The Secretary of Commerce Don Evans this week announced a new encryption standard for the federal government, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). AES is expected to be used by businesses and organizations outside of government as well. AES, which replaces the Data Encryption Standard (DES) that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) adopted in 1977, has been in production...

This site, sponsored by Stanford University's Computing and Communications Group, is maintained by Jeff Hodges, Project Manager of Stanford's Enterprise Directory Services Project. It is an annotated metasite designed as a tutorial and aid to navigating resources on the Internet relating to the directory services protocols LDAP (the Lightweight Directory Services Protocol) and X.500. The site...

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), one of the key technologies in the transition to broadband telecommunications, is used to transmit "data, video and voice at ultra high speeds." This home page for the ATM Forum is a good place to learn about the technology and its many applications. For people unfamiliar with ATM, the Beginner's Guide to ATM explains some of the basic principles involved in...

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is one of the most active organizations in developing standards for emerging technologies. At this site, visitors can learn about many different working groups and the process of implementing new standards. Each working group's homepage has an overview of the purpose and scope of the particular standards project, and some offer reports...

The title of this paper immediately brings to mind images of a harmful technology that would change the operation of the Internet. In this case, the term disruptive is used to describe a way to revolutionize the Net and break away from the old adage, "If it's not broken, don't fix it." The proposed technology to accomplish this task is overlay networks. The paper describes the characteristics of...

The Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) is one of the most high-profile operations for the development and adoption of an industry standard for personal computer security. The main participants in the TCPA are Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft. This Web site has many documents written for or about the alliance. The most significant resource is the latest version of the main...