Transparent proxy signalling

This paper argues that the increasing use of proxies is not a stop-gap measure, but rather, that proxies play a fundamental role in the Internet architecture: They bridge discontinuities between different regions of the Internet. To be effective, however, proxies need to coordinate and communicate with each other. Toward this end, this paper describes a signalling protocol that can be used to establish and configure a sequence of one or more proxies along any end-to-end flow. The protocol is realized as an extension of IP, which simplifies its deployment in the Internet. The paper also demonstrates how a collection of proxies might use the signalling protocol to provide an enhanced end-to-end service.