applications determine what data they need to send and then use a new transfer service to send it. This transfer service acts as a common interface between applications and the lower-level network layers, facilitating innovation both above and below. The transfer service frees developers from re-inventing transfer mechanisms in each new application. New transfer mechanisms, in turn, can be easily deployed without modifying existing applications.
We have used DOT to craft a variety of robust underlying transfer mechanisms, including automatic transfer resumption, multi-path transfers, and the use of out-of-band portable storage to effect transfers when the network has failed. We find that DOT is easy to use and to integrate with existing applications.
