Functional description and engineering of the Dolmen HIB proxy server

The current WWW technology in the Internet is characterised by a number of problems. Performance is poor due to the lack of suitable caching and propagation methods for frequently accessed documents, finding information is difficult since WWW has no built-in directory service. In this paper the functionality of a hypermedia information browsing (HIB) proxy server is described, as well as more details about the way it is implemented. In the European ACTS DOLMEN (Service Machine Development for an Open Long-term Mobile and Fixed Network Environment) project two basic ways have been identified of providing information browsing on the OSAM Platform, that is, the Open Service architecture for a mixed fixed and mobile environment. These are called the gateway approach and the full OSAM approach. It is decided to implement a browsing application based on the gateway approach. The gateway approach involves two subsystems: (1) HIB browser running on the end-user's terminal; and (2) HIB proxy server running on a service node. The objective of the gateway approach is to provide an enhanced Web browsing service for end-users on the OSAM platform. The TINA sessions and stream communication are used between the HIB browser and HIB proxy server.