The Ferret Document Browser
Howard P. Katseff and Thomas B. London
AT&T Bell Laboratories
Holmdel, NJ 07733
Abstract
The Ferret Document Browser is a vehicle for exploring the design and
use of document storage and retrieval systems. Its distributed,
modular structure allows independent information providers to control
their data, yet make use of a common access and billing control
facility. Document images are distributed via a nationwide AT&T
corporate internet which consists mainly of Ethernet networks
interconnected by leased data circuits. The relatively low bandwidth
of this networks is dealt with by compressing the documents for
transmission, and by decompressing pages as requested on the
workstation. A page image can be decompressed and displayed in less
that a half second.
A broadband version of the system makes use of the BBFS broadband file
server, the HPC interconnect, the LuckyNet broadband network and the
Liaison network multimedia workstation. This system allows document
browsing at rates up to 15 page images per second.
The full text of this paper is not available at this time.
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