Reporting period - This report covers work completed June 2003 - August 2003

Accomplishments

Work on the scalable and secure peer-to-peer information sharing tool project focused on security and enhancements to the initial prototype implementation.

Work on the security aspects focused on the design and implementation of software components.  Some specific accomplishments include:

• incorporated X.509 certificate support into the scishare application 
• completed initial prototype of Java version of Akenti (in cooperation with the Distributed Security Architectures project) 

On the information-sharing portion of the project, we have continued to work on a graphical user interface and the application logic.  We have added the following functionality to the application and interface:

• enhanced the search result view by grouping results that refer to replicas
• ability to download a file in parallel from its replica locations
• ability to view information on queries posed to the peer by the network
• ability to view information on file transfers to remote peers
• enhanced the management of information in the local database
• • users have the ability to sort the items within a folder by name, size or time of last modification
• enhanced user preferences
• • choose whether to view incoming query and upload information
  • choose number of concurrent downloads
  • choose whether to download in parallel
• security
• • preference panel that allows the user to enable or disable security and register an X.509 certificate
  • ability to secure the transfer of search results and files

The initial software release scheduled for this quarter has been delayed as we are waiting for clearance from the LBNL patent department.

Presentations

• Enabling Secure Ad-hoc Collaboration.  Presented by K. Berket at the Workshop on Advanced Collaborative Environments, Seattle, WA, June 22, 2003. 
• "A Secure and Scalable Peer-to-Peer Information Sharing Tool."  Presented by K. Berket at the National Collaboratory Middleware and Network Research Project Review. Argonne National Laboratory, August 18, 2003.

Publications

• Enabling Secure Ad-hoc Collaboration.  K. Berket and D. Agarwal, Proceedings of the Workshop on Advanced Collaborative Environments, Seattle, WA, June 22, 2003. LBNL-52895.

Workshops and Conferences

• Workshop on Advanced Collaborative Environments, Seattle, WA, June 22, 2003.
• The Twelfth International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing, Seattle, WA, June 22-24, 2003.
• Global Grid Forum 8, Seattle, WA, June 24-27, 2003.

Future Plans (next quarter)

• continue designing the security infrastructure and adding security mechanisms to the implementation
• enhance the user interface and application functionality based on feedback from initial users
• initial software release (pending clearance from patent department)
• begin instrumentation of system characteristics on the Planetlab network
  

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Credits: A Scalable and Secure Peer-to-Peer Information Sharing Tool research and development is funded by the U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Mathematical, Information, and Computational Sciences Division; Support Credits identify the funding sources and the organizational context of the work described in this document.