Requirements for the Discovery of Agents, Workloads, and Named Entities (DAWN)
draft-king-dawn-requirements-01
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| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Daniel King , Adrian Farrel | ||
| Last updated | 2026-04-28 | ||
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draft-king-dawn-requirements-01
Network Working Group D. King
Internet-Draft A. Farrel
Intended status: Informational Old Dog Consulting
Expires: 30 October 2026 28 April 2026
Requirements for the Discovery of Agents, Workloads, and Named Entities
(DAWN)
draft-king-dawn-requirements-01
Abstract
The proliferation of distributed systems, Artificial Intelligence
(AI) agents, cloud workloads, and network services has created a need
for interoperable mechanisms to discover entities across
administrative and network boundaries. Entities may include AI
agents, software services, compute workloads, and other named
resources that need to be found and characterised before interaction
can begin.
This document defines the requirements for Discovery of Agents,
Workloads, and Named Entities (DAWN) and sets out the objectives that
a discovery mechanism for such entities must satisfy. It describes
what information must be discoverable, what properties a discovery
mechanism needs to support, and what constraints apply to discovery
in decentralised environments.
This document does not specify any particular discovery protocol or
solution.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 30 October 2026.
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components
extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1. Discovery Actors and Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2. Entity Classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3. Entity Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.4. Trust and Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.5. Scalability and Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.6. Discovery Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.7. Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6. Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
7. Operational Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1. Introduction
Modern distributed systems increasingly rely on the dynamic
composition of services, agents, and workloads that may not have pre-
configured relationships. For example, an AI agent may need to find
another agent with specific capabilities, a workload orchestrator may
need to locate compute resources in a particular jurisdiction, or a
service consumer may need to discover providers that support a
required protocol version. Further use cases and scenarios are
expected to be documented separately.
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In each case, an entity needs knowledge of remote entities before
interaction can proceed: what they are, what they offer, and whether
they can be trusted. Such knowledge could be obtained through static
configuration, but this approach is impractical at scale and across
organisational boundaries. Automated discovery mechanisms are
therefore needed.
Today, where automated discovery exists, it is typically handled
through proprietary directories or platform-specific mechanisms.
These approaches do not scale across organisational boundaries and
create fragmented ecosystems where entities cannot find entities
managed by other organisations.
An interoperable discovery mechanism is needed that builds on
existing protocols and tools, benefits from an established trust
model, supports proven delegation and federation architectures, and
allows organisations to independently publish discovery information.
This document defines requirements that any Discovery of Agents,
Workloads, and Named Entities (DAWN) mechanism must satisfy. It is
informed by:
* [I-D.akhavain-moussa-dawn-problem-statement] DAWN Problem
Statement I-D.
* [I-D.mozley-aidiscovery] AI Agent Discovery Problem Statement I-D.
* [I-D.farrel-dawn-terminology]
1.1. Scope
The requirements in this document address what information must be
discoverable about entities, what properties a discovery mechanism
must support, and what architectural constraints apply. The detailed
requirements are set out in Section 3.
These requirements are intended to be solution-neutral. They do not
require discovery information, endpoint information, capability
descriptions, or capability cards to be carried directly in any
particular protocol element or data record. A discovery mechanism
may return such information directly or provide a reference to
another resource from which the information can be obtained, provided
that the requirements for authenticity, integrity, interoperability,
and usability are satisfied.
The following topics are explicitly out of scope:
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* Entity registration processes, including attestation and other
security mechanisms for registration;
* Design, definition, and governance of naming systems for entities;
* Trust, authentication, and authorisation of entities themselves
(as distinct from trust in discovery information);
* Capability exchange and negotiation between entities;
* Entity selection mechanisms and policies;
* Task management and orchestration;
* Agent-to-agent communication protocols.
2. Terminology
This document uses the following terms defined in
[I-D.farrel-dawn-terminology]:
* Agent
* Capability
* Capability Card
* Capability Exchange
* Discovering Entity
* Discovery
* Discovery Mechanism
* Entity
* Function
* Named Entity
* Properties
* Selection
* Trust Indicator
* Workload
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2.1. Conventions and Definitions
Although this is an informational requirements document, key words in
upper case are used for clarity of stating the requirements. The key
words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD",
"SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL"
in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14
[RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals,
as shown here.
3. Requirements
The requirements are organised into the following categories:
discovery actors and scenarios, entity classification, entity
properties, trust and security, scalability and architecture,
discovery protocol, and extensibility.
3.1. Discovery Actors and Scenarios
REQ-DISC-1: A discovery mechanism MUST support discovery initiated
by any type of entity, including agents, services, workloads, and
human operators.
REQ-DISC-2: A discovery mechanism MUST support the discovery of both
specific entity instances and classes of entities that can perform
a desired function.
REQ-DISC-3: A discovery mechanism MUST identify the primary scenario
groupings (categories) of entities where discovery is needed and
address the specific discovery requirements of each category.
REQ-DISC-4: A discovery mechanism MUST define where discovery fits
within the overall workflow of entity interaction, distinguishing
discovery from registration, selection, and capability exchange.
REQ-DISC-5: A discovery mechanism SHOULD support discovery of
intermediary aggregation points or brokers that can provide
further dynamic information about entities.
3.2. Entity Classification
REQ-CLASS-1: A discovery mechanism MUST allow entities to be
classified by type (e.g., AI agent, service, workload, network
function).
REQ-CLASS-2: A discovery mechanism MUST allow entities to be
classified by the function or capability they provide.
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REQ-CLASS-3: A discovery mechanism SHOULD allow entities to be
associated with a geographic or jurisdictional location.
REQ-CLASS-4: A discovery mechanism SHOULD allow entities to be
associated with an owning or operating organisation.
REQ-CLASS-5: A discovery mechanism SHOULD allow entities to be
associated with a source or origin (e.g., the standards body,
vendor, or open-source project that defined the entity's
interface).
3.3. Entity Properties
REQ-PROP-1: A discovery mechanism MUST define a set of mandatory
base properties that every discoverable entity provides.
REQ-PROP-2: A discovery mechanism MUST support the discovery of
communication protocols and transport parameters needed to
interact with an entity, either directly or by reference to
another resource.
REQ-PROP-3: A discovery mechanism MUST support the discovery of
capability descriptions for an entity, either directly or by
reference to another resource.
REQ-PROP-4: A discovery mechanism MUST distinguish between static
properties (e.g., entity type, supported protocols) and dynamic
properties (e.g., operational status, current load).
REQ-PROP-5: A discovery mechanism SHOULD support the association of
version information with entity properties and capability
descriptions.
REQ-PROP-6: A discovery mechanism MUST support the identification of
the party responsible for an entity. The mechanism SHOULD also
allow entities to be registered anonymously where appropriate.
REQ-PROP-7: A discovery mechanism SHOULD support the discovery of an
entity's functional capacity, such as the scope or volume of work
it can perform.
REQ-PROP-8: A discovery mechanism MUST support the discovery of
security-related communication parameters needed to establish a
secure connection with an entity, either directly (e.g., through
protocol-level fields) or by reference to an external capability
descriptor that contains details such as supported Transport Layer
Security (TLS) versions and authentication methods.
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REQ-PROP-9: A discovery mechanism MUST support the discovery of
capability cards or equivalent structured, machine-readable
descriptions of an entity's interface and functions, either
directly or by reference to another resource.
REQ-PROP-10: A discovery mechanism MUST categorise each discoverable
property as mandatory or optional, so that consumers of discovery
information can determine which properties are guaranteed to be
present.
REQ-PROP-11: A discovery mechanism MUST indicate whether each
property is static, mainly static, or dynamic, so that consumers
can determine appropriate caching and refresh strategies.
REQ-PROP-12: A discovery mechanism SHOULD support the discovery of
attestation, provenance, policy, or risk-related information about
an entity, either directly or by reference to another resource.
3.4. Trust and Security
REQ-SEC-1: A discovery mechanism MUST provide a means to verify the
authenticity and integrity of discovery information.
REQ-SEC-2: A discovery mechanism MUST support the use of
cryptographic trust indicators (e.g., digital signatures,
certificates) to establish the provenance of entity information.
REQ-SEC-3: A discovery mechanism MUST be resilient to attacks that
could poison or corrupt discovery information.
REQ-SEC-4: A discovery mechanism SHOULD allow an entity to control
the visibility of its properties to different audiences (e.g.,
public versus organisation-internal discovery).
REQ-SEC-5: A discovery mechanism SHOULD support operation across
trust boundaries without requiring a single global trust anchor.
REQ-SEC-6: A discovery mechanism MUST be designed to limit its use
as a vector for abuse, including amplification, scraping, denial-
of-service, or unauthorised disclosure of discovery information.
REQ-SEC-7: A discovery mechanism SHOULD support auditability of
publication and discovery operations where required by deployment
policy, regulation, or operational practice.
3.5. Scalability and Architecture
REQ-ARCH-1: A discovery mechanism MUST be capable of operating in
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decentralised architectures.
REQ-ARCH-2: A discovery mechanism MUST NOT require a single
centralised registry as a prerequisite for operation.
REQ-ARCH-3: A discovery mechanism MUST scale to support discovery
across a large number of entities and administrative domains.
REQ-ARCH-4: A discovery mechanism SHOULD allow organisations to
independently publish discovery information without depending on a
third-party directory.
REQ-ARCH-5: A discovery mechanism SHOULD support discovery across
heterogeneous network environments, including cloud, edge, and
enterprise networks.
REQ-ARCH-6: A discovery mechanism MUST NOT assume that discovered
entities have stable, symmetric, or publicly routable network
paths. It SHOULD support discovery of information needed to use
relays, proxies, or rendezvous mechanisms where direct
connectivity is infeasible.
3.6. Discovery Protocol
REQ-PROTO-1: A discovery mechanism MUST define the protocols used by
discovering entities to communicate with discovery enablers (e.g.,
discovery servers, directories, or DNS resolvers).
REQ-PROTO-2: A discovery mechanism SHOULD be built in a modular way
using existing Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) protocols
where possible, filling gaps only where existing protocols are
insufficient.
REQ-PROTO-3: A discovery mechanism SHOULD support different
protocols for different discovery scenarios where a single
protocol cannot efficiently serve all use cases.
REQ-PROTO-4: A discovery mechanism MUST define a predictable entry
point for discovery that is based on ubiquitous and interoperable
mechanisms.
3.7. Extensibility
REQ-EXT-1: A discovery mechanism MUST support the addition of new
entity types and property definitions without requiring changes to
the core mechanism.
REQ-EXT-2: A discovery mechanism MUST support structured, versioned
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schemas for entity properties to enable backward-compatible
evolution.
REQ-EXT-3: A discovery mechanism SHOULD allow domain-specific or
industry-specific extensions to entity properties.
REQ-EXT-4: A discovery mechanism SHOULD support schema lifecycle
information, such as deprecation status, sunset timing, and
compatibility information, so that consumers can handle backward-
compatible evolution of entity properties and capability
descriptions.
4. IANA Considerations
This document does not make any requests of IANA.
5. Security Considerations
This document defines requirements for entity discovery mechanisms.
It does not define a protocol and therefore does not introduce
specific security vulnerabilities. However, the requirements in
Section 3.4 place security constraints on any solution that satisfies
these requirements.
Implementers of discovery mechanisms that satisfy these requirements
should pay particular attention to the following concerns:
* The integrity and authenticity of discovery information must be
protected to prevent poisoning attacks that could direct entities
to malicious endpoints.
* Access control mechanisms should be considered to prevent
unauthorised disclosure of entity properties, particularly in
environments where entity metadata may be sensitive.
* The discovery mechanism itself must not become a vector for
denial-of-service attacks against the infrastructure on which it
is built.
6. Privacy Considerations
Discovery mechanisms inherently involve the publication of
information about entities. Implementers should consider the privacy
implications of exposing entity properties, capabilities, and
organisational associations. In particular:
* Entities should be able to control what information is made
publicly discoverable versus restricted to specific audiences.
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* The discovery mechanism should not require the disclosure of
information beyond what is necessary for a discovering entity to
determine whether interaction is appropriate.
* Where entities represent individuals or process personal data,
compliance with applicable data protection regulations should be
considered.
7. Operational Considerations
Discovery mechanisms that satisfy these requirements will need to be
deployable across public and private networks, across organisational
boundaries, and across heterogeneous operational environments.
Operators should consider publication workflows, update and
withdrawal procedures, caching and refresh behaviour, observability,
operational policy, and the impact of discovery traffic on the
infrastructure used to support the mechanism.
8. Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of participants in
the DAWN discussions that shaped this document, including Jim Mozley
and Balazs Nemethi.
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[I-D.farrel-dawn-terminology]
Farrel, A., Yao, K., Schott, R., and N. Williams,
"Terminology for the Discovery of Agents, Workloads, and
Named Entities (DAWN)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
draft-farrel-dawn-terminology-01, 21 April 2026,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-farrel-dawn-
terminology-01>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.
9.2. Informative References
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[I-D.akhavain-moussa-dawn-problem-statement]
Akhavain, A., Moussa, H., and D. King, "Problem Statement
for the Discovery of Agents, Workloads, and Named Entities
(DAWN)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-akhavain-
moussa-dawn-problem-statement-00, 11 April 2026,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-akhavain-
moussa-dawn-problem-statement-00>.
[I-D.mozley-aidiscovery]
Mozley, J., Williams, N., Sarikaya, B., and R. Schott, "AI
Agent Discovery (AID) Problem Statement", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-mozley-aidiscovery-01, 16
April 2026, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-
mozley-aidiscovery-01>.
Authors' Addresses
Daniel King
Old Dog Consulting
United Kingdom
Email: daniel@olddog.co.uk
Adrian Farrel
Old Dog Consulting
United Kingdom
Email: adrian@olddog.co.uk
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