| Summary: | In conventional data communication networks, the basic network components are passive; routing decisions are made solely on the basis of packet header information. In contrast, active networks allow added computation within the network through user-defined routing and processing instructions, providing the on-demand installation of powerful software-based network services.
As an adaptation of previous active networks, this thesis presents an architecture based entirely in middleware. By utilising middleware services, the architecture resolves authentication, memory-management, and interconnectivity issues otherwise assumed as inherent, and enables a highly functional multiple-language interface for the deployment of dynamic protocols. After describing the architectural design, an empirical system evaluation is presented with comparisons to both conventional network protocols and a well-known existing active network architecture. Results indicate performance improvements over the existing architecture, and demonstrate the feasibility of a multiple-language active network infrastructure implemented entirely in middleware.
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