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USENIX Technical Program - Abstract - USENIX Annual
Conference, Freenix Session - June 2000
The Globe Distribution Network
A. Bakker, E. Amade, G. Ballintijn, Vrije Universiteit, The
Netherlands; I. Kuz, Delft University of Technology; P. Verkaik, I. van
der Wijk, M. van Steen, A.S. Tanenbaum, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Abstract
The goal of the Globe project is to design and build a middleware
platform that facilitates the development of large-scale distributed
applications, such as those found on the Internet. To demonstrate the
feasibility of our design and to test our ideas, we are currently
building a new Internet application: The Globe Distribution
Network. The Globe Distribution Network, or GDN, is an application
for the efficient, worldwide distribution of free software and other
free data. The GDN can be seen as an improvement to anonymous FTP and
the World Wide Web due to its flexibility and extensive support for
replication. This paper describes the design of the GDN. We start by
explaining how the replication facilities of the Globe middleware are
used to make the GDN efficient, and how these facilities are
implemented. Next, we present the architecture of the GDN and discuss
how the Domain Name System can be used as a first approach towards a
worldwide service for naming software packages and other entities. This
is followed by an analysis of the security requirements for the GDN and
measures taken to satisfy these requirements. We hope to make Globe and
GDN itself available for free under the BSD license by 2001.
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