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March 2002
March 2001
March 2000
March 1999
| Report from Research on Super-fast Internet Architecture Technologies | ||
| Research and Survey to Promote Open Networking | ||
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(Report from Research Consigned by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) Introduction Originally, the Internet technologies were researched and developed by computer science engineers of the 1960s, who tried to integrate information processing and telecommunication into a technological foundation upon which they could build systems that would enable exchanges of information among all the "super computers" of those days stationed at the leading institutes and laboratories in the entire U.S.A. Now, after further development over the last four decades or so, the Internet has established itself as part of the information infrastructure that supports the activities of businesses and industries, as well as the lives of people. The Internet provides an environment where digital information can travel, without restriction, all over the world using UP, a globally available telecommunication protocol. The Internet has progressed in several phases so far: globalization by means of IP, spread of the Internet thanks to the WWW technology, and utilization by businesses enabled by business-oriented security technologies. Now, the net is heading for a broadband and ubiquitous networking environment, where Internet connections are faster and always "ON". The Internet was originally an information infrastructure to provide low-quality packet transfer service built upon on the valuable telephone networks. Unceasing technological development and implementations since then, have resulted in the higher-quality telecommunication infrastructure, which is finding its way into common households today. In the years to come, this infrastructure called the Internet is expected to carry many new applications, in addition to voice communications and broadcasting services. Meeting the demand of those up-coming applications of wide-ranging nature, as well as the R&D and further expansion of sophisticated telecommunication infrastructure where new applications can be continuously created and implemented, are crucial in policies related to information and telecommunication in the future. The Internet Protocol itself is expected to cover more networks and devices and thus will include much more nodes(access points) in the near future. This means the demand for security, multi-casting, and other technologies that have been "experimental" so far will experience explosive growth. To satisfy this demand, the Internet Protocol itself has to evolve further. Against such a background, the protocol is taking the next step forward today, from the current Version 4 to Version 6, and should satisfy these new demands. Digital communication and business models that use the net have progressed from an original peer-to-peer model (B-to-B) to a client-server model (B-to-C). Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, a new enlarged peer-to-peer model (C-to-C) has been under development. For years to come, many new business models are expected to spring up out of this new peer-to-peer networking, and such new models can reshape the industrial structure. This report, based on the background and recognition of the future of the Internet as described above, summarizes and illuminates issues including: a brief history of the transformation of the Internet architecture, basic access technologies, super-fast IP transfer technology, size of the market for IPv6 technologies and policies intended to spread this new version of IP, trends with R&D efforts to create next-generation applications that are to run in the new broadband global Internet, and R&D test beds that verify and evaluate such applications. Contents
Outline
Chapter 2 Access Technologies
Chapter 3 Super-fast IP Optical Network Technology
Chapter 4 Applications
Chapter 5 Trends with Development of Research and Educational Test beds in Europe
Chapter 6 Marketability of IPv6 and Measures To Spread It
Chapter 7 Conclusion Chapter 7 Conclusion The 21st century will see the establishment and expansion of broadband and ubiquitous digital information infrastructure. The traditional Business (B)-centered client-server model will be overshadowed by new peer-to-peer systems that truly utilize the characteristics of the Internet, namely, its end-to-end model, interactivity, and globalism. In this coming environment, PCs, which have so far been the main players in information and communication systems, will be replaced by informational household appliances and mobile devices. These new devices are something that Japan leads the world, in terms of technology. Still, these devices will be required to handle digital information that are essentially different from that of the conventional consumer electronics and mobile devices. Japan cannot afford to take for granted its leadership in the field of conventional consumer electronics. Thus, the nation needs to consider how to conduct R&D activities to develop these open and general-purpose consumer and mobile devices. The expected spread of the new end-to-end model and further progress of digital information processing technologies should result in the distribution of digital information as a C-to-C model. It is, therefore, crucial to promote strategic R&D activities in order to develop and spread element technologies that are essential to this model. All of us at the Committee sincerely hope that this report will be of some help to the readers with respect to R&D activities of the technologies that will form the foundations of the society, lifestyle, and industries of the 21st century; especially the future development of, and policies related to, IPv6, a technology for the next-generation Internet.
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| Report from Research and Survey on Semantic Web Technologies | ||
| Where They Stand Today, and Where They Are Heading for | ||
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Introduction
Many nations of Europe and North America are busy developing new Web technologies that might radically change the nature of the coming society with higher information processing. These technologies are called gsemantic Webh technologies. Semantic Web can be used for any type of information, including physical substances, hardware, software, functions, etc., and the agent can process such information autonomously and automatically, responding to simple instructions from a human user. Semantic Web offers dramatically more convenience and efficiency to the society and households, since it automatically processes simple, monotonous work on the Internet which is currently performed by human users. Many national governments of Europe and North America are providing grants to R&D projects for semantic Web, and such projects will inevitably involve consideration of the establishment of international standards for semantic Web. If this situation goes on unaddressed, those nations might determine all the international standards for semantic Web without the inclusion of Japan. To prevent this from occurring, Japan should begin R&D efforts soon, and commit itself to the development of international standards for this new technology. One new business after another is springing up in Europe and North America, taking advantage of results from the semantic Web R&D projects. If Japan does not act, the nation will fall disastrously behind in this information technology and will become a land devoid of this line of business. Being aware of this critical situation, this report intends to identify the issues and future directions of semantic Web by exploring the latest trends with standardization of this new kind of Web at W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), a major standardization organization of Web technologies, and with semantic Web R&D activities in the U.S. and Europe. Contents
Chapter 1 Semantic Web Technology Outlined
Chapter 2 Why Japan Should Develop Semantic Web
Chapter 3 What Can Result If Japan Ignores Semantic Web
Chapter 4 Survey of Trends with W3C's Standardization Related to Semantic Web
Chapter 5 Trends with R&D Related to Semantic Web in the U.S.
Chapter 6 Trends with R&D Related to Semantic Web in Europe
Chapter 7 Issues and Future Directions of Semantic Web Glossary
Appendix I: Replies to FAQs
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| Guidelines for Applying RM-ODP and UML Profile for EDOC | ||
| With the Focus on Enterprise Modeling | ||
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Introduction This document describes open distributed processing and enterprise system modeling. Many people may wonder what brings, open distributed processing and enterprise system modeling, together. Some may also think that it is strange for an organization like INTAP to be dealing with modeling. First, allow us to describe open distributed processing. Being "open," such distributed processing cannot be closed to any definite organizations or corporations. It is meant to operate across organizations and businesses. This in turn means such processing has to have its protocol, interface, behavior (business processes, etc.), security, systems management, and other regulations (or policies) all written to be gopen,h i.e., described in compliance with standards understandable to third parties. Otherwise, it would be necessary to design and develop nC2 (n is the number of enterprise systems involved) kinds of conversion / software in order to, for instance, add some software that adds new value to existing enterprise systems or create a system that unites multiple enterprise systems. Although similar arguments existed in the OSI era, gstandardsh become the key to reducing some extent of its complexity, from O(nC2) to O(n). Response to complexity by applying a standard Next, modeling of enterprise systems. The modeling of an enterprise system has been processed at the upper stage of the development of the system, to analyze and arrange its requirements. Then, based on the results, the system was developed to produce the maximum results in a specific environment. In this kind of modeling, the concepts, model elements, description method, development methodology, etc, differed depending on the specific enterprise system and the project. Furthermore, such modeling allowed the system to grow much larger and much more complex as the organizationfs / corporationfs operations grew larger and/or more complex. Such a large scale and complexity made it hard to grasp the whole picture of the enterprise system development work and projects. The loss of understanding of the whole picture has so far caused many different problems. Hence, it is desirable to create a model of enterprise systems that is compliant with the relevant standards, and understandable to third parties. Open distributed processing and enterprise system modeling, therefore, have deep connection in terms of standard description of external specifications. INTAP has thus prepared the guidelines, which will be helpful in solving the two problems of complexity and interoperability, and in applying open distributed processing to enterprise system modeling. As part of the preparatory work for the guidelines, we conducted gResearch on Modeling Methodology and Software Designing for Distributed Applications,h appended to this document. We hope this will provide you with helpful comparative information. Contents
Chapter 1 About This Guideline
Chapter 2 Open Distributed Processing Modeling Technology
Chapter 3 Guide to Model Creation
Chapter 4 Requirements of Application Support Tools Chapter 5 Positioning within the Development Process Reference Documents Appendix: Modeling Methodology for Distributed Applications
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| Guideline for Selective Use of iDC | ||
| Introduction | ||
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Originally developed in the U.S., Internet data centers (to be referred to as "iDCs" hereafter) have spread worldwide in an extremely short period of time, thanks to the expansion of Internet services and the universal appeal of the Net. In Japan today, we are seeing the emergence of sixty to seventy iDC businesses, both large and small. In the U.S., iDCs were originally intended to reduce running costs by large-scale intensive management of servers and data storage, and also provide advanced security and secure connectivity. In addition to these, the integration of many vendorsf servers enabled the exchange of data among corporations within an iDC and, furthermore, allowed the provision of business models created in the iDC. Meanwhile in Japan, the governments(national and local) are considering and/or trying to provide administrative services to the general public and allow the procurement of supplies over the Internet. In those cases, the information systems have to satisfy two contradicting demands: while they need to manage information handled by national and local governments, at the same time, they need to publish such information openly to the general public and businesses. A practical solution currently proposed for this problem is using iDCs as a mediator. With iDCs bearing more responsibilities as part of the infrastructure that influences peoplefs lives and activities of corporations, iDCs come to serve a greater variety of services with more diversity of service levels. At the same time, it is becoming harder, both technologically and financially, for an iDC provider to independently provide all the services required. Many providers are now sharing services among themselves to avoid and handle various risks, and utilize the services of expert consultants, to cope with the rapid progress of technologies. From the standpoint of an iDC user, it is already very hard to choose the right iDC from so many providers. One might make the error of subscribing to a full-service iDC (at a hefty rate) when a simple limited-service iDC(at a much lower rate) would have sufficed. Or someone in need of an iDC with high security(e.g. for the protection of customer information), may wrongly sign-up with a service provider where information can be accessed freely by unspecified users. Meanwhile, some have forecast in the U.S. that 80% of corporate information will be based on iDCs by the end of 2003. And in Japan as well, many systems integrators (SIers) will soon select the right iDCs for their purposes, and build their customer information systems using these iDCs. Since this Spring, being aware of these situations, INTAP has been surveying iDCs from the viewpoint of a SIer and trying to define some criteria for choosing the right iDCs. Though covered by the single term of giDCs,h they are in reality highly diversified in their size and scale of operations; from facility-oriented iDCs that use huge-capacity lines, to those integrated-service providers that offer applications as well. For this reason, it would take many months of research to cover all of these variations. Yet such a longterm undertaking can become easily outdated by the time the results are produced. Thus, at the risk of insufficient coverage and limited research, we have decided to present this incomplete guideline to help the readers choose the right providers of basic iDC services. Though this guideline mainly supposes SIers as its target readers, we believe it will also be helpful to ASPs and systems divisions of corporations and bureaus that use iDCs. We hope our member corporations, as well as government bureaus (national and local) and private businesses, will find this guideline useful. March 2002 Masahiro Honda, Chairman, iDC/ASP Committee Guideline to Selective Use of iDC Contents
Chapter 1 What Is an iDC?
Chapter 2 Structure of This Guideline
Chapter 3 Facilities
Chapter 4 Connectivity Services
Chapter 5 Housing Services
Chapter 6 Hosting Services
Chapter 7 Storage Services Glossary
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| Report from Research and Survey on Content Distribution Technologies | ||
| Introduction | ||
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Sources from Japan's IT Strategy Headquarters say the number of households connected to the Internet through what is called broadband networks, including ADSL, cable TV networks, fiber optic connections (FTTH), and others is approaching 3 million in Japan as of November 2001. In terms of the telecommunication infrastructure, the number of lines able to be provided totals at some 90 million. This figure far exceeds that of the number of households in the nation in 2000, 47 million. The nation is ready for the proliferation of continuous (always "ON") broadband Internet services.
In the U.S., some 10 million households in total are believed to be connected to the net via ADSL, cable TV, and fiber optics. A survey conducted on how those households use the Net, revealed that more than half of the households enjoy music and videos downloaded from the Internet.
For content distribution over the Internet to expand, in addition to mass production of contents, efficient production in small quantities of many different contents and systematic management of such contents are essential. A great diversity of contents should be produced to meet the individual users' tastes and be distributed to suit their device environments. Also necessary are advanced methodology of information compression to prevent network congestion and efficient distribution systems that distribute the traffic to prevent concentration of load on the servers. This report is meant to be the first step toward the goal of enabling the Japanese society to understand better, this new field of content distribution over the Internet. The committee hopes the report will be of some help to the progress of the content distribution industry in Japan, as well as to the Japanese society in general, as it moves toward a society of information technology.
March 2002 Content
Chapter 1 Generation
Chapter 2 CDN
Chapter 3 Making Profits Future tasks Conclusion Glossary Conclusion
In the entire Internet-related business market, the content-related businesses should gain more and more weight in the future. They will, without doubt, be the mainstay of the market.
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