The use of a Java implementation of SLP in a tele-teaching application

One of the areas that is of primary importance in distributed applications is that of the name server and directory service. This area is one that the Service Location Protocol (SLP) addresses. The requirements for a name server differ in performance from the high speed needs of a transaction processing system to the more reasonable needs of a video-conferencing system. It is in this later area that this paper concentrates. For some years UCT has been involved in developing Java based network educational distributed systems including tele-teaching delivery systems, which have required high speed delivery but reliable slow speed access to a naming server. During the implementation of these systems the requirement was found for a fully scalable directory service to permit users to find and connect to the available services with a degree of authentication and security. This paper describes an implementation of SLP in Java, which is designed to be used in this type of application area. The implementation issues, the problems faced and the advantages of scalability are discussed