infoworld: Universities tapped to build secure Net
The US National Science Foundation has announced it will fund MIT's IRIS distributed hash table project.
The joint project, dubbed Infrastructure for Resilient Internet Systems (IRIS), aims to use distributed hash table (DHT) technology to develop a common infrastructure for distributed applications. [...] Like in peer-to-peer networks, there is no central server in the system that contains a list of where all the data, or files in the cabinet, are located. Instead, each server has a partial list of where data is stored in the system. The trick for the researchers is creating a "lookup" algorithm that allows the location of data to be found in a short series of steps. [...] The NSF launched the project with a $12 million research award to MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, the International Computer Science Institute, New York University, and Rice University in Houston. The award is spread over five years, and at the end of that time period, the research team hopes to have a system in place, Kaashoek said. - Infoworld, Universities tapped to build secure Net.