Handling Confidential Internet Conferences by E-mail
by Knut Bahr, Elfriede Hinsch, Anne Jaegemann, Lan Wang
Trans-European-Research and Education Networking Association,
1997
Language:
English
Note: 8th Joint European Networking Conference (JENC8), 1997 http://www.terena.nl/conferences/archive/jenc8/proceedings.html
External links
Full text: PS
Abstract
The demand for confidential conferences is increasing, for example on Internet and Intranets. This paper deals with aspects of handling confidential multimedia conferences and in particular pursues a method of utilizing E-mail for this purpose. The approach presented here exploits the inherent possibilities of the MIME standard, which lends itself to define conference specific parts within mails and in particular parts which can automatically be processed locally. This makes it possible to deliver mail which allows the recipients to enter a conference session right from their mail ("active mail"). To exemplify the approach, a Secure Conferencing User Agent (SCUA) has been developed, for managing confidential conferences between authentificated participants. The paper describes the design decisions, the implementation and the use of SCUA and discusses alternatives. Work is underway to make these facilities available for other platforms as well as other mailtools. As an example, the paper describes a first attempt at Netscape Mail.
