The primary goal of this lab is to support advanced R&D on distributed object computing middleware using an open source software development model. This model allows academics, developers, and end-users to participate in leading-edge R&D projects driven by the free market of ideas, requirements, and resources.
The emergence of the Internet is the most important technological event in the last decade of the 20th century. It is becoming pervasive
and will influence research, business, and personal life well into the 21st century. Its growth is phenomenal and it is stretching its
original design goals. It must be the next ``trade route,'' the next ``marketplace,'' the next ``information pipeline.'' The Next Generation
Internet (NGI) must have a whole new set of characteristics and powerful features. Most importantly, it should be based on standard,
completely open middleware.
Middleware is software that users do not see, but it is key to openness and continued innovation through competition. Its role is to broker
the communication between consumers and suppliers. Middleware masks differences between OS platforms and networks. For instance, clients can
request a service without knowing where or how that service is implemented. This flexibility will become even more important because the NGI
architecture is based on the fundamental premise that unlike today's computer-centric network, tomorrow's Internet will be a heterogeneous
mix of cooperative, intelligent devices located in the home, at the factory, in public places, and at the office. These network devices will
not just be PCs, they will increasingly be intelligent home appliances and sensors, personal communication devices, entertainment centers,
and other novel forms of electronics.
For the Internet to become pervasive, access devices must become very cheap, their use must be intuitive, and distributed computing middleware
must do most of the ``thinking'' for the users. Thus, today's network architectures, where applications rely largely on local
operating system services, must evolve. This evolution will turn the current computing model inside out -- clients will become
very thin, the intelligence will reside in the network, and most applications will be network-centric. Resources can then be shared,
to reduce their cost and facilitate maintenance and updates.
Intelligent middleware is the key enabling technology to realize the NGI vision. An open standard by the OMG called CORBA is rapidly gaining
mindshare and marketshare in both the research and commercial domains. Unfortunately, first-generation CORBA ORBs did not provide adequate
quality of service (QoS) for performance-sensitive NGI applications, such as teleconferencing and Internet telephony, because requests were
treated with ``best effort'' response. All NGI applications are not created equal, however. Some must run faster, more reliably and more
consistently, e.g., in a predictable time context, than others. In a heterogeneous environment, systems and networks can provide better QoS
by prioritizing services. As network providers broaden their bandwidth and service offerings, flexibility becomes increasingly more important,
since pricing must be sensitive to both performance and ``class of service'' if it is to reach the widest possible market.