Active Networks

Active networks allow individual user, or groups of users, to inject customized programs into the nodes of the network. "Active" architectures enable a massive increase in the complexity and customization of the computation that is performed within the network, e.g., that is interposed between the communicating end points.

The Active Networks Project at MIT was funded by a contract from DARPA from September 1996 through August 2000.

People

• John Guttag
• Stephen Garland
• Ulana Legedza
• Li-wei Lehman
• David Murphy
• Erik Nygren
• Jonathan Santos
• Liuba Shrira
• David Tennenhouse
• David Wetherall

Software

• ANTS, an Active Networking Toolkit. Currently maintained by David Wetherall at the University of Washington.
• PAN, a prototype high performance Practical Active Network.

Papers

• Introducing New Internet Services: Why and How, IEEE Network Magazine, July/August 1998.
• Using Network Level Support to Improve Cache Routing, 3rd International Web Caching Workshop, June 1998.
• A Protocol for Network Level Caching, MIT Master's thesis, May 1998.
• ANTS: A Toolkit for Building and Dynamically Deploying Network Protocols, IEEE OPENARCH'98.
• Active Reliable Multicast, IEEE INFOCOM'98.
• Improving The Performance of Distributed Applications Using Active Networks, IEEE INFOCOM'98.
• Building an Active Node on the Internet, MIT Master's thesis, May 1997.
• A Defense Against Address Spoofing Using Active Networks, MIT Master's thesis, May 1997.
• A Survey of Active Network Research, IEEE Communications (Jan. 1997)
• The ACTIVE IP Option, 7th ACM SIGOPS European Workshop (Sept. 1996)
• Towards an Active Network Architecture, CCR (April 1996)
• From Internet to ActiveNet, a Request for Comments (Jan. 1996)

• See our group publications page for more papers and details.

Pointers

• Active and High Confidence Networks, BAA-9704 from DARPA
• Liquid Software at Arizona
• SwitchWare at UPenn and Bellcore
• NetScript at Columbia
• Active Networking at Georgia Tech
• Smart Packets at BBN

Extensible Operating Systems

• SPIN - a safely extensible OS
• Scout - a communication-oriented OS
• Exokernel - build your own OS abstractions
• NOWs - active messages between computers

Mobile Code Systems

• Java/HotJava - extensible Web browsing
• Telescript - interpreted mobile agents
• Omniware - sandboxed portable RISC code

Network Mobility

• Daedalus - adapting to mobile computing
• Rover - mobile application toolkit
• Nomadicity in the NII