ITR: Fast, Flexible, and Secure Wide-Area File Systems

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal describes a set of new techniques for managing access to remote files in the wide area. The vehicle for evaluating these techniques will be a wide-area file system called MoteFS. MoteFS will provide fast, flexible, and secure access to remote files over untrusted wide-area networks. In more detail, the following mechanisms and policies will be investigated: - fine-grained namespace mechanisms that allow namespaces to be efficiently and securely added, mutated, transferred and deleted at granularities from single files to millions of files. - decomposable credentials, which allow credential holders to locally derive and transfer weaker credentials without contacting file owners. - a cross-server versioning abstraction, which allows correlated versions of a group of files to be referenced even if they span multiple users and file systems. - client-side differencing, which allows redundant data to be eliminated during network writebacks. - wide-area prefetching and caching algorithms. The combined effect of these techniques will allow allow users to interact with their files in a flexible, secure, location-independent manner.