The International Network Conference 1998

Citation

Furnell, S. (1999), "The International Network Conference 1998", Internet Research, Vol. 9 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/intr.1999.17209aaa.002

The International Network Conference 1998

The Guest EditorSteven Furnell is with the Network Research Group, University of Plymouth, UK.E-mail: sfurnell@hotmail.com

The International Network Conference 1998 (INC '98)

The papers in this issue of Internet Research are based on a selection of submissions from the International Network Conference 1998 (INC '98) that was held from 6-9 July 1998 in Plymouth, on the south-west coast of the UK.

INC '98 was the first event in a series of conferences aimed at providing a forum for the latest research in computer networks and related technologies. The Internet and the WWW obviously feature highly in such discussions, and almost all of the papers presented had some relationship to Internet technologies.

INC '98 was staged by the University of Plymouth, with co-sponsorship from the UK Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEE) and Internet Research. The resulting conference was a truly international event, with delegates from North and South America, Asia and numerous European countries. Authors and delegates also included a diverse mixture of academia and industry, ensuring that a number of different perspectives were represented.

The main themes addressed by INC '98 were as follows:

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  Internet and WWW technologies;

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  distributed software technologies;

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  information systems security;

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  intelligent data analysis;

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  network management, design and planning;

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  network simulation, modelling and optimisation; ATM networking.

Of these, "Internet and WWW technologies" was selected as the main theme of the 1998 event. The full conference proceedings include a total of 34 quality papers, with coverage ranging from discussion of applications and services, down to details of specific underlying technologies.

The papers selected for this "special issue" of Internet Research have been chosen to be representative of the broad range of topics covered by the conference, while at the same time addressing topics of relevance to the journal readership. Having said this, a couple of the papers cover topics that are slightly removed from the normal focus of Internet Research, but it is hoped that these will also be of interest.

The article by Loew et al. addresses the important issue of security. This is approached from an organisational perspective, discussing how a combination of technologies can be utilised to secure a network externally (via firewalls) and internally (using intranet-based measures). Staying with the security theme, the paper by Gritzalis et al. recognises the threat posed by downloadable executable content and examines the security features of current approaches. This is discussed in the context of Java and Safe-Tcl languages, which represent two common methods of realising portable, platform-independent code.

Several of the papers present discussions of ongoing research. For example, the work by Evans et al. talks of extending the flexibility and performance of the WWW through the introduction of content migration mechanisms. The issue of migration has been explored for several years in the distributed computing and telecommunications domains but, as yet, there has been no practical realisation of the concept in a Web context. The distributed nature of the Web is considered for a different purpose in the paper by Finkel et al. This work presents a means of turning the inherent computational power of many systems to the advantage of the individual user by means of so-called "distriblets".

The papers also address a number of emerging considerations, which are becoming more apparent as the Internet and Web markets mature. The sheer size of the WWW means that even the management of individual sites is no longer a trivial matter. Prevelakis discusses a framework that aims to facilitate the flexible management of such large sites and presents the details of a prototype implementation. At a more technical level, the paper by Wolf addresses the important issue of quality of service (QoS) and contrasts the approach taken in the Internet with that of ATM technology, where QoS is a central concept. Nomadic access is becoming another increasingly common issue of Internet use, but mobile data communications can often be problematic. The paper by Alanko et al. recognises this and presents an architecture designed to overcome many of the constraints of wireless access.

Finally, the paper by Hofmann et al. addresses the topic of component-based software. This may initially seem a little removed from the overall Internet context. However, it is increasingly likely that future applications will be realised via a component-based approach and the Internet will act as the primary means by which they are located and shared between developers.

All of the papers have been extended from the versions that appeared in the conference proceedings. This has given the authors the opportunity to provide greater detail, as well as to update the content to reflect more recent developments and/or feedback from the conference itself.

The success of the first conference has ensured that further INC events will be organised in future and details of the second conference will be announced in due course. Updates will be posted on the conference WWW site (http://ted.see.plym.ac.uk/inc)

Steven FurnellGuest Editor

Acknowledgements must be given to a number of other staff from the University of Plymouth, without whose support and involvement the INC '98 Conference would not have taken place: Kathryn Burn-Thornton, Denise Horne, Emmanuel Ifeachor, Benn Lines, Lesley Pengelly, Paul Reynolds and Peter Sanders.

Thanks are also due to the numerous members of the International Programme Committee who assisted with the original review process. Finally, thanks must be given to David Schwartz and John Peters, the current and previous Editors of Internet Research, for their support of the conference and for offering the opportunity for us to compile this special issue.

Full copies of the conference proceedings can be obtained from Denise Horne, at the University of Plymouth, UK (d.horne@plymouth.ac.uk).