Example Scenario

As an example, consider an HTTP listener service which fulfills the requirements set in the Harrys Game example in section . Such a service would be able to optimise the path between Harry's web servers and the end user, in two ways:

• Choosing the most optimum server for the particular user
• Creating new servers in response to changing usage trends

If the listener encapsulates some kind of HTTP accelerator or load balancer, typically the requests may be routed only to nodes within a particular network. The IP level NAT involved in the load balancing imposes this constraint. Also, the service may be more easily implemented if all networking is performed in the domain of the service provider.

Of course, consumers of such a service might download service proxies, from the optimised endpoints, but that seems a little pointless. One goal of such a service, after all, is to provide a level of abstraction which allows the service to provide smart optimsation of the service, and introducing the extra network hop is counter-productive. To do this, it needs to place constraints on where the consumers shall run.