1.1 Glossary

This document uses the following terms:

block: A chunk of content that composes a segment. Each segment is divided into one or more blocks. Every block belongs to a specific segment, and within a segment, blocks are identified by their progressive index. (Block 0 is the first block in the segment, block 1 is the second, and so on.) See [MS-PCCRC] for more details.

block hash: A hash of a content block within a segment. Also known as a block ID.

client: For the Peer Content Caching and Retrieval Framework, a client is a client-role peer; that is, a peer that is searching for content, either from the server or from other peers or hosted cashes. In the context of the Retrieval Protocol, a client is a peer that requests a block-range from a server_role_peer. It acts as a Web Services Dynamic Discovery (WS-Discovery) [WS-Discovery] client.

client-role peer: A peer that is looking for content, either from the server or from other peers or hosted caches.

content: Items that correspond to a file that an application attempts to access. Examples of content include web pages and documents stored on either HTTP servers or SMB file servers. Each content item consists of an ordered collection of one or more segments.

content server: The original source of the content that peers subsequently retrieve from each other.

Domain Name System (DNS): A hierarchical, distributed database that contains mappings of domain names to various types of data, such as IP addresses. DNS enables the location of computers and services by user-friendly names, and it also enables the discovery of other information stored in the database.

Generic Security Services (GSS): An Internet standard, as described in [RFC2743], for providing security services to applications. It consists of an application programming interface (GSS-API) set, as well as standards that describe the structure of the security data.

HoD: The hash of the content block hashes of every block in the segment.

HoHoDk: A hash that represents the content-specific label or public identifier that is used to discover content from other peers or from the hosted cache. This identifier is disclosed freely in broadcast messages. Knowledge of this identifier does not prove authorization to access the actual content.

hosted cache: A centralized cache comprised of blocks added by peers.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP): An application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems (text, graphic images, sound, video, and other multimedia files) on the World Wide Web.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS): An extension of HTTP that securely encrypts and decrypts web page requests. In some older protocols, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Sockets Layer" is still used (Secure Sockets Layer has been deprecated). For more information, see [SSL3] and [RFC5246].

peer: A node participating in the content caching and retrieval system. A peer is a node that both accesses the content and serves the content it caches for other peers.

Peer Content Caching and Retrieval Framework (or Framework): The framework that creates Peer Content Caching and Retrieval Discovery Protocol instances to discover client-role peers and download the content blocks from either client-role peers (distributed mode) or hosted cache (hosted-cache mode).

Peer Content Caching and Retrieval: Retrieval Protocol (PCCRR): The Peer Content Caching and Retrieval: Retrieval Protocol [MS-PCCRR].

segment: A subdivision of content. In version 1.0 Content Information, each segment has a size of 32 megabytes, except the last segment which can be smaller if the content size is not a multiple of the standard segment sizes. In version 2.0 Content Information, segments can vary in size.

segment hash of data: See HoD.

segment ID (HoHoDk): A hash that represents the content-specific label or public identifier that is used to discover content from other peers or from the hosted cache. This identifier is disclosed freely in broadcast messages. Knowledge of this identifier does not prove authorization to access the actual content.

segment secret: The content-specific hash that is sent to authorized clients along with the rest of the content information. It is generated by hashing the concatenation of the segment hash of data (HoD) and the server-configured secret.

server-role peer: A peer that listens for incoming block-range requests from client-role peers and responds to the requests.

Simple and Protected GSS-API Negotiation Mechanism (SPNEGO): An authentication mechanism that allows Generic Security Services (GSS) peers to determine whether their credentials support a common set of GSS-API security mechanisms, to negotiate different options within a given security mechanism or different options from several security mechanisms, to select a service, and to establish a security context among themselves using that service. SPNEGO is specified in [RFC4178].

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP): A protocol used with the Internet Protocol (IP) to send data in the form of message units between computers over the Internet. TCP handles keeping track of the individual units of data (called packets) that a message is divided into for efficient routing through the Internet.

Uniform Resource Locator (URL): A string of characters in a standardized format that identifies a document or resource on the World Wide Web. The format is as specified in [RFC1738].

MAY, SHOULD, MUST, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT: These terms (in all caps) are used as defined in [RFC2119]. All statements of optional behavior use either MAY, SHOULD, or SHOULD NOT.