Liquid software a new paradigm for networked systems.pdfVIP

Liquid Software: A New Paradigm for Networked Systems John Hartman, Udi Manber, Larry Peterson, and Todd Proebsting TR 96-11 Abstract This paper introduces the idea of dynamically moving functionality in a network—between clients and servers, and between hosts at the edge of the network and nodes inside the network. At the heart of moving functionality is the ability to support mobile code—code that is not tied to any single machine, but instead can easily move from one machine to another. Mobile code has been studied mostly for application-level code. This paper explores its use for all facets of the network, and in a much more general way. Issues of efficiency, interface design, security, and resource allocation, among others, are addressed. We use the term liquid software to describe the complete picture—liquidsoftware is an entire infrastructure for dynamically moving functionality throughout a network. We expect liquid software to enble new paradigms, such as active networks that allow users and applications to customize the network by interjecting code into it. Department of Computer Science The University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 1 Introduction The dramatic success of the World-Wide Web can in large part be attributed to its ability to provide location-independent access to data—with the click of a button a user can access information stored across the country as easily as that stored on his or her own computer. No longer must the user differentiate between data stored locally and that stored remotely and use different tools and methods to access the two; indeed the user need not know where any of the data are actually stored. Although the benefit of location-independent data access can be measured by the tremendous growth in the Web, the underlying functionality of the Web is relatively static. It supports a finite set of protocols to move data between computers. One’s local computer can only manipulate the data in a fixed number of ways, determined by it