The Atlantic Cloud is a transatlantic computing network built and operated by AIR Centre associates: a shared pool of storage, computing and web infrastructure for research across the Atlantic, in which each participating node keeps control of its own resources. The service itself is described at aircentre.org.
This repository holds the protocol - what a node owes in order to be part of that network. A reference architecture exists and is recommended: it is what the AIR Centre runs, and it is documented in the reference paper, arXiv:2608.20283. Conformance is judged against the obligations rather than against the architecture, so a node built differently is not thereby excluded.
Draft at v0.1. The conformance suite does not exist yet.
- PRINCIPLES.md - the principles the obligations are derived from.
- PROTOCOL.md - the obligations themselves.
A clause is settled by the principle it traces to, so an argument about a clause belongs in the principles.
- Each participant owns or operates the infrastructure it offers.
- The data served is meant to be found and used by others, so cataloging and access are wanted rather than resisted.
Changes arrive as pull requests, from members and from institutions considering membership. The main branch takes pull requests only.