Active network approach to the design of secure online auction systems

Online auction systems require high-speed bid transmission, large bandwidth and maximum bid security. Most current implementations of online auction systems perform all the auction operations on the auction server without any support from the network. This results in a large number of bid collisions, thus reducing the performance. Furthermore, many current implementations do not provide security measures such as client authentication and authorization, bid validation and bid data encryption.; Active Networking is a new networking paradigm that inserts intelligence within the network by offering dynamic programming capability to network routers as well as to packets traveling in the network. The result is a more flexible and powerful network that can be used to speed up the deployment of applications.; This thesis presents a novel approach to the design of secure online auction systems using active networks. The goal of this design is to develop efficient and portable quality of service mechanisms to perform a variety of auction system tasks in a secure manner. The thesis discusses the system design model and its implementation on an active network test bed. The utilization of active network technology accomplishes several enhancements such as reduction in number of bid collisions, better server utilization, distribution of the security process, adjustment of the server bandwidth and enabling of distributed monitoring the auction rules. Performance results from experiments on the test bed validate many of the advantages of the proposed approach.