Understanding internet protocols through hands-on programming ...

NEW BOOKS and MULTIMEDIA/Edited by Ioanis Nikolaidis

T h e New Books and Multimedia column contains brief descriptions of new books in the computer communications field. Each description has been abstracted from the publisher's descriptive materials, minus most of the advertising superlatives, after this material has been checked for accuracy against a copy of the book. Publishers wishing to have their books listed in this manner should send copies and appropriate advertising materials to John Spragins at the address below, with an indication the books are intended for the IEEE Network New Books and Multimedia column. Appropriate books will be listed in the column. Zoanis Nikolaidis Computing Science Department, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2Hl ~~

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Object Oriented Software Technologies in Telecommunications, From Theory to Practice

architecture based on the remote procedure call (RPC), current architectures are distributed due to the availability of distributed object technologies and mobile agent technologies. The target audience is engineers and managers working on the deployment of telecommunications infrastructure and services,as well as researchers in the particular area, with possible appeal to researchersworkingin the area of activenetworks and open network architectures and programming.

Understanding Internet Protocols Through Hunds-On Programming J. Mark Pullen, 2000, John Wiley & Sons, 0471-35626-3, 286 pages, softcover, CD-ROM included Mark Pullen's book is a fairly self-contained introductory

book to the algorithms behind many Internet protocols. The programs are executed on the Network Workbench (NW) which simulates the behavior of an Internet-like protocol stack. The book may be particularly appealing to instructors who wish to complement anundergraduate textbookwith abook that guides students to try proof-of-conceptprojects in protocol programming. Slight changes in the project formulations allow the instructor to provide a wider menu of possible programming tasks. Despite the fact that NW provides a simplified version of Internet protocols (e.g., HDLC, OSPF, and TCP), it appears to be sufficient to illustrate the concepts behind each protocol. It is fair to approach the book for its educationalvalue in understanding

lakovos Venieris, Fabriuio Ziua, and Thomas Magedanz, 2000, John Wiley and Sons, 0-47142379-2,271 pages, hardcover One interesting side effect of European projects, such as the Advanced Communication Technologies and Services (ACTS) family of projects, is the eventual publication of a volume that describes the collective experience on a research topic from a varietyofviewpoints.The collectiveexperienceof the MobileAgent Environments in Intelligent Networks (MARINE) project is described in a book that aims to bridge theorywithpracticalaspectsof buildingprogrammable networks. The programmability discussed in the bookrefers to any form es: Digital Security in a Networked World of programmabilitythat is possible through 00, John Wiley & Sons, 0-471-2531 1-1,412 pages, the incorporation of a middleware layer hardcover (a software layer that hides the specifics of underlying hardware implementations information suggests that the Lorenz code, used to but is also sufficient to provide primitives c traffic during World War 11, was cracked as a result of that programmers find useful,e.g., message passingprimitives).The other ingredient of programmability is the adoption of open interfaces andstandards. What middleware should be composed of, and how it may be implemented are the kinds of issues the book addresses. The chapters are split into three sections. The first section argues about the need for advanced software technologies.The second presents the available software technologies. The final sectiop details a case study for a distributed intelligent broadband network architecture. While it is true that a book of this type may force the reader into an ocean of alphabet soup in acronyms from both networking and softwareengineering, the first two sections are readable with little effort. In particular, the second section reviews existing software technolothc level ofdctail and intcraction an author n c d s toprovidc t o make hiscasc. Schnei gies and is useful to the newcomer in the field. Namely, it presents object-oriented attackers and their design methodologies, distributed object technologies (CORBA in particular), machine-independent code (Java and MHEG), and finally, agents. Each-of the rs. providing jmt cnough information software technologies in motivated in the context of telecommunicationsapplications. in thc iritcrcst of the more advanced reader, for example, The main argument is thatwhereas the intelligent network concept was a centralized

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IEEE Network NovemberDecember2000

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NEW BOOKS and MULTIMEDIA

protocols rather than for writing applications. That is, socketsbased programming is not included in the book. Given the close relation of the example projects to the particular simulator, the accompanyingCD-ROM includesversionsof NW that run on Linux, Window,s and Solaris, while other systems can be supported by porting the source code (included as well). Of the suggestedprojects, a few introductory ones concern installingNW and trying an example topology. The really interesting parts start with data link protocols where bit stuffing, CRC, and ARQ protocols are presented along with a corresponding project for each. MAC protocols are represented by two chapters and an equal number of projects, one on Ethernet and one on token rings. Similarly, two chapters and two projects are related to the network layer, one dealing with shortest path calculation and one with link state updates. The transport layer includes only one project: naturally, building a reliable end-to-end protocol. The pleasant surprise is the inclusion of a project in multicasting,which boilsdownto theconstruction processof amulticast tree. The application layer chapter is accompanied by a list server project. Finally, a packet filtering project represents the security section. The appendices include a glossary, instructions for installing and using NW, and the NW header files.

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ARM System-on-ChipArchitecture, 2nd Edition

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Steve Furber, 2000, Addison-Wesley, 0-201475 194,419 pages, softcover The ideas behind the Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) have influenced the architecture of several processors, including that of ARM processors. ARM processors attempt to achieve

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improved code density over other RISC processors, an area where RISC architectureslag behind CISG architectures.In the age of mobile computing devices, less space, less memory, and simpler architecture are strong selling points. The ARM architecture is at the center of power-efficient computing. ARM processor cores are found today in cell phones, palmtops,and numerous other embedded devices. Steve Furber’s book covers the architecture, instruction set, assembly programming, and support mechanisms for high-level languages and building operating systems. However, several chapters of the book are devoted to the particular features of the ARM architecture and how they can be exploited. One such characteristic of ARM processors is the so-calledThumb instructionset, the specificinstructionset “compression”approach that givesARM an edge over other RISC architectures.Thumbinstructionsare 16bits long.The result is a40percent faster code compared to plain ARM code and, even more important, a 30 percent less external memory power compared toplain ARMcode. TheThumbinstructionset isexplainedindetail, both at the architectural and at the coding level. Next, the particular ways of integrating ARM processors and peripherals are described, explaining the signal processing support one is likely to find in ARM applicationsrunning on mobile telephone handsets. Another property of ARM processors is that they are encountered as processor cores (the instruction fetching and execution mechanism) which can be used for integrating whatever components are necessary to produce the final “system on a chip.” The book covers the followingARM processor cores: ARM7TDM1, ARM& ARM9TDM1, and ARMlOTDMI. CPU cores also exist wherebyprocessor coresare combinedwithcachememory and memory management hardware to form a fairly self-containedCPU. The book covers the CPU cores: ARM710T, ARM720T, ARM740T, ARM810, StrongARM, ARM920T, ARM940T, ARM946E-S, ARM966E-S, and ARM1020E. A chapter is devoted to embedded ARM applications,the VLSI TechnologyInc. Ruby I1Advanced CommunicationsProcessor,and the ISDN SubscriberProcessor by the same company,OneC‘sVWS22100GSMchip, Ericsson-VLSI’s Bluetooth Baseband Controller, the ARM7500 and ARM7500FE single-chip computers (including audio and video controllers), and the SA1000 handheld application system in a chip. The final chapter presents AMULET, a fully asynchronous (and even less power-consuming) implementationof the A R M architecturedeveloped at the University of Manchester.

The Wireless Application Protocol Steve Mann and Scott Sbihli, 2000, John Wiley & Sons, 0-47139992-2, 2 10 pages, softcover The Wireless Application Protocol is in fact a set of protocols forming a protocol stack currently in the early stages of its use as the communication protocol in low-cost low-power mobile devices. The intended audience is nonexpert and general, maybe even new to networking. For this reason, some introductory material is provided to illustrate the technical aspects of wireless communications, describing, among other things, the existing infrastructure and the trend of integrating all kinds ofdeviceswith theInternet. Oneofthemainobjectivesofthe book is to convincethe reader of the business case supporting WAP, and the strategies by which corporations may espouse it. Moreover, the general architecture of WAP-based services is presented, pointingout the need for the differentsoftwarecomponents (from microbrowsers to WAP gateways). Half of the book is a high-level description of the protocols involved in WAP, with numerous references to example applications, actual devices, and software components. The second half is essentially the WML standard. WLM is a markup language,related to HTML and XML, but with the specific intent of being efficient and generally tuned to the capabilitiesof mobile devices. Unfortunately, the book

IEEE Network

NovemberDeccmber 2000