RFC 2768 (rfc2768) - Page 2 of 29

Network Policy and Services: A Report of a Workshop on Middleware

RFC 2768          A Report of a Workshop on Middleware     February 2000


   security, and operational tools.  The need for a more organized
   framework for middleware R&D was recognized, and a list of specific
   topics needing further work was identified.

Table of Contents

   Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
   1.0   Contextual Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.0   What is Middleware?  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.0   Application Perspective  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   4.0   Exemplary Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   5.0   Application Programming Interfaces and Signaling . . . . . .  8
   6.0   IETF AAA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   7.0   Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   8.0   Directories  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   9.0   Resource Management  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   10.0  Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval Services . . . 17
   11.0  Network QOS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   12.0  Authentication, authorization, and access management . . . . 21
   13.0  Network Management, Performance, and Operations  . . . . . . 22
   14.0  Middleware to support multicast applications . . . . . . . . 23
   15.0  Java and Jini TM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
   16.0  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
   17.0  Summary  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
   18.0  Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
   19.0  URLs/references  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
   20.0  Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
   21.0  Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Introduction

   This document describes the term "middleware" as well as its
   requirements and scope. Its purpose is to facilitate communication
   between developers of both collaboration based and high-performance
   distributed computing applications and developers of the network
   infrastructure. Generally, in advanced networks, middleware consists
   of services and other resources located between both the applications
   and the underlying packet forwarding and routing infrastructure,
   although no consensus currently exists on the precise lines of
   demarcation that would define those domains. This document is being
   developed within the context of existing standards efforts.
   Consequently, this document defines middleware core components within
   the framework of the current status of middleware-related standards
   activities, especially within the IETF and the Desktop Management
   Task Force (DMTF). The envisioned role of the IETF is to lead the
   work in defining the underlying protocols that could be used to
   support a middleware infrastructure. In this context, we will
   leverage the information modeling work, as well as the advanced XML



Aiken, et al.                Informational