The Emergence of Net-Centric Computing: Network Computers, Internet Appliances, and Connected PCs - Hardcover

Cole, Bernard Conrad

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0138978697 ISBN 13: 9780138978693

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 1999

Synopsis

Presents the challenges facing the net-centric computing industry, including security, testing, maintenance, and reliability. The first section examines the first-generation of net-centric computing that depends on links to more powerful servers on the Internet and Intranet for full functionality. The second section evaluates hardware and software building blocks, the available alternatives, and the necessary technical choices. Section three discusses the need for increased reliability on the desktop, network computer and Internet appliance, servers, routers, and switches. The final section considers the emergence of multimedia on the Internet and World Wide Web, the new architectural choices that engineers will have to make, and the need for a paradigm shift from a graphical to a network user interface. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

About this title

About the Author

BERNARD COLE is Senior Technical Editor, Embedded Systems/Net-centric Computing for Electronic Engineering Times, and a winner of the Distinguished Editorial Achievement Award from McGraw-Hill for a special report on Electronics in the Year 2000. He is author of Beyond Word Processing: Using Your Personal Computer as a Knowledge Processor. Cole resides in Flagstaff, Arizona, and can be contacted at bcole@cmp.

From the Back Cover

* Experience the net-centric computing revolution from the inside!
* Covers every variety of network computing device.
* Clients, servers, and back-end infrastructure.
* Networked multimedia: the future of the Internet.

The traditional PC is history: net-centric computing is the future. But what form will it take? Computing appliances, "connected PCs," Web-enabled set-top boxes, Webphones, Internet-connected wireless communicators, or Java-based network computers? All of them or something else entirely? What challenges face professionals who want to build, plan for, or invest in these new systems? Now, award-winning editor Bernard Cole who covers net-centric computing for Electrical Engineering Times provides an up-to-the-minute birds-eye view of the entire field. He presents every leading approach and reviews all these crucial technology issues:

* Making the Internet scale to support net-centric computing.
* Pros, cons, and alternatives to Java in networked computing devices.
* The role of distributed objects, including CORBA and COM.
* Net-centric operating systems: OS-9000, DAVID, pSOS+, VxWorks, VRTX, PowerTV, Java OS, and Windows CE 2.0.
* RISC and CISC processors: x86, ARM, picoJava, Shaboom, and other alternatives.
* Supercharging I/O: RSVP, parallelism, I2O, and other key strategies.

Cole offers new insight into the make-or-break challenges facing the net-centric computing industry, including security, testing, maintenance, and reliability. He reviews the massive infrastructure and technology enhancements needed to support real-time networked multimedia, including MPEG4, RTSP, VRML, Java3D, MMX and its competitors, and 64-bit processors. Finally, he previews tomorrow's new Web-centric user interfaces, intended to keep users from getting "lost in the Web." With extraordinary breadth and depth, Cole has done what others thought impossible: He has made sense of the net-centric computing future.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0138978697
• ISBN 13: 9780138978693
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 362