All Technical Sessions will be held in the San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina.

Bill Joy will be talking about his vision of the future of computing.

Instrumentation and Visualization
Session Chair: Christopher Small, Osprey Partners LLC

Mapping and Visualizing the Internet
Bill Cheswick, Bell Laboratories; Hal Burch, Carnegie Mellon University; Steve Branigan, Bell Laboratories

Measuring and Characterizing System Behavior Using Kernel-Level Event Logging
Karim Yaghmour and Michel R. Dagenais, Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal

Pandora: A Flexible Network Monitoring Platform
Simon Patarin and Mesaac Makpangou, INRIA SOR Group, Rocquencourt

Computer System Security: Is There Really a Threat?
Avi Rubin, AT&T Research

I'm often asked, "If we're so vulnerable, how come I don't hear about incidents that often?" While I cannot answer that question, I can try to answer the question of whether or not there is a threat. In this talk, I will look at some historic and some more recent computer security incidents. How did the attacks occur? Why did they succeed? What were the consequences? Could it have been worse? We will look at security issues in existing systems and assess the level of danger. Finally, I'll discuss what the best defenses are, and the steps we can each take to secure our systems and data.

Storage Systems
Session Chair: Marshall Kirk McKusick, Author & Consultant

Swarm: A Log-Structured Storage System for Linux
Ian Murdock and John H. Hartman, University of Arizona

DMFS--A Data Migration File System for NetBSD
William Studenmund, Veridian MRJ Technology Solutions

A 3-Tier RAID Storage System with RAID1, RAID5, and Compressed RAID5 for Linux
K. Gopinath, Nitin Muppalaneni, N. Suresh Kumar, and Pankaj Risbood, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

File Systems

Session Chair: Liuba Shrira, Brandeis University

A Comparison of File System Workloads
Drew Roselli and Jacob R. Lorch, University of California at Berkeley; Thomas E. Anderson, University of Washington

FiST: A Language for Stackable File Systems
Erez Zadok and Jason Nieh, Columbia University

Journaling Versus Soft Updates: Asynchronous Meta-data Protection in File Systems
Margo I. Seltzer, Harvard University; Gregory R. Ganger, Carnegie Mellon University; M. Kirk McKusick, Author & Consultant; Keith A. Smith, Harvard University; Craig A. N. Soules, Carnegie Mellon University; Christopher A. Stein, Harvard University

Watching the Waist of IP
Steve Deering, Cisco Systems

The Internet protocol architecture has an hourglass shape: a wide variety of applications and end-to-end (upper-layer) protocols are supported by a single, "narrow" protocol called IP, which in turn rests upon a wide variety of network and datalink (lower-layer) protocols. The Internet's enormous flexibility in accommodating new transmission technologies and new applications, and its ability to serve as the convergence platform for data, telephony, TV, and other media, depend on this hourglass design. However, as the Internet has grown, the waist of the hourglass has spread. In this talk, I review the evolution of the IP layer of the Internet, discuss the consequences of the changes, and speculate on the future shape of IP.

Network System Administration
Session Chair: Victor Yodaiken, FSMLabs and New Mexico Institute of Technology

Extending Internet Services Via LDAP
James Dutton, Southern Illinois University

MOSIX: How Linux Clusters Solve Real-World Problems
Steve McClure and Richard Wheeler, EMC² Corp.

Webmin
Jamie Cameron, Caldera Systems

Old Dogs, New Tricks
Session Chair: Greg Minshall, Siara Systems

Lexical File Names in Plan 9, or, Getting Dot-Dot Right
Rob Pike, Bell Laboratories

Gecko: Tracking a Very Large Billing System
Andrew Hume, AT&T Labs--Research; Scott Daniels, Electronic Data Systems Corp.; Angus MacLellan, AT&T Labs--Research

Extended Data Formatting Using Sfio
Glenn S. Fowler, David G. Korn, and Kiem-Phong Vo, AT&T Labs--Research

Implementing 3D Workstation Graphics on PC UNIX Hardware
Daryll Strauss, Precision Insight

3D hardware for PCs has improved to the point that it is beginning to rival that of traditional 3D graphics workstations. Providing these capabilities on commodity hardware poses a number of difficult problems. For example, 3D hardware has a voracious appetite for data, and commodity hardware is typically not designed for secure multitasking. Precision Insight is working with a number of vendors to provide completely open-source solutions to these problems under X and Linux.

File Systems
Session Chair: Ted Ts'o, VA Linux Systems

Porting the SGI XFS File System to Linux
Jim Mostek, Bill Earl, Steven Levine, Steve Lord, Russell Cattelan, Ken McDonell, Ted Kline, Brian Gaffey, and Rajagopal Ananthanarayanan, SGI

LinLogFS--A Log-Structured File System for Linux
Christian Czezatke xS+S; M. Anton Ertl, TU Wien

UNIX Filesystem Extensions in the GNOME Environment
Ettore Perazzoli, Helix Code, Inc.

Distribution and Scalability: Problems and Solutions
Session Chair: Ken Arnold, Sun Microsystems

Virtual Services: A New Abstraction for Server Consolidation
John Reumann, University of Michigan; Ashish Mehra, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center; Kang G. Shin, University of Michigan; Dilip Kandlur, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

Location-Aware Scheduling with Minimal Infrastructure
John Heidemann, USC/ISI; and Dhaval Shah, Noika

Distributed Computing: Moving from CGI to CORBA
James FitzGibbon and Tim Strike, Targetnet.com Inc.

The Microsoft Antitrust Case: A View from an Expert Witness
Edward Felten, Princeton University

Edward Felten recently served as an expert witness in the Microsoft antitrust case, and as a consultant to the Department of Justice. He will talk about his experiences in working on this high-profile case, and what he learned about the law, economics, computer science, and connections among them.

Sockets
Session Chair: David Greenman, The FreeBSD Project

Protocol Independence Using the Sockets API
Craig Metz, University of Virginia

Scalable Network I/O in Linux
Niels Provos, University of Michigan; Chuck Lever, Sun-Netscape Alliance

Accept() Scalability in Linux
Stephen P. Molloy, University of Michigan; Chuck Lever, Sun-Netscape Alliance

Tools
Session Chair: Eran Gabber, Lucent Technologies--Bell Labs

Outwit: UNIX Tool-Based Programming Meets the Windows World
Diomidis Spinellis, University of the Aegean

Plumbing and Other Utilities
Rob Pike, Bell Laboratories

Integrating a Command Shell into a Web Browser
Robert C. Miller and Brad A. Myers, Carnegie Mellon University

Challenges in Integrating the Mac OS and BSD Environments
Wilfredo Sanchez, Apple Computer

Apple's next-generation operating system, Mac OS X, is a drastic departure from previous versions of the Mac OS. Mac OS X's core operating system is a derivative of BSD UNIX, topped by a suite of application toolkits. The user-friendly GUI of the original Mac OS has been widely emulated in the personal computer industry. BSD's robust core, advanced networking, and scalability are highly valued in engineering and server applications. The combination offers a great deal of promise, but it has required many changes in the architecture of system components. Additionally, users use the systems in very different ways and expect different sorts of behavior.

Network Publishing
Session Chair: Chris Demetriou, AT&T Labs

Permanent Web Publishing
David S. H. Rosenthal, Sun Microsystems Laboratories; and Victoria A. Reich, Stanford University Libraries

The Globe Distribution Network
A. Bakker, E. Amade, and G. Ballintijn, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; I. Kuz, Delft University of Technology; P. Verkaik, I. van der Wijk, M. van Steen, and A. S. Tanenbaum, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Open Information Pools
Johan Pouwelse, Delft University of Technology

Kernel Structures
Session Chair: Keith A. Smith, Harvard University

Operating System Support for Multi-User, Remote, Graphical Interaction
Alexander Ya-li Wong and Margo Seltzer, Harvard University

Techniques for the Design of Java Operating Systems
Godmar Back, Patrick Tullmann, Leigh Stoller, Wilson C. Hsieh, and Jay Lepreau, University of Utah

Signaled Receiver Processing
José Brustoloni, Eran Gabber, Abraham Silberschatz, and Amit Singh, Lucent Technologies--Bell Laboratories

The Convergence of Networking and Storage: Will It Be SAN or NAS?
Rod Van Meter, Network Alchemy

What we think of as storage generally follows one of two models--either named files or undifferentiated, numbered blocks. Both models can be presented on a network. The former is often called network-attached storage (NAS); the latter, storage-area networks (SAN). This talk will explore the differences and similarities between the two and will examine where both are likely to go in the near future. Emphasis will be on scalability, naming, security, and network media.

X11 and User Interfaces
Session Chair: Miguel de Icaza, Helix Code, Inc.

The GNOME Canvas: A Generic Engine for Structured Graphics
Federico Mena-Quintero, Helix Code, Inc.; Raph Levien, Code Art Studio

Efficiently Scheduling X Clients
Keith Packard, SuSE, Inc.

The AT&T AST OpenSource Software Collection
Glenn S. Fowler, David G. Korn, Stephen S. North, and Kiem-Phong Vo, AT&T Laboratories--Research

Works in Progress Reports (WIPs)

Session Chair: Aaron Brown, University of California at Berkeley

Pithy and fun, Works in Progress Reports introduce interesting new or ongoing work, and the USENIX audience provides valuable discussion and feedback.

Slots are limited. If you have interesting work you'd like to share, or a hot idea that's not yet ready for publication, send a paragraph or two of description to Aaron Brown at usenix2000-wips@usenix.org. Student work is particularly welcome.

Lessons Learned About Open Source
Jim Gettys, Compaq

The X Window System was developed open-source using the Internet from nearly its inception, but has taken a number of (partial) turns along the way. These were partly forced by commercial pressure, but primarily because the Internet was not able to support the kind and scale of development seen in free software today. Now we see large-scale open-source software engineering with hundreds of contributors to a given project. Amazingly, X is alive and moving forward again. What can we learn from these experiences? What traps can be avoided? What opportunities are offered by the new desktops and new window managers? Where is further work needed? How should we further exploit the Web? What is possible now that we have more developers for open source than sit behind the walls of any corporation on the planet?

Annual Meeting of the USENIX Association

Meet the USENIX Association Board of Directors face-to-face at the Annual meeting with the membership. Bring your questions and suggestions on how we might server you better. Drinks provided.

Run-Time Tools and Tricks
Session Chair: Christopher Small, Osprey Partners LLC

DITools: Application-Level Support for Dynamic Extension and Flexible Composition
Albert Serra, Nacho Navarro, and Toni Cortes, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

Portable Multithreading--The Signal Stack Trick for User-Space Thread Creation
Ralf S. Engelschall, Technische Universität München (TUM)

Transparent Run-Time Defense Against Stack-Smashing Attacks
Arash Baratloo and Navjot Singh, Bell Labs Research, Lucent Technologies; Timothy Tsai, Reliable Software Technologies

An Introduction to Quantum Computation and Communication
Rob Pike, Lucent Technologies--Bell Labs

Quantum computation is more than just the use of very small things to compute. It exploits the fundamentally odd properties of quantum-mechanical interaction to achieve profound parallelism, zero-energy calculations, and other technological marvels. I will discuss how the quantum world makes these things possible, the design of quantum hardware and software, proposals for practical quantum devices, and the prospects for quantum computation and communication in our lifetimes.

Security
Session Chair: Niels Provos, University of Michigan

Implementing Internet Key Exchange, IKE
Niklas Hallqvist, Applitron Datasystem AB; Angelos D. Keromytis, University of Pennsylvania

Transparent Network Security Policy Enforcement
Angelos D. Keromytis, University of Pennsylvania; Jason L. Wright, Network Security Technologies, Inc. (NETSEC)

Safety Checking of Kernel Extensions
Craig Metz, University of Virginia

Measurement and Stability
Session Chair: Fred Douglis, AT&T Labs--Research

Towards Availability Benchmarks: A Case Study of Software RAID Systems
Aaron Brown and David A. Patterson, University of California at Berkeley

Performing Replacement in Modem Pools
Yannis Smaragdakis, Georgia Institute of Technology; Paul Wilson, University of Texas at Austin

Auto-Diagnosis of Field Problems in an Appliance Operating System
Gaurav Banga, Network Appliance, Inc.

Providing Future Web Services
Andy Poggio, Sun Labs

This presentation will begin by describing the day when desktop PCs will no longer dominate as networked devices. In this new era, network appliances will be the most common devices. It will discuss Web services for commerce, education, and entertainment: how they'll change, and what new Web services will proliferate. Finally, it will describe in detail the computer system architecture and network infrastructure that will be needed to provide these services, including the roles that InfiniBand, IPv6, and other new technologies will play.

Cool Stuff
Session Chair: Clem Cole, Compaq

An Operating System in Java for the Lego Mindstorms RCX Microcontroller
Pekka Nikander, Helsinki University of Technology

LAP: A Little Language for OS Emulation
Donn M. Seeley, Berkeley Software Design, Inc.

Traffic Data Repository at the WIDE Project
Kenjiro Cho, Sony CSL; Koushirou Mitsuya, Keio University; Akira Kato, University of Tokyo

Servers: Load Balancing and Scheduling
Session Chair: Yoonho Park, IBM Research

Dynamic Function Placement for Data-Intensive Cluster Computing
Khalil Amiri, David Petrou, Gregory R. Ganger, and Garth A. Gibson, CS, Carnegie Mellon University

Scalable Content-Aware Request Distribution in Cluster-Based Network Servers
Mohit Aron, Darren Sanders, Peter Druschel, and Willy Zwaenepoel, Rice University

Isolation with Flexibility: A Resource Management Framework for Central Servers
David G. Sullivan and Margo I. Seltzer, Harvard University

The GNOME Project
Miguel de Icaza

The GNU Network Object Model Environment (GNOME) project aims at providing a framework for UNIX application development. Lack of infrastructure has made UNIX systems lag in some areas. GNOME provides a component model that encourages code reuse and tool replacement by making applications adhere to a set of GNOME-standardized CORBA interfaces. A name server and an object-launching facility are used to make GNOME tools integrate in the desktop. GNOME graphical applications are written using the GTK+ toolkit, and they use the GNOME foundation libraries to simplify programming and encourage a standardized graphical user environment. The GNOME printing subsystem provides programmers with a portable and powerful printing subsystem.

Short Topics
Session Chair: Stephen C. Tweedie, Red Hat, Inc.

JEmacs--The Java/Scheme-Based Emacs
Per Bothner

A New Rendering Model for X
Keith Packard, SuSE, Inc.

UBC: An Efficient Unified I/O and Memory Caching Subsystem for NetBSD
Chuck Silvers, The NetBSD Project

Mbuf Issues in 4.4BSD IPv6 Support--Experiences from the KAME IPv6/IPsec Implementation
Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino, Internet Initiative Japan Inc.

Malloc() Performance in a Multithreaded Linux Environment
Chuck Lever and David Boreham, Sun-Netscape Alliance

New Horizons for Music on the Internet

Thomas Dolby Robertson, Beatnik, Inc.

The dynamics of creating and experiencing Web content are continually evolving. The integration of music and interactive audio into the fabric of computer and Internet technologies have enhanced the overall Web experience, moving it from a silent environment to a multi-sensory one. Come see what Thomas Dolby Robertson and his company, Beatnik, Inc., have contributed to the world of the Internet using sound and audio technologies. Mr. Robertson will show that everyone, from composers and musicians to Web homesteaders and professional Web designers, can benefit from these evolving technologies. Case studies presented will also illustrate how the emergence of new applications is making the Web a stage for true musical interaction.