TCPDF Example 021

10-2006-304 | Knowhow - BARTER: A Backbone Architecture for Trade of Electronic content (A Scalable and
Efficient E-Commerce System)
Dolev Danny, HUJI, School of Computer Science and Engineering, CS - Machine Learning
Available Knowhow
Commercial Advantages:
The BARTER System is a scalable, highly-available and efficient commerce system that facilitates digital content
trade over an open network. It is designed to operate over a large-scale global and heterogeneous
communication network infrastructure. The BARTER protocols address two vital requirements from an
electronic commerce system, neglected from existing systems: scalability and transactional efficiency, without
sacrificing other important requirements such as security, transactional reliability, and auditability. In addition,
BARTER suggests three basic protocols offering different levels of trust. This novelty is two-fold:
1. By distributing signature verification away from BARTER servers, the overhead of online transaction
processing is reduced by orders of magnitude. However, this does not sacrifice strong security requirements,
namely the ability to aggregate transaction commitments and to resolve disputes.
2. BARTER integrates scalability considerations into several system components that are likely to suffer
service degradation in a world-wide setting. These components are the authentication subsystems, the account
management subsystem, and the maintenance of global data (such as transaction identifier lists).
Background:
Most existing suggestions for electronic commerce protocols and electronic commerce systems assume the
existence of a server (or several servers) that process most transactions flowing through the system. This
server has various functions, which vary among the different systems, and include authentication, database
management, transaction processing, assurance of agreement between parties, fraud detection, aggregation
and storage of transaction evidence, and sometimes even assuring an atomic exchange of the items involved in
the transaction.
Yissum Research Development Company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hi-Tech Park, Edmond J. Safra Campus,Givat-Ram, Jerusalem
P.O. Box 39135, Jerusalem 91390 Israel
Telephone: 972-2-658-6688, Fax: 972-2-658-6689
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When transaction processing is on-line, the volume of transactions processed per unit of time is of high
economic importance to the financial institution involved. Some operations performed by current technology
servers are computationally expensive, especially if such operations make use of cryptographic primitives, such
as digital signatures or public keys. It should be noted that the usage of such primitives is inevitable when one
of the basic requirements from an electronic commerce system is the possibility of aggregation and storage of
undeniable commitments for the details of transaction executed by the system. This requirement is highly
important when safety of information stored at the server is at stake and, evidently, needed when parties
involved in the transaction are not trustworthy.
We therefore argue that in most existing electronic commerce systems, such a server is liable to become a
bottleneck, since verifying even a single digital signature per transaction will yield a transaction volume of no
more than several hundreds per second. Nonetheless, an electronic commerce system which aims at assuring
an atomic exchange of items must assume the existence of an on-line server.
In BARTER, we tackle the problem described above in the following manners:
1. Transaction load is distributed among a large number of geographically distant servers, operating at
several domains of the network.
BARTER protocols are based on the asynchronous model, according to which there is no assumption regarding
clock synchronization among the system servers. Moreover, BARTER protocols tolerate server failures and
message omissions; we contend that in a wide area settings, such faults, are liable to occur. BARTER uses are
divided into realms, each realm maintained by a primary realm server. Transactions, spanning several
domains, are coordinated by the corresponding realm server. Specially, the authentication subsystem and
database processing technique apply highly available protocols for coordinating inter-realm transactions.
2. Verification of evidence for the details of a transaction are performed by the parties themselves. The
Online realm server/s assure agreement hold, perform database management, and authentication, all of which
are inexpensive operations which enable raising the transaction volume by several orders of magnitude.
3. Evidence can be stored by the parties involved in the transaction or by the system itself. This factor
implies flexibility when the system trustworthiness cannot be assumed.
BARTER also has several other important properties, required by electronic commerce systems as listed below:
1. Only authorized users can benefit from system services.
2. Properties involved in a transaction do not disclose private information (such as, identity, shopping habits,
etc.) 3. A transaction is processed only when both parties agree over its details and the system has collected
Yissum Research Development Company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hi-Tech Park, Edmond J. Safra Campus,Givat-Ram, Jerusalem
P.O. Box 39135, Jerusalem 91390 Israel
Telephone: 972-2-658-6688, Fax: 972-2-658-6689
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undeniable proofs for their commitments.
4. Items exchanged within the transaction are being transferred atomically. (Either all parties receive the
items exchanged, or none of them do.) 5. All details of transactions processed by the system are subject to arbitration (possibly by human
arbitrator).
6. Assuming a continuous interaction between a user and the corresponding realm server, timely delivery
can be assured. This means that the exchange of items involved in a transaction will take place within a
specified period of time. Contact for more information:
Tamir Huberman
VP Business Dev. Computer Science & IT Director
+972-2-6586678
Yissum Research Development Company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hi-Tech Park, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Givat-Ram, Jerusalem
P.O. Box 39135, Jerusalem 91390 Israel
Telephone: 972-2-658-6688, Fax: 972-2-658-6689
Yissum Research Development Company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hi-Tech Park, Edmond J. Safra Campus,Givat-Ram, Jerusalem
P.O. Box 39135, Jerusalem 91390 Israel
Telephone: 972-2-658-6688, Fax: 972-2-658-6689
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