<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<reference anchor="I-D.li-cats-kv-cache-distribution" target="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-li-cats-kv-cache-distribution-00">
   <front>
      <title>KV Cache Distribution for Distributed LLM Inference: Use Case and Requirements</title>
      <author initials="Z." surname="Li" fullname="Zhiqiang Li">
         <organization>China Mobile</organization>
      </author>
      <author initials="Z." surname="Du" fullname="Zongpeng Du">
         <organization>China Mobile</organization>
      </author>
      <author initials="J." surname="Wang" fullname="Junjie Wang">
         <organization>Centec</organization>
      </author>
      <author initials="W." surname="Cheng" fullname="Wei Cheng">
         <organization>Centec</organization>
      </author>
      <author initials="G." surname="Zhang" fullname="Guoying Zhang">
         <organization>Centec</organization>
      </author>
      <author initials="X." surname="Sun" fullname="Xun Sun">
         <organization>Inesa</organization>
      </author>
      <author initials="C." surname="Zhao" fullname="Chunhao Zhao">
         <organization>SAIA</organization>
      </author>
      <date month="July" day="4" year="2026" />
      <abstract>
	 <t>   In large language model (LLM) inference, the key-value (KV) cache
   holds the attention state computed from previously processed tokens.
   Reusing cached state across requests avoids repeated prefill
   computation and reduces time-to-first-token.  In distributed
   inference deployments, the KV cache becomes a network-distributed
   resource: the effectiveness of steering a request to a service
   instance depends not only on computing and network metrics but also
   on whether reusable cached state is available at or near that
   instance.

   This document describes the KV cache distribution use case for
   Computing-Aware Traffic Steering (CATS), identifies the gaps relative
   to the existing CATS framework and metrics, and states requirements
   for cache-state metric exposure and for the distribution and
   synchronization of cached content across multiple cache tiers.

	 </t>
      </abstract>
   </front>
   <seriesInfo name="Internet-Draft" value="draft-li-cats-kv-cache-distribution-00" />
   
</reference>
