Showing papers in "IEEE Internet Computing in 2001"
TL;DR: JXTA as discussed by the authors is a network programming and computing platform that is designed to solve a number of problems in modern distributed computing, especially in the area broadly referred to as peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or P2P networking.
Abstract: JXTA technology, from Sun Microsystems, is a network programming and computing platform that is designed to solve a number of problems in modern distributed computing, especially in the area broadly referred to as peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or P2P networking. JXTA provides a network programming platform specifically designed to be the foundation for P2P systems. As a set of protocols, the technology stays away from APIs and remains independent of programming languages. This means that heterogeneous devices with completely different software stacks can interoperate through JXTA protocols. JXTA technology is also independent of transport protocols. It can be implemented on top of TCP/IP, HTTP, Bluetooth, HomePNA, and many other protocols.
501Â citations
TL;DR: As privacy concerns continue to develop along with the digital communication domain, steganography will undoubtedly play a growing role in society and it is important that the authors are aware of digital Steganography technology and its implications.
Abstract: Digital steganography is the art of inconspicuously hiding data within data. Steganography's goal in general is to hide data well enough that unintended recipients do not suspect the steganographic medium of containing hidden data. The software and links mentioned in this article are just a sample of the steganography tools currently available. As privacy concerns continue to develop along with the digital communication domain, steganography will undoubtedly play a growing role in society. For this reason, it is important that we are aware of digital steganography technology and its implications. Equally important are the ethical concerns of using steganography and steganalysis. Steganography enhances rather than replaces encryption. Messages are not secure simply by virtue of being hidden. Likewise, steganography is not about keeping your message from being known - it's about keeping its existence from being known.
465Â citations
TL;DR: Explores mechanisms for storage-level management in OceanStore, a global-scale distributed storage utility infrastructure, designed to scale to billions of users and exabytes of data, and concludes that OceanStore is self-maintaining.
Abstract: Explores mechanisms for storage-level management in OceanStore, a global-scale distributed storage utility infrastructure, designed to scale to billions of users and exabytes of data OceanStore automatically recovers from server and network failures, incorporates new resources and adjusts to usage patterns It provides its storage platform through adaptation, fault tolerance and repair The only role of human administrators in the system is to physically attach or remove server hardware Of course, an open question is how to scale a research prototype in such a way to demonstrate the basic thesis of this article - that OceanStore is self-maintaining The allure of connecting millions or billions of components together is the hope that aggregate systems can provide scalability and predictable behavior under a wide variety of failures The OceanStore architecture is a step towards this goal
303Â citations
TL;DR: Patients are no longer to be called patients, but would be generally referred to as clients.
Abstract: When you're in business, it's good to have customers, but do you have customer service in mind when you're developing technology for an e-business Web site? If not, you should, because the place where your work and the customers' experience comes together is where you can make it easy-or hard for customers to do business at a site. If you can understand customer intentions at an e-business site, you can factor them into technology choices and mechanisms that support them. Is it easy for a single-minded customer to find and buy a product, or for a holistic-minded user to do a combination of browsing, learning and shopping? While the marketing people decide what goes on a site and the content developers create the look-and-feel, the front-row seat for data mining is with the technical staff who know what information is available in log files, what profiling can be dynamically processed in the background and indexed into the dynamic generation of HTML, and what performance can be expected from the servers and network to support customer service and make e-business interaction productive.
273Â citations
TL;DR: The article looks at the basic model for such services, focusing on the key real-world challenges they face (high availability, evolution, and growth), and developing some principles for attacking these problems.
Abstract: Web portals and ISPs such as AOL, Microsoft Network, and Yahoo have grown more than tenfold in the past five years (1996-2001). Despite their scale, growth rates, and rapid evolution of content and features, these sites and other "giant-scale" services like instant messaging and Napster must be always available. Many other major Web sites such as eBay, CNN, and Wal-Mart, have similar availability requirements. The article looks at the basic model for such services, focusing on the key real-world challenges they face (high availability, evolution, and growth), and developing some principles for attacking these problems. Few of the points made in the article are addressed in the literature, and most of the conclusions take the form of principles and approaches rather than absolute quantitative evaluations. This is due partly to the author's focus on high-level design, partly to the newness of the area, and partly to the proprietary nature of some of the information (which represents 15-20 very large sites). Nonetheless, the lessons are easy to understand and apply, and they simplify the design of large systems.
267Â citations
TL;DR: Author-X is a Java-based system that addresses the security issues of access control and policy design for XML document administration and allows a user to verify a document's integrity without contacting the document server.
Abstract: Author-X is a Java-based system that addresses the security issues of access control and policy design for XML document administration. Author-X supports the specification of policies at varying granularity levels and the specification of user credentials as a way to enforce access control. Access control is available according to both push and pull document distribution policies, and document updates are distributed through a combination of hash functions and digital signature techniques. The Author-X approach to distributed updates allows a user to verify a document's integrity without contacting the document server.
248Â citations
TL;DR: Recommender system users who rate items across disjoint domains face a privacy risk analogous to the one that occurs with statistical database queries.
Abstract: Recommender system users who rate items across disjoint domains face a privacy risk analogous to the one that occurs with statistical database queries.
226Â citations
TL;DR: The article discusses how hyperlink analysis can be applied to ranking algorithms, and surveys other ways Web search engines can use this analysis.
Abstract: Hyperlink analysis algorithms significantly improve the relevance of the search results on the Web, so much so that all major Web search engines claim to use some type of hyperlink analysis. However, the search engines do not disclose details about the type of hyperlink analysis they perform, mostly to avoid manipulation of search results by Web-positioning companies. The article discusses how hyperlink analysis can be applied to ranking algorithms, and surveys other ways Web search engines can use this analysis.
221Â citations
TL;DR: As the World Wide Web continues to grow, people find it impossible to access even a small portion of the information generated in a day from Usenet news, e-mail, and Web postings.
Abstract: As the World Wide Web continues to grow, people find it impossible to access even a small portion of the information generated in a day from Usenet news, e-mail, and Web postings. Automated filters help us to prioritize and access only the information in which we're interested. Because opinions differ about the importance or relevance of information, people need personalized filters. Implicit indicators captured while users browse the Web can be as predictive of interest levels as explicit ratings.
199Â citations
TL;DR: Traffic measurement technologies have scaled up to provide insight into fundamental behavior properties of the Internet, its protocols, and its users.
Abstract: The Internet's evolution over the past 30 years (1971-2001), has been accompanied by the development of various network applications. These applications range from early text-based utilities such as file transfer and remote login to the more recent advent of the Web, electronic commerce, and multimedia streaming. For most users, the Internet is simply a connection to these applications. They are shielded from the details of how the Internet works, through the-information-hiding principles of the Internet protocol stack, which dictates how user-level data is transformed into network packets for transport across the network and put back together for delivery at the receiving application. For many networking researchers however, the protocols themselves are of interest. Using specialized network measurement hardware or software, these researchers collect information about network packet transmissions. With detailed packet-level measurements and some knowledge of the IP stack, they can use reverse engineering to gather significant information about both the application structure and user behavior, which can be applied to a variety of tasks like network troubleshooting, protocol debugging, workload characterization, and performance evaluation and improvement. Traffic measurement technologies have scaled up to provide insight into fundamental behavior properties of the Internet, its protocols, and its users. The author introduces the tools and methods for measuring Internet traffic and offers highlights from research results.
192Â citations
TL;DR: The authors discuss the design and operation of a trading agent competition, focusing on the game structure and some of the key technical issues in running and playing the game.
Abstract: The authors discuss the design and operation of a trading agent competition, focusing on the game structure and some of the key technical issues in running and playing the game. They also describe the competition's genesis, its technical infrastructure, and its organization. The article by A. Greenwald and P. Stone (2001), describes the competition from a participant's perspective and describes the strategies of some of the top-placing agents. A visualization of the competition and a description of the preliminary and final rounds of the TAC are available in IC Online (http://computer.org/internet/tac.htm).
TL;DR: The IETF now embraces SCTP as a general-purpose transport layer protocol, joining TCP and UDP above the IP layer.
Abstract: For the past 20 years (1980-2000), applications and end users of the TCP/IP suite have employed one of two protocols: the transmission control protocol or the user datagram protocol. Yet some applications already require greater functionality than what either TCP or UDP has to offer, and future applications might require even more. To extend transport layer functionality, the Internet Engineering Task Force approved the stream control transmission protocol (SCTP) as a proposed standard in October 2000. SUP was spawned from an effort started in the IETF Signaling Transport (Sigtrans) working group to develop a specialized transport protocol for call control signaling in voice-overt (VoIP) networks. Recognizing that other applications could use some of the new protocol's capabilities, the IETF now embraces SCTP as a general-purpose transport layer protocol, joining TCP and UDP above the IP layer. Like TCP, STCP offers a point-to-point, connection-oriented, reliable delivery transport service for applications communicating over an IP network.
TL;DR: The Bluetooth protocol stack as mentioned in this paper describes the lower layers of the protocol stack and how the layers fit together from an application's point of view, and also briefly describes its service discovery protocol.
Abstract: In 1998, five major companies (Ericsson, Nokia, IBM, Toshiba and Intel) formed a group to create a license-free technology for universal wireless connectivity in the handheld market. The result is Bluetooth, a technology named after a 10th-Century king who brought warring Viking tribes under a common rule. The Bluetooth specifications (currently in version 1.1) define a radiofrequency (RF) wireless communication interface and the associated set of communication protocols and usage profiles. The link speed, communication range and transmission power level for Bluetooth were chosen to support low-cost, power-efficient, single-chip implementations of the current technology. In fact, Bluetooth is the first attempt at making a single-chip radio that can operate in the 2.4-GHz ISM (industrial, scientific and medical) RF band. While most early Bluetooth solutions are dual-chip, vendors have recently announced single-chip versions as well. In this overview of the technology, I first describe the lower layers of the Bluetooth protocol stack. I also briefly describe its service discovery protocol and, finally, how the layers of the protocol stack fit together from an application's point of view.
TL;DR: This article presents a task-focused approach to recommendation that is entirely independent of the type of content involved and leverages robust, high-performance, commercial software.
Abstract: A technique that correlates database items to a task adds content-independent context to a recommender system based solely on user interest ratings. In this article, we present a task-focused approach to recommendation that is entirely independent of the type of content involved. The approach leverages robust, high-performance, commercial software. We have implemented it in a live movie recommendation site and validated it with empirical results from user studies.
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TL;DR: The article provides a primer on Web resource caching, one technology used to make the Web scalable and a high-level argument for the value of Web caching to content consumers and producers.
Abstract: The article provides a primer on Web resource caching, one technology used to make the Web scalable. Web caching can reduce bandwidth usage, decrease user-perceived latencies, and reduce Web server loads transparently. As a result, caching has become a significant part of the Web's infrastructure. Caching has even spawned a new industry: content delivery networks, which are also growing at a fantastic rate. Readers familiar with relatively advanced Web caching topics such as the Internet Cache Protocol (ICP), invalidation, and interception proxies are not likely to learn much here. Instead, the article is designed for the general audience of Web users. Rather than a how-to guide to caching technology deployment, it is a high-level argument for the value of Web caching to content consumers and producers. The article defines caching, explains how it applies to the Web, and describes when and why it is useful.
TL;DR: Metacat is a network-enabled database framework that lets users store, query, and retrieve XML documents with arbitrary schemas in SQL-compliant relational database systems and incorporates RDF-like methods for packaging data sets to allow researchers to customize and revise their metadata.
Abstract: Metacat is a network-enabled database framework that lets users store, query, and retrieve XML documents with arbitrary schemas in SQL-compliant relational database systems. The system (available from the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity, http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/) incorporates RDF-like methods for packaging data sets to allow researchers to customize and revise their metadata. It is extensible and flexible enough to preserve utility and interpretability working with future content standards. Metacat solves several key challenges that impede data confederation efforts in ecological research, or any field in which independent agencies collect heterogeneous data that they wish to control locally while enabling networked access. This distributed solution integrates with existing site infrastructures because it works with any SQL-compliant database system. The framework's open-source based components are widely available, and individual sites can extend and customize the system to support their data and metadata needs.
TL;DR: The article describes the task-specific details of and the general motivations behind, the four top-scoring agents in a trading agent competition.
Abstract: Designing agents that can bid in online simultaneous auctions is a complex task. The authors describe task-specific details and strategies of agents in a trading agent competition. More specifically, the article describes the task-specific details of and the general motivations behind, the four top-scoring agents. First, we discuss general strategies used by most of the participating agents. We then report on the strategies of the four top-placing agents. We conclude with suggestions for improving the design of future trading agent competitions.
TL;DR: The background, current status and future prospects for zero-configuration networking are examined in this tutorial.
Abstract: IP hosts and network infrastructure have historically been difficult to configure, but emerging networking protocols promise to enable hosts to establish IP networks without prior configuration or network services. Even very simple devices with few computing resources will be able to communicate via standard protocols wherever they are attached. Current IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) standardization efforts, such as those in the Zeroconf Working Group, aim to make this form of networking simple and inexpensive. In this tutorial, I examine the background, current status and future prospects for zero-configuration networking.
TL;DR: An overview of this emerging marketplace is given, and the work ongoing at the Open Service Gateway initiative is introduced, which is defining a set of open-standard software application interfaces for building open-service gateways, including residential gateways.
Abstract: Two industrial trends are changing our day-to-day lives. One is the introduction of broadband service to the home, where it promises to deliver complex new services. The other is the increasing resourcefulness, connectedness, and intelligence of home appliances. A residential gateway is a networking device that creates a bridge between the broadband network and the in-home network, and between different networking technologies within the home. The article gives an overview of this emerging marketplace, and introduces the work ongoing at the Open Service Gateway initiative. OSG1 is defining a set of open-standard software application interfaces (APIs) for building open-service gateways, including residential gateways.
TL;DR: The authors introduce the components of the Prism architecture, a CDN architecture for distributing, storing, and delivering high quality streaming media over IP networks.
Abstract: Prism's content naming, management, discovery, and redirection mechanisms support: high-quality streaming media services in an IP-based content distribution network. IP content distribution networks (CDNs) are special-purpose networks that provide scalability by distributing many servers across the Internet "close" to consumers. Prism (Portal infrastructure for Streaming Media) is a CDN architecture for: distributing, storing, and delivering high quality streaming media over IP networks. The Prism-based stored-TV (STV) service allows users to select content based on the program's name as well as the time it was aired. Content stored inside the network is accessible throughout the whole Prism infrastructure. For example, a user in the US can access European TV content both live and on-demand. Prism also allows users to specify content to be stored in a "network-VCR" type service. The authors introduce the components of the Prism architecture.
TL;DR: The author describes an approach that uses role-based access controls (RBACs) and Web session management to protect against network security breaches in the HTTP environment and augment network-level security, such as firewalls, inherent in the deployment of any Web based system with untrusted interfaces.
Abstract: As the only ubiquitous public data network, the Internet offers business partners a communications channel that previously existed only in unique situations with private, special-purpose networks. Well-publicized security risks, however, have limited the deployment of business-to-business extranets, which typically use the Internet's public data network infrastructure. These risks extend behind firewalls to intranets, where any user gaining entry to a facility is often implicitly authenticated to access unprotected services by simply plugging a portable computer into an unused network port. The author describes an approach that uses role-based access controls (RBACs) and Web session management to protect against network security breaches in the HTTP environment. The RBAC and session management services augment network-level security, such as firewalls, inherent in the deployment of any Web based system with untrusted interfaces. The RBACs are implemented through the Internet Engineering Task Force's Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). Session management is implemented through cryptographically secured, cookie-based ticket mechanisms.
TL;DR: The approach provides an integrated view of patient data from heterogeneous, distributed information systems and presents it to users electronically as part of two European Commission-funded projects, Synapses and SynEx.
Abstract: Presents a novel approach to sharing electronic health-care records that leverages the Internet and the World Wide Web, developed as part of two European Commission-funded projects, Synapses and SynEx. The approach provides an integrated view of patient data from heterogeneous, distributed information systems and presents it to users electronically. Synapses and SynEx illustrate a generic approach in applying Internet technologies for viewing shared records, integrated with existing health computing environments. Prototypes have been validated in a variety of clinical domains and health-care settings.
TL;DR: This article covers each feature category of Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language and its basic constructs using a simple SMIL presentation built with the SMIL 2.0 Language Profile, which is the flagship SMIL-defined language for multimedia browsers.
Abstract: On 7 August 2001, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released version 2.0 of Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, or SMIL. Three years ago, SMIL 1.0 introduced a basic foundation for Web multimedia and it quickly gained widespread use. With a specification document about 15 times as large as version 1.0, SMIL 2.0 builds on this foundation and marks an enormous step forward in multimedia functionality. Although Web multimedia has long been obtainable with proprietary formats or Java programs, it's been largely inaccessible to most Web authors and isolated from the Web's technical framework. SMIL's HTML-like syntax aims to do for multimedia what HTML did for hypertext: bring it into every living room, with an easy-to-author descriptive format that works with readily available cross-platform players. SMIL lets authors create simple multimedia simply and add, more complex behavior incrementally. But SMIL isn't just HTML-like, it's XML, which makes it part of the W3C's family of XML-related standards including scalable vector graphics (SVG), cascading style sheets (CSS), XPointer, XSLT, namespaces, and XHTML. SMIL's features fall into five categories: media content, layout, timing, linking, and adaptivity. The latter brings altogether new features to the Web, letting authors adapt content to different market groups, user abilities, system configurations, and runtime system delays. The article covers each feature category and its basic constructs using a simple SMIL presentation built with the SMIL 2.0 Language Profile, which is the flagship SMIL-defined language for multimedia browsers.
TL;DR: The authors first describe intelligent assistant systems in general and then present the Webnaut architecture, its learning agent, and the genetic algorithm, which uses a genetic algorithm to collect and recommend Web pages.
Abstract: Webnaut is an intelligent agent system that uses a genetic algorithm to collect and recommend Web pages. A feedback mechanism adapts to user interests as they evolve. The authors first describe intelligent assistant systems in general and then present the Webnaut architecture, its learning agent, and the genetic algorithm. They conclude with results from two preliminary experiments that tested the accuracy and adaptability of the learning agent.
TL;DR: A framework for characterizing knowledge management technology is discussed, identifying the desirable attributes of a knowledge management system and how Web-centric approaches can support these requirements.
Abstract: The World Wide Web provides a ubiquitous medium for seamlessly integrating distributed applications, formats and content, making it well-suited for enterprise knowledge management. In this article, we discuss a framework for characterizing knowledge management technology. We identify the desirable attributes of a knowledge management system and describe how Web-centric approaches can support these requirements. We also review related research in enterprise knowledge management.
TL;DR: XML is becoming a standard for data communication over the Internet, but it supports a richer set of features, such as user-defined tags that allow both data and descriptive information about data to be represented within a single document.
Abstract: XML is becoming a standard for data communication over the Internet. Like HTML, it is a markup language, but it supports a richer set of features, such as user-defined tags that allow both data and descriptive information about data to be represented within a single document. At the same time, presentation aspects remain decoupled from data representation. XML's flexibility lets it serve as a metalanguage for defining other markup languages specialized for specific contexts. A document type definition (DTD) describes the tags documents can use, customized to the specific semantic requirements of the application context, and the rules connecting tags with their contents. These capabilities make XML a common data format for data interchange between computer systems and between applications. XML's proliferation raises the question of how data transferred by XML documents can be read, stored, and queried. In other words, how can database management systems (DBMSs) handle XML documents?.
TL;DR: There are still several challenges to face, including: developing a formal foundation for Web metadata standards; developing techniques and tools for the creation, extraction, and storage of metadata; investigating the area of semantic interoperability frameworks; and developing semantic-based tools for knowledge discovery.
Abstract: XML is rapidly becoming a standard for data representation and exchange. It provides a common format for expressing both data structures and contents. As such, it can help in integrating structured, semistructured, and unstructured data over the Web. Still, it is well recognized that XML alone cannot provide a comprehensive solution to the articulated problem of data integration. There are still several challenges to face, including: developing a formal foundation for Web metadata standards; developing techniques and tools for the creation, extraction, and storage of metadata; investigating the area of semantic interoperability frameworks; and developing semantic-based tools for knowledge discovery.
TL;DR: The approach to these problems and the design guidelines that led to the current implementation of an access control system for XML information are described.
Abstract: Access control techniques for XML provide a simple way to protect confidential information at the same granularity level provided by XML schemas. In this article, we describe our approach to these problems and the design guidelines that led to our current implementation of an access control system for XML information.
TL;DR: As market activities move online, there is an opportunity to re-examine the processes and conventions that governed pre-Internet commerce, and to restructure those that need it for the virtual marketplace.
Abstract: From its simple beginnings in the town square, the "marketplace" has grown to encompass the entire global business environment. The vast and intricately woven infrastructure necessary for this level of commerce involves issues of money, credit, insurance, legal infrastructure, corporate and individual identities, and fraud detection and deterrence. As market activities move online, we have an opportunity to re-examine the processes and conventions that governed pre-Internet commerce, and to restructure those that need it for the virtual marketplace. One concept being challenged by new technologies is fixed pricing, which became prevalent in western society during the industrial revolution when mass production and widespread delivery of goods made price negotiation impractical. A Wyoming frontiersman could not negotiate with Sears, Roebuck and Co. about the mail-order catalog price of a pair of boots in the late 1890s. The Internet now has the potential to reverse that trend.
TL;DR: By indicating the level of congestion and the user tolerance of it in their networks, congestion pricing can inform operators about when to re-provision and increase network capacity.
Abstract: Network congestion is a fundamental problem facing Internet users today. A network where users are selfish, and thus reluctant to defer to other users, may result in the famous "tragedy of the commons", where, in the absence of controls, a shared resource is overconsumed by individuals who consider only their personal costs and not the cost to society as a whole. In terms of the Internet, the "tragedy" could be viewed as congestive collapse, resulting from overconsumption of the shared network resource. It is important to distinguish congestion pricing from other forms of network pricing. Charging network users for the congestion they cause can lead to more efficient network utilization by forcing them to take social costs into account. In a congestion-pricing framework, the congestion charge would replace usage and QoS charges. Users would pay their ISPs a subscription charge to cover fixed costs and a congestion charge only when appropriate. This pricing scheme is feasible because, in the absence of congestion, the marginal cost of a network link is practically zero. Congestion pricing can also benefit network operators. By indicating the level of congestion and the user tolerance of it in their networks, congestion pricing can inform operators about when to re-provision and increase network capacity.