[Vrs-development] Authentication

[Chris Smith]

Been having a bit of a ponder on the old 'infinite' cluster size issue. I 
have a plan, and it involves LDSs pooling connections to the most frequently 
accessed remote LDSs.  That way we can stay within our system imposed 'max 
connections' whilst benifiting from a bunch being 'keep-alive'.  This is a 
departure from GWs current design, but looks like it is easy to achieve. Rah!

So, some questions for yah:

When an LDS wants to talk to another LDS it will need to authenticate in some 
way (We can't have just *any* old LDS taking part in the VRS anonymously!).  

So I'm thinking that perhaps an LDS that asks to join a VRS initialy gets a 
certificate signed by the VRS moderator.  This certificate will be checked 
whenever a new connection is established and rejected if it was not signed by 
the appropriate agent (basically by checking the RootCA perhaps...).


What are peoples views on this?
Any other suggestions?

Goldwater is designed to support various authentication mechanisms as is, 
though there is no code behind any of them yet.

I'm also desperately trying to get pNet linked into Goldwater so we can start 
using C#... and writing documentation for GW.... and holding down a day job 
which is eating up my time..... arrrrrrrrrggggggggggggg :o)

When I've got the pNet skeleton started, it should be straightforward for 
people to extend GWs pnet features as and when required.

Cheers.
-- 
Chris Smith
  Technical Architect - netFluid Technology Ltd.
  "Internet Technologies, Distributed Systems and Tuxedo Consultancy"
  E: address@hidden  W: http://www.nfluid.co.uk