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March-April 2002 Home Page
E-Notes Home Page
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"Tomorrow's Internet": A Georgetown Technologist's Advanced Research
Devlan Nocera
How many keys do you have? Chances are you have separate sets for your house, car, office, and desk—some of us even need a key chain for our key chains. Wouldn't it be great to have only one key?
Computer systems can be like that. Having a network login, an e-mail login, a calendar login, a PeopleSoft login, a Blackboard login, and even more login can be inconvenient. NetID has alleviated these problems at Georgetown, but what happens when you guest-teach at another university or collaborate with somebody from another institution? More passwords. Our world of higher education demands a system that will minimize repeated logins while remaining secure. Internet2, a university-led collaboration of government, business, and almost 200 higher-education institutions, is working for just that.
Michael Gettes, Principal Technologist for UIS, is Georgetown University's Internet2 representative. Gettes works in Internet2's Middleware division, helping to steer the Middleware initiative with MACE, the Middleware Architecture Committee for Education. He is also a primary participant in MACE-Dir, the higher education directory working group.
Middleware is, according to the Internet2 Web site, "a layer of software between the network and the applications. This software provides services such as identification, authentication, authorization, directories, and security." 1 In other words, middleware takes the burden of user authentication and authorization off networks and applications, shifting the process to separate software.
Next page—One area of applied research in middleware is the use of Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs).
page 1, page 2, page 3
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