P.

BHAVYA 09G11A1240 IT

ABSTRACT Satellites have been used for years to provide communication network links. Historically, the use of satellites in the Internet can be divided into two generations. In the first generation, satellites were simply used to provide commodity links (e.g., T1) between countries. Internet Protocol (IP) routers were attached to the link endpoints to use the links as single-hop alternatives to multiple terrestrial hops. Two characteristics marked these firstgeneration systems: they had limited bandwidth, and they had large latencies that were due to the propagation delay to the high orbit position of a geosynchronous satellite. In the second generation of systems now appearing, intelligence is added at the satellite link endpoints to overcome these characteristics. This intelligence is used as the basis for a system for providing Internet access engineered using a collection or fleet of satellites, rather than operating single satellite channels in isolation. Examples of intelligent control of a fleet include monitoring which documents are delivered over the system to make decisions adaptively on how to schedule satellite time; dynamically creating multicast groups based on monitored data to conserve satellite bandwidth; caching documents at all satellite channel endpoints; and anticipating user demands to hide latency. This paper examines several key questions arising in the design of a satellite-based system:

Can international Internet access using a geosynchronous satellite be competitive with today's terrestrial networks? What elements constitute an "intelligent control" for a satellite-based Internet link? What are the design issues that are critical to the efficient use of satellite channels?

The paper is organized as follows. The next section, Section 2, examines the above questions in enumerating principles for second-generation satellite delivery systems. Section 3 presents a case study of the Internet Delivery System (IDS), which is currently undergoing worldwide field trials. Section 4 surveys other organizations (Sky Cache, InternetSkyway, I-beam, and PanamSat) that are deploying elements of second-generation satellite systems, primarily caching. Section 5 discusses the future for IDS. In the second generation of systems now appearing, intelligence is added at the satellite link endpoints to overcome these characteristics. This intelligence is used as the basis for a system for providing Internet access engineered using a collection or fleet of satellites, rather than operating single satellite channels in isolation.

2. Issues in second-generation satellite We discuss in this section each of the questions raised in this paper's introduction. 2.1 International Internet access using a geosynchronous Can international Internet access using a geosynchronous satellite be competitive with today's terrestrial networks?

to the Internet backbone, bypassing congestion points and providing faster access time and higher net throughputs. In theory, a bit can be sent the distance of an international connection over fiber in a time on the order of tens of microseconds. In practice today, however, international connections via terrestrial links are an order of magnitude larger. For example, in experiments we performed in December 1998, the mean round trip time between the U.S. and Brazil (vt.edu to embr.net.br) over terrestrial links were 562.9 msec (via teleglobe.net) and 220.7 (via gzip.net) [Habib]. In contrast, the mean latency between the two routers at the two endpoints of a satellite link between Bangladesh and Singapore measured in February 1999 was 348.5 msec. Therefore, a geosynchronous satellite has a sufficiently large footprint over the earth that it can be used to create wormholes in the Internet: constantlatency transit paths between distant points on the globe [Chen]. The mean latency of an international connection via satellite is competitive with today's terrestrial-based connections, but the variance in latency can be reduced. As quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees are introduced by carriers, the mean and variance in latency should go down for international connections, reducing the appeal of geosynchronous satellites. However, although QoS may soon be widely available within certain countries, it may be some time until it is available at low cost between most countries of the world.

The first question is whether it makes sense today to use geosynchronous satellite links for Internet access. Alternatives include wired terrestrial connections, low earth orbiting (LEO) satellites, and wireless wide area network technologies (such as Local Multipoint Distribution Service or 2.4-GHz radio links in the U.S.). We see three reasons why geosynchronous satellites will be used for some years to come for international Internet connections. The first reason is obvious: it will be years before terrestrial networks are able to provide adequate bandwidth uniformly around the world, given the explosive growth in Internet bandwidth demand and the amount of the world that is still unwired. Geosynchronous satellites can provide immediate relief. They can improve service to bandwidthstarved regions of the globe where terrestrial networks are insufficient and can supplement terrestrial networks elsewhere. Second, geosynchronous satellites allow direct single-hop access

A third reason for using geosynchronous satellites is that the Internet's traffic distribution is not uniform worldwide: clients in all countries of the world access content (e.g., Web pages, streaming media) that today is chiefly produced in a few regions of the world (e.g., North America). This implies that a worldwide multicast architecture that caches content on both edges of the satellite network (i.e., near the content providers as well as near the clients) could provide improved response time to clients worldwide. We use this traffic pattern in the system described in the case study (Section 3). One final point of interest is to ask whether LEO satellites that are being deployed today will displace the need for geosynchronous satellites. The low orbital position makes the LEO footprint relatively small. Therefore, international connections through LEOs will require multiple hops in space, much as today's satellite-based wireless phone systems operate. The propagation delay will eliminate any advantage that LEOs have over geosynchronous satellites. On the other hand, LEOs have an advantage: they are not subject to the constraint in orbital positions facing geosynchronous satellite operators. So the total available LEO bandwidth could one day surpass that of geosynchronous satellites. Satellite link with a bank of network-attached servers that implement algorithms appropriate for the types of traffic carried over the links. We use certain terminology in our discussion. First, given the argument above for asymmetric.

2.2 Elements constitute an intelligent control What elements constitute an "intelligent control" for a satellite-based Internet link?

The basic architecture behind intelligent control for a satellite fleet is to augment the routers at each end of traffic, our discussion is framed in terms of connecting content providers (in a few countries) to end users (in all countries). In some cases (e.g., two-way audio), however, the traffic may be symmetrical. Second, we refer to the content-provider endpoint of a satellite link as a warehouse, and the end-user endpoint as a kiosk. The architecture of warehouses and kiosks must be scalable: The number of servers, storage capacity, and throughput of warehouses and kiosks must scale as the number and bandwidth of satellite links, content providers, and end users grows. Figure1 illustrates the generic architecture. Content providers are connected via the terrestrial Internet to a router inside a warehouse. The router also connects to a local area network that interconnects various servers. The router also connects to the earth station for the satellite. Within the footprint of the satellite are many groundstations, each connected to a router within a kiosk. The kiosk is similar to the warehouse in that it connects to a local area network that interconnects servers, and optionally, to a terrestrial Internet connection. The kiosk also acts as the head end for Internet service providers

(ISPs) that provide network connections to end users. More details are given in the case study in Section 3

Figure 1: Intelligent control resides in warehouses and kiosks Intelligent controls reside in the warehouse and kiosk and are required to share limited satellite bandwidth among many users and to hide the quarter-second latency of a geosynchronous satellite. The controls are a distributed algorithm, in which part runs on warehouses and part runs on kiosks. All warehouses and kiosks must cooperate and must coordinate the use of satellite resources. Multicast groups are defined to allow communication between cooperating entities (e.g.,

between a warehouse and multiple kiosks). To identify which controls make sense, it is useful to look at the characteristics of Internet traffic. Figure2 is taxonomy of traffic with six categories. Three of them represent Web pages: pages that are popular for months or longer (e.g., news service such as cnn.com); pages that are popular for a short time (e.g., hours, days, or weeks, such as those resulting from Olympic games); and pages that are accessed only a few times.

One of the facts known about this traffic is that most of the requests and most of the bytes transferred in client workloads come from a small number of servers. For example, in a study of proxy or client uniform resource locator (URL) reference traces from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), America Online, Boston University, Virginia Tech, a gateway to South Korea, and one high school, 80% to 95% of the total accesses went to 25% of the servers [Abdulla].

The next category of traffic in Figure2 is push channels. This consists of a collection of media that a content provider assembles and distributes, for example using the proposed World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Information and Content Exchange (ICE) protocol [ICE]. The remaining two categories are real-time traffic, such as streaming audio or video from a teleconference, and what we call timely but not real time. This last category includes information that is updated periodically and has a certain lifetime, such as financial quotes and Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP).

Figure 2: Categorization of Internet traffic

The point of categorizing traffic is that different intelligent controls are needed for different categories of traffic. The following are mechanisms used in the case study of Section 3:

Caching of both categories of popular URLs and push channels should be done at both the

warehouse and the kiosk. Caching at the kiosk side obviously avoids the satellite delay when an end-user requests a popular document. Caching at the warehouse is desirable to decouple the process of retrieving documents from the content providers (i.e., the path between content providers and the warehouse in Figure 1) and the process of scheduling multicast transmission of documents from a warehouse via satellite to kiosks.

In addition, the warehouse reduces cache consistency traffic, because consistency traffic occurs only between the content providers and the warehouse. The kiosks do not need consistency checks, because they rely on the warehouse to send them updated pages when the warehouse detects inconsistency. Feedback of logs of documents, channel content, real-time streams, and timely documents are requested from the kiosk end of satellite connections by the warehouse side for use in adaptive algorithms. Unpopular pages may be cached at an individual kiosk only, and retrieved from the Internet using a terrestrial link if available. Only if feedback from the kiosk logs sent to the warehouse shows that a document is popular among multiple kiosks does the document get reclassified as "popular for short term" and hence cached at the warehouse. To hide latency, pages and updates to the content of changed pages could be preemptively delivered across the satellite link based on the feedback of logs. Push channels could be dynamically constructed by identifying which Web documents have become popular. Multicast could be used to deliver push channels, real-time streams and timely documents based on subscriptions. The bandwidth available on satellite links could be allocated based on traffic categories.

Intelligent controls reside in the warehouse and kiosk and are required to share limited satellite bandwidth among many users and to hide the quarter-second latency of a geosynchronous satellite. The controls are a distributed algorithm, in which part runs on warehouses and part runs on kiosks. All warehouses and kiosks must cooperate and must coordinate the use of satellite resources. Multicast groups are defined to allow communication between cooperating entities (e.g., between a warehouse and multiple kiosks). To identify which controls make sense, it is useful to look at the characteristics of Internet traffic. Figure2 is taxonomy of traffic with six categories. Three of them represent Web pages: pages that are popular for months or longer (e.g., news service such as cnn.com); pages that are popular for a short time (e.g., hours, days, or weeks, such as those resulting from Olympic Games); and pages that are accessed only a few times. One of the facts known about this traffic is that most of the requests and most of the bytes transferred in client workloads come from a small number of servers. For example, in a study of proxy or client uniform resource locator (URL) reference traces from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), America Online, Boston University, Virginia Tech, a gateway to South Korea, and one high school, 80% to 95% of the total accesses went to 25% of the servers [Abdulla].

2.3 Design issues

What are the design issues that are critical to using satellite channels efficiently?
The overall system must achieve a balance between the throughput of the terrestrial Internet connection going into the warehouse, the throughput of the warehouse itself, the throughput of the satellite link, the throughput of each kiosk, and the throughput of the connection between a kiosk and its end users. In addition, a balance among the number of end users, the number of kiosks, and the number of warehouses is required. Consider some examples. As the number of end users grows, so will the size of the set of popular Web pages that must be delivered, and the bandwidth required for push, real time, and timely traffic. Let's look at Web traffic in detail. Analysis of end-user traffic to proxy servers at America Online done at Virginia Tech shows that an average user requests one URL about every 50 seconds, which indicates a request rate of 0.02 URLs per second. (This does not mean that a person clicks on a link or types a new URL every 50 seconds; instead, each URL requested typically embeds other URLs, such as images. The average rate of the individual URLs requested either by a person or indirectly as an embedded object is one every 50 seconds.)

Thus, a kiosk supporting 1,000 concurrent users must handle a request rate of 200 per second. The median file size from the set of traces cited above (DEC, America Online, etc.) is 2 kilobytes [Abdulla]. Thus, the kiosk Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)level throughput to end users must be 400 kilobytes per second. At the other end, the warehouse has a connection to the Internet. The bandwidth of this connection must exceed that of the satellite connection, because the warehouse generates cache consistency traffic. The servers within the warehouse and kiosk have limited throughput, for example, the throughput at which the cache engines can serve Web pages. To do multicast transmission, a collection of content (Web pages, pushed documents) must be bundled up at the application layer at the warehouse into a unit for transmission to a multicast group, then broken down into individual objects at the kiosk. This assembly and disassembly process also limits throughput. A second issue is how to handle Web page misses as kiosks. If the kiosk has no terrestrial Internet connection, then these situations obviously must be satisfied over the satellite channel.

This reduces the number of kiosks that a satellite link can handle. On the other hand, if the kiosk does have a terrestrial connection, an adaptive decision might be to choose the satellite over the terrestrial link if there is unused satellite

capacity and if the performance of the territorial link is erratic. A third issue is how to handle Domain Name System (DNS) lookups. A DNS server is necessary at kiosks to avoid the delay of sending lookups over a satellite. However, how should misses or lookups of invalidated entries in the kiosk's DNS server be handled? One option is for the DNS traffic to go over a terrestrial link at the kiosk, if one is available. An alternative is for the warehouse to multicast DNS entries to the kiosks, based on host names encountered in the logs transmitted from the kiosks to the warehouse. A fourth issue is fault tolerance. If a kiosk goes down and reboots, or a new kiosk is brought up, there must be a mechanism for that kiosk to obtain information missed during the failure. Recent developments in research and technology have drawn attention to wireless sensor networks as one of the key enabling technologies of the next ten years. Ubiquitous intelligent sensing environments have a promising future in supporting the everyday life of European citizens, bringing important social benefits for each person and for society as a whole. Taking into account the current fragmentation of European research in this field, the CRUISE Network of Excellence (NoE) aims to be a focal point in the coordination of research on communication and application aspects of wireless sensor networking in Europe.

CRUISE's NoE partners are combining their efforts to make a significant contribution to both the coordination and the effectiveness of research into the communication and application aspects of WSN in Europe, promoting not only open cooperation between individuals and organizations from European academia, but also research into cooperation with industry. The main aim for CRUISE is to push for a broad integration of actions and to become one of the focal points for these actions, with the strategic goal of greatly strengthening the European position in this area of research. CRUISE is to amalgamate the majority of European research entities in the field of Wireless and Sensor Networks. It is doing this on the under standing that this critical mass will put the European Wireless and Sensor Networks research community in a position to successfully compete with the US and Asia and to provide support for the satellite. The first reason is obvious: it will be years before terrestrial networks are able to provide adequate bandwidth uniformly around the world, given the explosive growth in Internet bandwidth demand and the amount of the world that is still unwired. Geosynchronous satellites can provide immediate relief. They can improve service to bandwidthstarved regions of the globe where terrestrial networks are insufficient and can supplement terrestrial networks elsewhere. Second, geosynchronous satellites allow direct single-hop access to the Internet backbone, bypassing congestion points and providing faster

access time and higher net throughputs. In theory, a bit can be sent the distance of an international connection over fiber in a time on the order of tens of microseconds. In practice today, however, international connections via terrestrial links are an order of magnitude larger. For example, in experiments we performed in December 1998, the mean round trip time between the U.S. and Brazil (vt.edu to embr.net.br) over terrestrial links were 562.9 msec (via teleglobe.net) and 220.7 (via gzip.net) [Habib]. In contrast, the mean latency between the two routers at the two endpoints of a satellite link between Bangladesh and Singapore measured in February 1999 was 348.5 msec. Thus, a kiosk supporting 1,000 concurrent users must handle a request rate of 200 per second. The median file size from the set of traces cited above (DEC, America Online, etc.) is 2 kilobytes [Abdulla]. Thus, the kiosk Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)level throughput to end users must be 400 kilobytes per second. At the other end, the warehouse has a connection to the Internet. The bandwidth of this connection must exceed that of the satellite connection, because the warehouse generates cache consistency traffic. The servers within the warehouse and kiosk have limited throughput, for example, the throughput at which the cache engines can serve Web pages. To do multicast transmission, a collection of content (Web pages, pushed documents) must be bundled up at the application layer at the warehouse into a unit for transmission to

a multicast group, and then broken down into individual objects at the kiosk. This assembly and disassembly process also limits throughput. A second issue is how to handle Web page misses as kiosks. If the kiosk has no terrestrial Internet connection, then these situations obviously must be satisfied over the satellite channel. This reduces the number of kiosks that a satellite link can handle. On the other hand, if the kiosk does have a terrestrial connection, an adaptive decision might be to choose the satellite over the terrestrial link if there is unused satellite capacity and if the performance of the territorial link is erratic. The servers within the warehouse and kiosk have limited throughput, for example, the throughput at which the cache engines can serve Web pages. To do multicast transmission, a collection of content (Web pages, pushed documents) must be bundled up at the application layer at the warehouse into a unit for transmission to a multicast group, and then broken down into individual objects at the kiosk. This assembly and disassembly process also limits throughput. A second issue is how to handle Web page misses as kiosks. If the kiosk has no terrestrial Internet connection, then these situations obviously must be satisfied over the satellite channel. This reduces the number of kiosks that a satellite link can handle. On the other hand, if the kiosk does have a terrestrial connection, an adaptive decision might be to choose the satellite

over the terrestrial link if there is unused satellite capacity and if the performance of the territorial link is erratic. A third issue is how to handle Domain Name System (DNS) lookups. A DNS server is necessary at kiosks to avoid the delay of sending lookups over a satellite. However, how should misses or lookups of invalidated entries in the kiosk's DNS server be handled? One option is for the DNS traffic to go over a terrestrial link at the kiosk, if one is

available. An alternative is for the warehouse to multicast DNS entries to the kiosks, based on host names encountered in the logs transmitted from the kiosks to the warehouse. A fourth issue is fault tolerance. If a kiosk goes down and reboots, or a new kiosk is brought up, there must be a mechanism for that kiosk to obtain information missed during the failure.

Case study
IDS uses

multicast transmission to share channel bandwidth with users in many counties caching (e.g., Table 1) at both ends of the satellite to hide or avoid latency, in the form of large (terabyte-size) content warehouses and kiosks automated monitoring of user behavior to dynamically create multicast push channels of content proactive content refreshing that updates inconsistent cached documents before users request those documents

1. creating satellite-based wormholes [Chen], from content providers to geographically distant service providers, thus providing a fast path from one edge of the network to the other 2. caching content such as HTTP, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), NNTP, and streaming media at the content-provider end as well as the service-provider end, thus conserving bandwidth The idea for the IDS was conceived at INTELSAT, an international organization that owns a fleet of geostationary satellites and sells space segment bandwidth to its international signatories. Work on the prototype started in February 1998. In February 1999, the prototype system stands poised for international trials involving ten signatories of INTELSAT. A commercial version of IDS will be released in May 1999. The building blocks of IDS are warehouses and kiosks. A warehouse is a large repository (terabytes of storage) of Web content. The warehouse

The objective of the IDS is to provide fast and economical Internet connectivity worldwide. IDS also facilitate Internet access to parts of the globe that have poor terrestrial connectivity. An ID achieves this goal by two means:

is connected to the content-provider edge of the Internet by a high-bandwidth link. Given the global distribution of Web content today, an excellent choice for a warehouse could be a large datacenter or large-scale bandwidth reseller situated in the U.S. The warehouse will use its high-bandwidth link to the content providers to crawl and gather Web content of interest in its Web cache. The warehouse uses an adaptive refreshing technique to assure the freshness of the content stored in its Web cache. The Web content stored in the warehouse cache is continuously scheduled for transmission via a satellite and multicast to a group of kiosks that subscribe to the warehouse. The centerpiece of the kiosk architecture is also a Web cache. Kiosks represent the service-provider edge of the Internet and can therefore reside at national service providers or ISPs. The storage size of a kiosk cache can therefore vary from a low number of gigabytes to terabytes. Web content multicast by the warehouse is received, is filtered for subscription, and is subsequently pushed in the kiosk cache. The kiosk Web cache also operates in the traditional pull mode. All user requests for Web content to the service provider are transparently intercepted and redirected to the kiosk Web cache. The cache serves the user request directly if it has the requested content; otherwise, it uses its link to the Internet to retrieve the content from the origin Web site. The cache stores a copy of the requested content while passing it back to the user who requested it.

The layout for an IDS prototype warehouse and kiosk is shown in Figure 1 . The prototype warehouse consists of two server class Pentium II based machines, namely an application server and a cache server. The cache server houses a Web cache and other related modules. The Web cache at the warehouse has 100 gigabytes of storage. The application server is host to a transmitter application, a relational database, and a Java-based management application. These servers reside on a dedicated subnet of the warehouse network. This subnet is connected to a multicast-enabled router that routes all multicast traffic to a serial interface for up linking to the INTELSAT IDR system [Intelsat]. The INTELSAT IDR system provides IP connectivity, over a 2-Mbps satellite channel, between the warehouse and kiosks. The prototype kiosk also contains a Pentium II-based application server and a Pentium II-based cache server. The kiosk cache server houses a Web cache with 50 gigabytes of storage. The application server is host to a receiver application, a relational database, and a Java-based configuration and management application. These servers reside on a dedicated subnet of the kiosk network. This subnet is connected to a multicast-enabled router. An important part of the prototype kiosk is a layer-4 server switch [Williams], which is used to transparently redirect all HTTP (Transmission Control Protocol/port 80) user traffic to the kiosk cache server.

IDS treats Web content as composed of six traffic categories as categorized in Figure 2. These categories are summarized in Table 1 below. Type A traffic consists of HTTP Web content that is identified by a human operator as content that should remain popular over a long time (e.g., months). This may include popular news Web sites such as the Cable News Network (CNN) Web site. Type B traffic refers to HTTP Web content directly pushed into the warehouse by subscribing content providers. Type E traffic refers to unicast HTTP user

request-reply traffic that passes though the kiosk and is not cached at the kiosk. The reply for a type E request is cached at the kiosk on its return path from the origin server. As requests for a particular URL accumulate at multiple kiosks, such a hot-spot URL is converted from type E to type C. Type D traffic refers to real-time streaming traffic. Type F traffic refers to semi-real-time reliable traffic such as financial quotes and NNTP. Traffic of types A, B, C, D, or F is multicast to all kiosks and pushed to subscribing kiosks.

Table 1: IDS traffic categories Traffic Definition IDS traffic category Web sites popular over long time A Publisher pushed B Automatically identified as hot Web sites C Kiosk unicast requests E Real-time streaming D Semi-real time F the Web and stored in the warehouse Web cache. The IDS prototype implements traffic types A, C, and E. Figure 3 below shows the flow of traffic types A, C, and E through the IDS system. Type A traffic is defined by the warehouse operator by entering popular URLs through the warehouse management interface. The warehouse operator also classifies URLs into channels as part of creating type A content. Once created, content belonging to type A is registered in the relational database and subsequently crawled from

The warehouse refreshes content of type A from the origin servers based on an adaptive refresh algorithm. Content of type A is also continuously multicast by the transmitter application to the kiosks. At the kiosk, the receiver application filters the incoming multicast traffic, thus accepting only the subset of traffic that belongs to channels subscribed at the kiosk. Filtered content is then pushed into the Web cache at the kiosk.

Traffic of type E originates as an HTTP request from kiosk end users. The request is redirected to the layer-4 switch at the kiosk, the kiosk cache. If the requested content is not found in the kiosk cache, then that request is routed to the origin server. The reply from the origin server is cached at the kiosk Web cache on its way back to the end user who made the request. In Figure 2, the path for unicast type E traffic is shown as going

through the satellite back channel. It must be noted, however, that type E traffic bypasses all warehouse components and is routed to the Internet. On a periodic basis, the warehouse polls all subscribing kiosks for hit statistics regarding the type E content in their respective Web caches. Once type C content has been created, the data flow for this traffic type follows the same path as described above for traffic type A.

Figure 3: IDS data flow

IDS architecture

Components at the warehouse

The IDS warehouse is composed of four major components, namely the cache subsystem, transmission subsystem, management subsystem, and database subsystem. Figure4 shows the major components of the warehouse along with their interconnections. The cache subsystem consists of a cluster of standard Web caches that communicate among each other using standard protocols such as Internet Cache Protocol (ICP). For the IDS prototype, we have a single Squid cache. The cache subsystem also consists of refresh and crawl modules that communicate with the Web cache(s) using HTTP and are responsible for proactively refreshing and crawling newly created type A or C content from origin Web servers, respectively. The log module in the cache subsystem parses standard logs from the Web cache and communicates hit-metering data to the database subsystem. The transmission subsystem contains scheduling and gathering modules. These modules perform the following functions:

each URL to the corresponding object construct object bundles sized for optimal transmission transfer the bundles to the transmitter

The transmitter module, also a part of the transmission subsystem, receives bundles and transmits them using the Multicast File Transfer Protocol from Starburst Communications [Starburst]. The management subsystem is a Web-based graphical front end that communicates with the database subsystem and provides the warehouse operator with a tool to perform the following types of activities:

add popular content to the warehouse (traffic type A) create channels and manually classify content into channels configure system operational parameters such as thresholds for conversion of content from type E to type C

obtain from the database subsystem lists of URLs belonging to content of types A and C that must be transmitted obtain objects corresponding to the URLs from the Web cache append a bit map denoting kiosks that subscribe to the channel with

The database subsystem consists of the relational database, the Y module, and the mapper. The relational database contains persistent information about the content stored in the warehouse Web cache as well as URL hit statistics and channel and subscription information. The Y module performs three major tasks: 1. It periodically requests per-URL hit statistics for type E content stored in the Web caches of all kiosks.

2. Based on thresholds set at the warehouse, it converts a subset of E content to C. 3. It automatically channelizes the newly converted C content into the channels available at the warehouse.

the warehouse interconnections. The IDS warehouse is composed of four major components, namely the cache subsystem, transmission subsystem, management subsystem, and database subsystem. Figure4 shows the major components of

along

with

their

The cache subsystem consists of a cluster of standard Web caches that communicate among each other using standard protocols such as Internet Cache Protocol (ICP). For the IDS prototype, we have a single Squid cache.

The transmission subsystem at the kiosk contains a receiver module and several push clients. The receiver module performs the following functions:

Components at the kiosk

Like the warehouse, the IDS kiosk is also composed of four major components: (1) the cache subsystem, (2) the transmission subsystem, (3) the management subsystem, and (4) the database subsystem. Figure5 shows the major components of the kiosk. The cache subsystem at the kiosk consists of a cluster of standard Web caches, a layer-4 switch, and a log module. The cache cluster at the kiosk is identical to the one at the warehouse in all respects except one: the Web cache(s) at the kiosk are equipped to accept an HTTP push. The HTTP push method, which is described in detail in [Chen], enables the kiosk to directly push multicast Web content received from the warehouse into the kiosk cache(s). For the IDS prototype, we have a single Squid cache at the kiosk. The kiosk Web cache(s) are connected to the rest of kiosk network through a layer-4 switch. The layer-4 switch at the kiosk is configured to redirect all user HTTP-based traffic transparently to the Web cache(s). The log module accepts log data from the Web cache and inserts hit-metering data into the database subsystem.

receives Multicast File Transfer Protocol bundles takes the bundles apart into separate HTTP objects filters out objects that do not belong to channels subscribed at the kiosk by inspecting associated bit maps passes the rest of the objects along with their URLs to the push clients

The push clients push all objects forwarded to them by the receiver into the Web cache(s) using the HTTP push method. The management subsystem at the kiosk is a Web-based graphical front end that communicates with the database subsystem and provides the kiosk operator with a tool to perform the following types of activities:

subscribing to the channels made available by the warehouse blocking specific URLs from being pushed into the kiosk Web cache configuring system operational parameters

The database subsystem consists of the relational database and the Y module. The relational database contains persistent information about the content stored in the kiosk Web cache as well as URL hit statistics and channel and subscription information. The Y module at the kiosk transmits per-URL hit

statistics for E type content stored in its Web cache when requested to do so by the warehouse.

Figure 5: IDS kiosk The kiosk Web cache(s) are connected to the rest of kiosk network through a layer-4 switch. The layer-4 switch at the kiosk is configured to redirect all user HTTP-based traffic transparently to the Web cache(s). The log module accepts log data from the Web cache and inserts hit-metering data into the database subsystem.

Design issues and goals

In this section, we discuss some of the salient design goals that make IDS a unique system that fits its requirements.

Content

refresh warehouse

at

the

Cache consistency techniques for Web caches are a well-debated topic. In [Gwertzman], the authors describe techniques for maintaining fresh content in Web caches, namely,

Time to live (TTL) fields, implemented using the "expires" header field in HTTP, are used by content publishers to set a TTL for objects they create. When the TTL for an object expires, the cache invalidates that object. The next request for that object to the Web cache is directed to the origin server. The caveat in this strategy is that for a significant proportion of Web content, the TTLs are either incorrect or unspecified. Invalidation protocol is an originserver-oriented solution that puts the onus on the origin server to invalidate cached copies of an object whenever the object is updated. This solution does not scale and therefore is unsuitable for deployment over the Internet. Client polling is a technique in which caches periodically query the origin server to determine whether an object has changed. The query frequency is a key factor in this technique. In [Gwertzman], the authors used a client-polling scheme based on the assumption that "young files are modified more frequently than old files" on the Alex FTP cache. A well-tuned clientpolling algorithm can be more effective than a cache refresh policy based only on TTL.

objects residing within IDS (i.e., in the warehouse and kiosk Web caches). The IDS warehouse design includes an adaptive refresh client-polling technique that uses object TTLs as initial estimates for object refresh times. The clientpolling technique is encapsulated in the following relationship: Ci+1 = Ci + f.(Ci - M) Where Ci denotes the time when the ith query to check the freshness of an object was sent to the origin Web server. Ci+1 denotes the estimated query time for the (i + 1) th query. M denotes the time when the object was last modified at the server. Finally, f denotes a constant factor. A desirable value of f can be determined by minimizing the number of queries i, such that a subsequent modification to the object after time M is discovered as quickly as possible. A value of 0.1 for f is suggested in the HTTP 1.1 request for comments. By having the warehouse refresh all the kiosks, IDS saves the client-polling bandwidth to origin servers. In addition, the refresh mechanism in IDS is sensitive to objects that change too frequently. Such frequently changing documents are tagged as uncacheable by the system.

Content prefetch

In the IDS design, the warehouse maintains the freshness of

The IDS warehouse is designed to prefetch cacheable objects embedded in a cached Web page. The crawler module in IDS proactively parses cached objects for embedded cacheable objects, evaluates the embedded objects against evaluation parameters, and fetches them from their origin servers to be cached. The evaluation parameters, set through the management application, use the heuristic that objects associated with a popular object are likely to be popular also. Thus, caching of prefetched objects leads to better hit rates for the kiosk caches.

Any object in the warehouse can be manually associated with a channel. Web content brought in by the warehouse crawler module is also automatically channelized based on a keywords discovery algorithm in the crawler. Kiosks subscribe to channels offered by the warehouse. Based on kiosk subscriptions, which are communicated periodically from all kiosks to the warehouse, the warehouse is able to append a subscription bitmap to all objects being multicast out to the kiosks. Kiosks inspect the subscription bitmap and filter out all unwanted traffic.

Content rerun -- kiosk fault tolerance

Along with new and updated Web content, the IDS warehouse constantly multicasts all information cached in its Web cache to the kiosks. This design feature provides an automatic recovery for kiosks that were offline for a certain period of time. It automatically brings new kiosks up-todate as well.

Portable module interface

A specific goal in the design of IDS is to design modules with portable interfaces. This allows flexibility in choosing implementation platforms. All IDS modules within the warehouse and kiosks use Transmission Control Protocol/IP for interprocess communication. Thus, all warehouse (or kiosk) functionality may reside on a single machine or may be distributed among several machines. In addition, the relational database communicates with other modules through a single set of application programming interfaces.

Push channels
The IDS warehouse is designed to classify all Web content into push channels based on keywords associated with cached objects.
Two methods of channelization are present. Manual channelization is offered through the management application at the warehouse.

Transparent redirection of HTTP traffic at kiosk

A hard requirement of the IDS kiosk design is that all HTTP traffic from users to the kiosk must be transparently redirected to the kiosk

cache. Thus, the deployment of a kiosk at a national service provider or an ISP will be invisible to the customers of the kiosk. Although transparent redirection has been implemented in software by Net cache and other cache vendors, most service providers choose to deploy a hardware-based solution such as Web Cache Control Protocol running on CISCO cache engines and routers or to use a content-aware layer-4 switch. The IDS design includes a layer4 switch to implement transparent redirection of HTTP traffic to the kiosk cache.

Persistent storage of Web cache metadata

Web cache metadata including hit-metering statistics for all cached objects is stored in a relational database. This persistent storage provides IDS with the ability to query relevant metadata statistics to enforce business rules. These high-level objectives are

pursued in activities such as:

Evaluating state-of-the-art wireless sensor networking and collating research topics covered in CRUISE and in Europe into a knowledge model depicting a path from current technological status to a successful nearterm and long-term vision, by creating the vision and roadmap on necessary research in wireless sensor networking in Europe implementing a set of well-defined joint research activities and publishing white papers and a joint book providing an integrated research view sharing and integrating methods, software tools and test-beds and making an inventory of the existing platforms and evaluating of the experiences using them facilitating the mobility of researchers and PhD students as a key factor for integration and rationalization of research efforts creating distributed PhD teaching curricula and training curricula in sensor networking and related topics; Organizing regular CRUISE Schools as

Content push into Web cache

The Web caches used in IDS are designed to operate in pull as well as push mode. While pull is the default mode of behavior, IDS Web caches are modified to accept object push. The kiosk Web cache accepts objects pushed from the warehouse. The warehouse Web cache can accept objects pushed from content providers. The design of the push protocol for Web caches is detailed in [Chen].

Minimal modifications to Web cache architecture

A key goal in the IDS design was to keep modification to the Web cache to a minimum, which would allow the Web cache to be used as a pluggable module. The IDS prototype uses the Squid Web cache from the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research; however, the design allows for the substitution of Squid by any commercial Web cache that implements the push protocol.

a tool for training young researchers and communicating with the industry standardization community and international research community organizing open collaboration events with industry, SMEs, academia, other projects with participation of experts from Europe, the USA and Asia, i.e., cluster meetings, workshops, roundtable discussions, web-based tutorials, discussion forums, etc., to exchange and discuss ideas and to further elaborate thoughts exploiting CRUISE results. The cache subsystem at the kiosk consists of a cluster of standard Web caches, a layer-4 switch, and a log module. The cache cluster at the kiosk is identical to the one at the warehouse in all respects except one: the Web cache(s) at the kiosk are equipped to accept an HTTP push. The HTTP push method, which is described in detail in [Chen], enables the kiosk to directly push multicast Web content received from the warehouse into the kiosk cache(s). For the IDS prototype, we have a single Squid cache at the kiosk. The kiosk Web cache(s) are connected to the rest of kiosk network through a layer-4 switch. The layer-4 switch at the kiosk is configured to redirect all user HTTP-based traffic transparently to the Web cache(s). The log module accepts log data from the Web cache and inserts hit-metering data into the database subsystem. depicting a path from current technological status to a successful nearterm and long-term vision, by creating the vision and roadmap on necessary

research in wireless sensor networking in Europe implementing a set of well-defined joint research activities and publishing white papers and a joint book providing an integrated research view sharing and integrating methods, software tools and test-beds and making an inventory of the existing platforms and evaluating of the experiences using them facilitating the mobility of researchers and PhD students as a key factor for integration and rationalization of research efforts 4. Parallel efforts Along with the development ofIDS, a number of proof-ofconcept projects as well as commercial ventures based on similar concepts have been announced. Best known among them are SkyCache, iBeam, Internet Skyway, and PanamSat/SPOT cast. SkyCache [SkyCache], offers a satellite-based internet cache updating service to ISPs. The SkyCache system consists of a MasterCache located at a central location. The MasterCache pulls popular Web content from the Internet through a high-bandwidth link. The MasterCache transmits HTTP/NNTP content via satellite, using an unreliable broadcast protocol, to a Cache Adapter located at the ISP. The ISP is required have an ICP-compliant Web cache. The ISP Web cache is connected to the SkyCache

Cache Adapter. Whenever the ISP Web cache is unable to serve user-requested content, it uses ICP to pull content from the Cache Adapter. The Cache Adapter transmits hit/miss statistics back to the MasterCache via a terrestrial return channel. Another project, called Internet Skyway, is working toward a solution to provide two-tier caching and replication for HTTP/NNTP/FTP-based Web content for ISPs in Europe. A centrally placed ISWRobot crawls "interesting and most frequently used" content from the Internet. Crawled content is then broadcast via a 2-Mbps satellite link using IP over Digital Video Broadcasting. ISWCaches, located at ISP points of presence receive and cache the broadcast content. ISP end users are served the content from the ISWCache. IBeam broadcasting [iBeam] is in the process of building a network of "distributed servers" called MaxCaster servers that will reside at ISP points of presence and will serve streaming media and HTTP content to ISP end users. The iBeam model is driven by content providers and, by design, will carry HTTP and streaming traffic for subscribing content providers only. Content providers use a site definition file to identify the location and refresh for the content that is to be distributed by the iBeam network. Such content is pulled into an iBeam Network Operations Center (NOC). The NOC then replicates content to the remote MaxCaster servers using a satellite broadcast. Copies of content residing in the distributed MaxCaster servers are refreshed by the NOC based on instructions in the site definition file. At

the ISP end, users are transparently redirected to the MaxCaster servers by using a layer-4 switch. Similar to the goals of iBeam, the primary focus of the PanamSat effort is distribution of multimedia content via satellite. To this end, PanamSat has developed a solution called SPOT cast that enables the distribution of multimedia content using IP multicast over satellite. In its current incarnation, SPOT cast uses the Cyber Stream product by New Media Communications to distribute multimedia content to Online System Services cable head-end network called i2u community. NEWPORT NEWS, Va., Nov. 16, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The U.S. Navy has awarded Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) a $635 million cost plus fixed-fee/level of effort contract for engineering, design and modernization support of new construction, operational and decommissioning submarines. The company's Shipbuilding sector in Newport News, Va., is the prime contractor for the work on both the Los Angeles-class and Seawolf-class submarines which includes technical support; management of technical manuals and drawings; and design efforts to support modernization of the ships. Work on the contract is scheduled to conclude in 2014. "This contract award continues the core work that is the foundation of our submarine business. We look forward to continuing our partnership with the Navy as we endeavor to build and maintain high quality, complex and very capable submarines for the fleet," said

Becky Stewart, vice Northrop Grumman submarine program.

president for Shipbuilding's

"This contract brings stability to the submarine program and our workforce, and the modernization work over the next five years will greatly benefit our customer." Planning and engineering for upgrade modifications and modernization is part of an attack submarine's 33-year life. Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding is the design agent and planning yard for the Los Angeles class and the lead design and co-planning yard for the Seawolfclass submarines. Content providers use a site definition file to identify the location and refresh for the content that is to be distributed by the iBeam network. Such content is pulled into an iBeam Network Operations Center (NOC). The NOC then replicates content to the remote MaxCaster servers using a satellite broadcast. Copies of content residing in the distributed MaxCaster servers are refreshed by the NOC based on instructions in the site definition file. At the ISP end, users are transparently redirected to the MaxCaster servers by using a layer-4 switch. The MasterCache transmits HTTP/NNTP content via satellite, using an unreliable broadcast protocol, to a Cache Adapter located at the ISP. The ISP is required have an ICP-compliant Web cache. The ISP Web cache is connected to the SkyCache Cache Adapter. Whenever the ISP Web cache

is unable to serve user-requested content, it uses ICP to pull content from the Cache Adapter. The Cache Adapter transmits hit/miss statistics back to the MasterCache via a terrestrial return channel. A satellite phone, or sat phone, uses a network different from that of normal mobile phones. These do not use transmitting towers, but makes use of satellites directly. A number of technical challenges are involved in devising a satellite phone system. Path length between earth and satellite introduces significant losses due to divergence. To minimize this, most of the systems use low earth orbiting satellites. But then, a number of satellites are to be used; each satellite will be in view only for a certain amount of time. It is therefore necessary even for a stationary phone to be able to change over from one satellite to another. There are service providers who make use of geostationary satellites as well like Aces, Inmarsat , Thuraya and MSAT. Phones used for satellite communication are often larger in size. Satellite will be in view only for a certain amount of time. It is therefore necessary even for a stationary phone to be able to change over from one satellite to another. There are service providers who make use of geostationary satellites as well like Aces, Inmarsat , Thuraya and MSAT. Phones used for satellite communication are often larger in size. The antenna is often larger to ensure the required level of power. Any mobile phone requires speedy communication with the network to

enable calls to be set up, controlled and finished. The round trip delay from the mobile to satellite and back to the earth is significantly long, and affects speed of communication and protocol exchanges. As a result, much of intelligence of the system has to be placed within the satellite so that the required protocol exchanges can take place fast. A satellite phone doesnt rely on local telephone infrastructure to function. Because of this, they are used widely in regions which are disaster prone. Satellite phones are used widely in ships for communication. They are also used widely for communication in remote area where there are no mobile networks available. There are many disadvantages; high cost of both the handset and call, and bulky handset are some. Satellite phone networks themselves are prone to congestion as satellites cover a very large area with relatively less number of voice channels. Sat phones are built for one particular network and cannot be switched to other networks for dedicated and critical channels, satellite phones are very effective. While popularizing more efficient and strategic technologies, government and people must make sure that they dont reach wrong hands. There are confirmed reports that terrorists involved in Mumbai blast used sat phones for communication The numerous anomalies surrounding the crash and the eagerness by both the investigative authorities and the news media to solely blame the

hapless Henri Paul for the incident strongly suggest the occurrence of a massive cover-up. The news media claimed that Paul had been battling alcoholism for at least a year, yet his autopsy revealed that his liver was normal for a person of his age. According to Henri Paul's friends, he wasn't a heavy drinker and led a quiet life. Moreover, he had successfully passed a medical exam necessary for renewal of his pilot's license only a few days prior to his death. An accomplished musician and lover of classical music, he had a passion for flying light aircraft. A possible explanation for the high alcohol content is that his blood sample may not have been refrigerated in a timely manner, thus allowing decomposition of the blood (there is no published record of the time or temperature of the body at the time of storage). It was claimed that the blood sample also contained a carbon monoxide level of 20.7%, which would have been even higher prior to death. Such an abnormally high and near lethal percentage would have resulted in nausea, confusion, a violent headache and difficulty in walking, yet the Ritz security cameras showed Paul with none of these symptoms while still at the hotel. According to Commander Mules, the head of the Paris Criminal Brigade which had responsibility for investigating the crash, carbon monoxide was inhaled when the driver's airbag inflated upon impact. This was impossible since the Mercedes Benz Company has publicly asserted that their

airbags do not contain carbon monoxide releasing chemicals. In addition, it is customary for French firefighters to wear carbon monoxide detectors, yet none of the firefighters at the crash scene reported detection of the deadly gas. Henri Paul's death was virtually instantaneous upon impact, primarily caused, according to the French autopsy report, by a ruptured aorta. This injury would have prevented carbon monoxide from being circulated throughout the body. Very significantly, Dodi's father was refused permission by French authorities to have an independent blood and DNA analysis conducted. In all probability, what really happened is that the blood sample had been taken from a person who had consumed a large quantity of alcohol prior to committing suicide by attaching a hose to the exhaust pipe of a vehicle. Ignoring the advice of the British Foreign Office, Charles was accompanied by Camilla at the Zimbabwe independence celebration, thereby providing fodder for the press. Still obligated to marry and produce an heir to the throne, a chance encounter brought Lady Diana Spencer to the attention of Charles at a weekend house party. This was like manna from heaven for the Windsor, for Diana was a blue eyed blond teen aged virgin who hailed from an eminently acceptable blue blooded family. A marriage to Diana also was acceptable to the prince, presumably because he assumed that this shy and nave teenager was too timid to challenge his adulterous relationship

with Camilla Parker Bowles. How wrong he was! The company's Shipbuilding sector in Newport News, Va., is the prime contractor for the work on both the Los Angeles-class and Seawolf-class submarines which includes technical support; management of technical manuals and drawings; and design efforts to support modernization of the ships. Work on the contract is scheduled to conclude in 2014. "This contract award continues the core work that is the foundation of our submarine business. We look forward to continuing our partnership with the Navy as we endeavor to build and maintain high quality, complex and very capable submarines for the fleet," said Becky Stewart, vice president for Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding's submarine program. "This contract brings stability to the submarine program and our workforce, and the modernization work over the next five years will greatly benefit our customer." Planning and engineering for upgrade modifications and modernization is part of an attack submarine's 33-year life. Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding is the design agent and planning yard for the Los Angeles class and the lead design and co-planning yard for the Seawolf-class submarines. Content providers use a site definition file to identify the location and refresh for the content that is to be distributed by the iBeam network. Such

content is pulled into an iBeam Network Operations Center (NOC). The NOC then replicates content to the remote MaxCaster servers using a satellite broadcast. Copies of content residing in the distributed MaxCaster servers are refreshed by the NOC based on instructions in the site definition file. At the ISP end, users are transparently redirected to the MaxCaster servers by using a layer-4 switch. A satellite phone, or sat phone, uses a network different from that of normal mobile phones. These do not use transmitting towers, but makes use of satellites directly. A number of technical challenges are involved in devising a satellite phone system. Path length between earth and satellite introduces significant losses due to divergence. To minimize this, most of the systems use low earth orbiting satellites. But then, a number of satellites are to be used; each satellite will be in view only for a certain amount of time. It is therefore necessary even for a stationary phone to be able to change over from one satellite to another. There are service providers who make use of geostationary satellites as well like Aces, Inmarsat, Thuraya and MSAT. Phones used for satellite communication are often larger in size. Satellite will be in view only for a certain amount of time. It is therefore necessary even for a stationary phone to be able to change over from one satellite to another. There are service providers who make use of geostationary satellites as well like Aces, Inmarsat,

Thuraya and MSAT. Phones used for satellite communication are often larger in size. The antenna is often larger to ensure the required level of power. Any mobile phone requires speedy communication with the network to enable calls to be set up, controlled and finished. The round trip delay from the mobile to satellite and back to the earth is significantly long, and affects speed of communication and protocol exchanges.

5. Roadmap for the future

Although the concept of "shortcuts" from the content providers to service providers is not new [Gwert96], this idea has been harnessed only recently. This recent development has resulted from the availability of enabling technologies such as IP multicast/broadcast over satellite, Web caches that accept push, and transparent redirection of layer-4 traffic. While the planet becomes wired through terrestrial and undersea high-bandwidth fiber links, geostationary satellites offer an ideal platform for offering an intelligent and high-performance infrastructure for Internet delivery. The first generation of such intelligent products will be available this year. These products and services will also serve as the proving grounds for several next-generation internet services, such as virtual private networks (VPNs), which offer security as well as guaranteed quality of service from the content providers to the end users.

At the writing of this document the IDS prototype has been tested at INTELSAT labs and is poised for deployment in international trials. The trials will comprise ten signatories of INTELSAT, including Teleglobe International (Canada), Telia (Sweden), British Telecom (UK), French Telecom (France), and Embratel (Brazil). The international trials will have a single warehouse located near Montreal, Canada, and operated by Teleglobe, and 10 kiosks located at participating signatory sites in North America, Europe, and Africa. The trials will last for three months.

The Reporting has gone out from the Pentagon to the Embassies of the world. There is re-entry taking place in the atmosphere but the Pentagon is stating that non of it is hitting the ground yet but rather burning up (vaporizing) upon re-entry. The US Strategic Command at Offit was the main control working the intercept. The Pentagon is not yet at the point of stating categorically that they did hit the tank but they believe that they have. Reporting that there are no sizes bigger than a football. Stating it will take 24 to 48 hours to get the count of the debris field, but they cannot yet rule out that something hazardous will not hit the ground, of course something size of a football hitting falling from space and hitting you would be lethal. The smaller pieces will generally heat up and be fully detectable by IR sensors as well as RADAR. Much smaller pieces of course should drift down, but these are very very small pieces. Pentagon also reports that this is a one time event. That in no way can such a system be put and left in place and would require a complete retasking of the missiles and ships to make this an anti-satellite weapons system. (Not that this could not be done, in fact this could be a proof of concept for such an anti-satellite weapons system, thereby confirming Russia's and China's claims that this was an anti-satellite weapons test - my interpretation and not the Pentagons.) As to why the satellite failed

Commercial releases of IDS will add functionality to provide the following:

Content-provider-based push of Web content into the warehouse Web cache. IDS modules within the warehouse as well as the content provider will be developed to implement this feature. A transport and proxy for realtime streaming traffic within IDS. Security and QoS for all traffic flowing through IDS. Billing components for warehouses and kiosks. Information mined from warehouse and kiosk databases to content providers and service providers.

The first commercial version of IDS is scheduled for release in May 1999. Two subsequent commercial releases are planned in 1999.

the Pentagon spokesman stated they have reached no conclusion as to why it inititially failed. They cannot know as they could not drive up along side of it and examine it. According to the Pentagon this was a NRO satellite. Preliminary data suggests that the hydrazine tank was hit, but they are not absolutely completely sure that is exactly what happened and will not state so until they are fully certain - can only state a reasonable degree of confidence but they are not comfortable in saying absolutely that they did hit the hydrazine tank. Discussion Policy Discussion Policy CLOSE Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post. Apparently large numbers of people were walking around theorizing that the democratic institutions of the state were a sham! Sure we have elections national and local, political parties large and small, coalition governments etc but it didn't matter who you voted for nothing ever changed!!! The powers that be did their own thing irrespective of the wishes of the people! And how is that? The reasonable people would ask nodding

their sage heads and trying not to roll their eyes to heaven in a way that seemed appropriate when listening to these poor misguided souls. Well you see the politicians and police and judiciary are all in thrall to the secret police who have them all blackmailed or threatened into doing what their told !(1) The same goes for the media ! They would confidently assert. 'I see' would come the inevitable non committal reply from those that knew that of course such police were only there to address the ongoing problems of internal subversion and other offences against the state, but his excitable neighbour continued: And besides even if some politicians did try to change direction the truth was that their big brothers in the eastern block would step in secretly or otherwise and ensure uniformity among their gallant allies! And so the debate raged across the hot summer and autumn until eventually in response to the popular unrest, or maybe because Moscow had quietly stepped back, the state fell and finally the people could learn the truth one way or the other. In Leipzig for example on the 4th of December the people rushed into the secret police (the Stasi) offices climbing the staircases and overpowering the few guards they expected to find the files that had held their secrets for so long .(2) The first sight that greeted them though was not paper but row upon row of small filled glass bottles like some anatomy lab rather than a police

headquarters. They were looking at the dirty underwear taken in burglaries and other means from the houses of all the 'dissidents' (meaning uncorrupt politically aware people) in Leipzig. That was a head scratcher even for the most extreme of the conspiracy theorists! It turns out that the Stasi wanted them as samples for their sniffer dogs who would use them to track the people corresponding to the samples (3). And then they learned , as the book 'Stasiland' has shown, that the extent and power of these intelligence agencies was far in advance of even the most extreme suspicions that the people had prior to being able to see the files. How very interesting I hear you ask, but what has that to do with Ireland. We all shudder at the activities of the Stasi and of course it was terrible but nothing like that happens in a modern democracy. After all their whole system reeks of a kind of eastern tyranny that people in the west would never stand for! People being dragged out their beds by the secret police for some supposed offense against the state, held without trial for goodness knows how long, allowed access to lawyers only under total surveillance by their captors (4), and then marched into juryless courts where denied the right to silence they were frequently fitted up by a corrupt police! (5) Its lucky we live in Ireland. But the interesting thing is that we have been here already. Just after the fall of East Germany and other eastern block states the whole Olympic movement was shaken by the revelations

that the great East German athletes and sports people only earned their four year haul of medals by massive organized doping .After some shock as people everywhere adjusted to the idea of such widespread fraud buried underneath the popular TV of the Olympics everything settled down with the comforting thought that at least such things didnt happen in the west. As the 90s wore on I guess many people wondered at the success of so many athletes from the big western powers and the blatant doping that was involved but still whatever happened at least we were spared such worries about sport in little old Ireland ! I wonder what people think now. Consider Peru: "Which of the democratic checks and balances opposition parties, the judiciary, a free press - is the most critical? Peru has the full set of democratic institutions. In the 1990s, the secret-police chief Vladimir Montesinos systematically undermined them all with bribes. We quantify the checks using the bribe prices. Montesinos paid television-channel owners about 100 times what he paid judges and politicians. One single television channels bribe was four times larger than the total of the opposition politicians bribes. By revealed preference, the strongest check on the governments power was the news media. "(6) And it proved no protection from the secret police chief who is widely considered to be a CIA asset. It may in short be too safe an assumption that such things as the Stasi revealed

couldn't

happen

here.

The first thing to note about Irish intelligence agencies is that it might be a naive assumption to think that they are controlled by Irish people in Ireland. It turns out that the control of the main domestic intelligence agency 'Security and Intelligence' , then known as C3 , was formally handed over to the British government in the form of MI5 at a secret meeting at Baldonnel airport in early 1974.(7) The reason given was naturally the suppression of terrorism. Turns out that at that time the main terrorism in the state was being carried out by the British intelligence agencies themselves , including the attacks that lead to the passing of the 'Offences Against the State" act.(8) It seems that this agreement is still in force.C3 in turn controlled Garda Special Branch and some army officers from Irish army intelligence known as G2 found themselves unpromoted because they were 'cautious of the apparently unquestioning alliance between some senior Garda officers and British intelligence.' An interesting phoenix article that discusses this subject notes this information given from a legal source who has seen the evidence given to the Barron enquiry on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings: "For years, a cabal of senior Garda officers, controlled by a foreign intelligence agency (MI5) directed state policy in many crucial areas, often against the better interests of citizens who were quite unaware of what was happening. Maybe people wouldn't stand for the

kind of practices that occurred in East Germany, but they aren't likely to be objecting to something they know nothing whatsoever about. The article goes on to state that army intelligence officers from G2 believe that one senior grade, in cooperation with MI5, had tried to oust the then Taoiseach Jack Lynch. MI5 in the UK meanwhile are known, as the article points out, to have bugged 10 Downing Street and broken into the private home of Harold Wilson, one of the few recent British prime ministers to question the Atlantic consensus. Not long ago I read a report of an Irish business man who wanted to speak to somebody in charge of security at Dublin Airport as he wanted to question some point about the ID he had shown. The person he was introduced to turned out to be English and admitted that he worked for a British intelligence agency .A statement from the Guardia , I think , was issued later claiming he had been on some 'training exercise' in Ireland.(9). Meanwhile with respect to the American government here again is my much thumbed Phoenix Annual 2004 (p68): "How much the hear no evil , see no evil policy towards the US by the Garda Siochana and Irish military intelligence (G2) is due to political influence , indolence or something more sinister , is hard to determine . Certainly, in the last 10 years, links have developed between American intelligence agencies and the Gardai and defense forces which need to be examined. Most of the senior officers in Garda HQ have been trained by the FBI

at Quantico near Washington, where they come into contact with CIA operatives. The US military attach in Dublin is a respected guest at monthly meals with G2 officers in McKee Barracks, while his informal visits to Defense Forces GHQ at Park gate are more frequent. .....[Shannon etc} may not be unconnected with the cosy relationship between the Pentagon's representative in Dublin and the top brass in the Defense Forces. In the absence of a look at those files it is obviously difficult to determine the extent or nature of the domestic intelligence agencies in Ireland but I think it might be instructive to look at two practices that the Stasi revealed and try to guess are they happening in Ireland. One of the most startling revelations the files revealed was that the Stasi were using chemicals and radioactive substances on their version of "terrorist suspects" ( i.e. the dissidents.) as a kind of secret tag that could be monitored by hidden Geiger counters .As reported in the New Scientist magazine: "The Stasi files revealed that dissidents were labeled with radioactive substances in a number of ways. If people could not be sprayed with a radioactive solution the spies would label their cars, documents or paper money, according to Becker. If the floors of rooms used for meetings by dissidents could be treated, the Stasi could follow anyone who attended."(10)Of course this had the

effect of badly damaging the health of the dissidents, an effect which was no doubt excused as necessary for the security of the state but very bad news for those people unfortunate enough to be treated that way. For example the Stasi irradiated banknotes this way and calculated that if a person had more than two notes in his pocket:" the effect on his fertility `came close to castration.'" 6. CONCLUSION A new generation of Internet access built around geosynchronous satellites can provide immediate relief. They can improve service to bandwidth-starved regions of the globe where terrestrial networks are insufficient and supplement terrestrial networks elsewhere. Two scaling problems face the Internet today. First, it will be years before terrestrial networks are able to provide adequate bandwidth uniformly around the world, given the explosive growth in Internet bandwidth demand and the amount of the world that is still unwired. Second, the traffic distribution is not uniform worldwide: Clients in all countries of the world access content that today is chiefly produced in a few regions of the world (e.g., North America). This new generation of satellite system manages a set of satellite links using intelligent controls at the link endpoints. Mechanisms controlled include caching, dynamic construction of push channels, use of multicast. and scheduling of satellite bandwidth. 7. BIBLIOGRAPHY [Abdulla] Ghaleb Abdulla, Edward A. Fox, Marc Abrams, "Shared User Behavior on the World Wide Web,"

WebNet97, Toronto, October 1997, http://www.cs.vt.edu/~nrg/docs/97webn et/. [Chen] Chen et. al, "Wormhole Caching with HTTP Push Method for a SatelliteBased Global Multicast Replication System," submitted to the International Cache Conference, San Diego, and June 1999. [Danzig] Peter Danzig, "Net Cache Architecture and Deployment," February 2, 1997. [Gwertzman] James Gwertzman and Margo Seltzer, "World-Wide Web Cache Consistency," http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/vino/usenix .196/. [Gwertz95] James Gwertzman and Margo Seltzer, "The Case for Geographical Push-Caching," Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Workshop on Hot Operating Systems, Oreas Island, WA, May 1995, 51-55. [Habib] Md. Ahsan Habib and Marc Abrams, Analysis of Bottlenecks in International Internet Links, Dept. of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, TR-98-24, Dec. 1998. [iBeam] "Distributed Serving Solutions for Content Providers: An iBeam White Paper," iBeam Broadcasting Corporation, 1998 http://www.ibeam.com. [Intelsat] "SSOG308 QPSK/FDMA: IDR CARRIERS LINEUP," INTELSAT 1998 http://www.intelsat.int/pub/ssog/pdf/ssog 308e.pdf

[Manley] Stephen Manley and Margo Seltzer, "Web Facts and Fantasy," http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~vino/sits.9 7.html/ [SkyCache] "Renovating the Internet: SkyCache White Paper," Skycache 1998 http://www.skycache.com/whitepaper.ht ml. [Starburst] "Starburst MFTP--An Efficient, Scalable Method for Distributing Information Using IP Multicast," Starburst Software [ICE] Neil Webber, Conleth O'Connell, Bruce Hunt, Rick Levine, Laird Popkin, Gord Larose, The Information and Content Exchange (ICE) Protocol, W3C Note 26 October 1998, http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-ice. [Williams] Bert Williams, "Transparent Web Caching Solutions," Alteon Networks White Paper, 1998.