The Globe Distribution Network

The goal of the Globe project is to design and build a middleware platform that facilitates the development of large-scale distributed applications, such as those found on the Internet. To demonstrate the feasibility of our design and to test our ideas, we are currently building a new Internet application: The Globe Distribution Network. The Globe Distribution Network, or GDN, is an application for the efficient, worldwide distribution of free software and other free data. The GDN can be seen as an improvement to anonymous FTP and the World Wide Web due to its flexibility and extensive support for replication. This paper describes the design of the GDN. We start by explaining how the replication facilities of the Globe middleware are used to make the GDN efficient, and how these facilities are implemented. Next, we present the architecture of the GDN and discuss how the Domain Name System can be used as a first approach towards a worldwide service for naming software packages and other entities. This is followed by an analysis of the security requirements for the GDN and measures taken to satisfy these requirements. We hope to make Globe and GDN itself available for free under the BSD license by 2001.