Push Technology

Seminar Report

INTRODUCTION
Push technology reverses the Internets content delivery model.

Before push, content publishers had to reply upon the

end-users own

initiative to bring them to a web site or download content. With push technology the publisher can deliver a content directly to the users PC, thus substantially improving the likelihood that the user will view it. Push content can be extremely timely, and delivered fresh several times a day. Information keeps coming to user whatever he asked for it or not. The most common analog for push technology is a TV channel; it keeps sending us stuff whether we care about it or not. Push was created to alleviate two problems facing users of net. The first problem is information overload. The volume and dynamic nature of content on the internet is a impediment to users, and has become an ease-of use of issue. Without push applications can be tedious, time consuming, and less than dependable. Users have to manually hunt down information, search out links, and monitor sites and information sources. Push applications and technology building blocks narrow that focus even further and add considerable ease of use. The second problem is that most end-users are restricted to low bandwidth internet connections, such as 33.3 kbps modems, thus making it difficult to receive multimedia content. Push technology provides means to pre-deliver much larger packages of content. Push technology enables the delivery of multimedia content on the internet through the use of local storage and transparent content downloads. Like a faithful delivery agent, push, often referred to as broadcasting, delivers content directly to user transparently and automatically. It is one of the internets most promising technologies.

Push Technology

Seminar Report

Already a success, push is being used to pump data in the form of news, current affairs and sports etc, to many computers connected to the internet.Updating software is one of the fastest growing uses of push. It is a new and exciting way to manage software update and upgrade hassles. Using the internet today without the aid of a push application can be a tedious, time consuming, and less than dependable. Computer programming is an inexact art, and there is a huge need to quickly and easily get bug fixes, software updates, and even whole new program out to people. Users have to manually hunt down information, search out links, and monitor sites and information sources.

Push Technology

Seminar Report

2. THE PUSH PROCESS

For the end user, the process of receiving push content is quite simple. First, an individual subscribes to a publishers site or channel by providing the content preferences. The subscriber also sets up a schedule specifying when information should be delivered. Based on the subscribers schedule, the PC connects to the internet, and the client software notifies the publishers server that the download can occur. The server collates the content pertaining to the subscribers profile and downloads it to the subscribers machine, after which the content is available for the subscribers viewing.

2.1 WORKING
Interestingly enough, from a technical point of view, most push applications are pull and just appear to be push to the user. In fact, a more accurate description of this process would be automated pull. The web currently requires the user to poll sites for new or updated information. This manual polling and downloading process is referred to as pull technology. From a business point of view, this process provides little information about user, and even little control over what information is acquired. It is the user has to keep track of the location of the information sites, and the user has to continuously search for informational changes a very time consuming process. The push model alleviates much of this tedium.

Push Technology

Seminar Report

Most push applications require a subscription and an information request profile from the user before they can begin filtering information. They also require the client to poll the server when it is able to accept information. The software initiates the pull accordingly, and the server responds with the information to match the request profile.

PULL VS PUSH

2.2 APPEARANCE
Push information comes to the user in a couple of different forms: Web site subscriptions It is basically a pre downloading service that aims to make users web use become faster and more efficient. The user subscribes to web page that he likes. After the web page is updated, he get sent a notification pulse some of web data if you want, the changed web page and perhaps some of the pages linked to it.

Push Technology

Seminar Report

Channels A channel is a new, non-web-specific way of sending

information to the user. A channel can be a web page, fully interacting application that only depends on the internet for occasional updates, or anything in between. Push information also gets displayed in several different ways. The whole idea behind push technology is immediacy, so push information display tends to get in the user face and grab to him. Here are the major ways pushed information is displayed. Screen savers Introduced by point cast, pushed information displayed in a screen saver was the first winning formula in push technology. If the users screen not being used for anything, fill it with breaking news and information. Tickers Tickers are scrolling strips of information that brings a small but action packed news update area to the users screen. On screen alerts Getting information quickly is really important, to the user wouldnt be using push technology. So, push products include various ways to tell the user that the information has arrived.

Push Technology

Seminar Report

Wall paper and Desktop replacements For some reasons, different push products need to do various

things to do the windows desktop. Microsoft is far from immune. In fact, the internet explorer 4.0 includes far reaching changes to the windows user interface itself. But internet explorer 4.0 onscreen channel displays, called desktop components are not two far out of control. System beeps When downloading is doing, system beeps are produced to inform the user about push content.

2.3

REQUIREMENTS
To use push technology effectively, the user should have a

computer system having the following requirements: A PC compatible running Windows 98 At least a 100 MHz Pentium processor 32 MB of RAM IE 4.0 or Netscape 4.0 200MB or more free hard disk space A 14or larger monitor and video card capable of at least 800x600

resolution.

Push Technology

Seminar Report

3 INFORMATION DELIVERY MODELS

There at least three-information delivery models by which push application can be categorized. These models differ in cost, the ease of use, the ease of integration, the customization capabilities, the brand adherence etc.

Channel content

Channel content

Channel content

Push server

Web server

Push client

Push client

Push client Content agents

Push server

Web server extension

Client agent model

3.1 PUSH SERVER MODEL

The most common delivery model is the push server model. This is a turn- key solution that provides a client, a server, and other development tools. Costs associated with the server may include the number of connections and / or the no of packets sent. Branding may or may not be a issue. A proprietary client is supplied. These applications may use a proprietary protocol.

Push Technology

Seminar Report

3.2WEB SERVER EXTENSION

A closely related model is the web server extensions model. In this model, the push vendor does not buy a server, so the costs are associated with the number of extensions sold. Feed back and demographic information can be directed to an external server so that the push vendor can retain information. No proprietary client is required; these run within the users regularly installed browser.

3.3CLIENT AGENT MODEL

This model does not need to have a server at all, except to update client software and retain user demography. It uses client agents to retrieve information from sites. Each agent is designed to provide different search results. This model can allow for an anonymous relationship between the vendor and the subscriber. Costs are associated with agent customizations. The user is responsible for deployment and controls the search type extensively.

Push Technology

Seminar Report

4 MAJOR PUSH PRODUCTS

The point of entry of push technology for most people is going to be the push capabilities in Internet 4.0 and Netscape Communicator 4.0.But there is still room for specialized products beyond the basic capabilities found in the two browsers. If the user wants pure push products with client software that the user can get from the Internet, that have a set of channel that the user can subscribe to and that dont do anything else, the user has four major players.

Backweb: Backweb has strong capabilities for delivering software as contents. Backweb is improving its somewhat frightening user

well as

interface by integrating the powerful headliner ticker push client, acquired when backweb merged in mid 1977 with lanacom.

Intermind : Intermind communicator is a lightweight product thats

easy to create contents for the company claims that the user can publish his own channel in ten minutes. It also has been adept in striking technology development deals with others.

Marimba : Marimba and its castanet push technology integrate the

hottest software development language, java, with the hottest software delivery mechanism, push. Marimba is among the most storied companies and products in the world of computing.

Point cast :It is the first citizen of the push world, having introduced its

product-the first product to use push technology and first to bring world wide attention to use push. Point cast offers multiple versions of the pointcast network and has become accessible through the pointcast program or internet explorer 4.0

Push Technology

Seminar Report

5 A COMPONENT MODEL FOR PUSH SYSTEM

. In its simplest form a push system consists of producers and consumers of information that are connected through channels. A consumer (receiver) subscribes to a channel and receives any information that is sent on the channel. A producer (information source) sends data through channels. Thus the connection phase of client-server systems is replaced by an early subscription phase. The information source provides new data for a specific channel to the broadcaster. The broadcaster applies filters on the data to limit data transfers and sends the data (in parallel or iteratively) to a set of repeaters (for scalability reasons) for which the filters succeeded. The repeaters then redistribute the data to receivers. For higher scalability, additional levels of repeaters may be necessary. Every broadcaster can send to multiple channels and every receiver can receive from multiple channels. In Fig. some of the arcs representing channels and backchannels cut through components of the transport system to motivate that these components are necessary for scalability purposes but are transparent to the channels and the dissemination process.

10

Push Technology

Seminar Report

Having decomposed a push system into the components in Fig, we will now take a detailed look at the concerns of each component of the component model.

5.1 Channel
A channel is a (logical) connector between a broadcaster and a receiver. It determines the protocols between these components. The most important of these protocols are the channel access protocol and the subscription protocol. Channels provide for many-to-many connections among broadcasters and receivers: each broadcaster provides a set of channels that receivers can subscribe to; each receiver subscribes to a set of channels. Channels are a major distinction between event-based systems and push systems.

5.2 Broadcaster
A push system has at least one broadcaster component that offers channels and distributes channel data to the subscribers of the channels. For small-scale intranet applications one dedicated broadcaster may suffice. For large-scale applications that provide channels to thousands of subscribers it cannot be a single component. For scalability, a specialized broadcasting infrastructure is necessary here.

5.3 Receiver
If we abstract from the transport medium, the broadcaster and receiver interact directly. The receiver has two main components: channel access and user interface. The receiver is the interface that facilitates interaction between human users and channels. It gets channel data from broadcasters and presents it to the user (the user could be human or an application). It allows the user to manipulate, control, and customize the user
11

Push Technology

Seminar Report

profile, the received information, and the channels. According to a channel's defaults and the user's settings the receiver is responsible for updating (received/requested) channel content, expiring channel data, and freeing disk space on demand.

5.4 Transport system

In a large-scale setting, a dedicated transport system is necessary to make a push system scalable and operational, i.e. decrease network bandwidth consumption and increase availability and responsiveness

12

Push Technology

Seminar Report

6 PUSH TECHNOLOGY FEATURES

All push applications share a common set of features and capabilities. This basic feature set includes the ability for the user to create an information profile. The content publisher has a similar capability to define which content to deliver to each use Seamless connectivity This refers to clients ability to connect to the internet. User connect to the internet in many ways such as via an online provider, by using analogue and ISDN modems through direct connections via corporate LANs. The push client application must be able to recognize all these connection with the internet . Seamless means establishing the connection with minimal end-user interaction, or no user interaction in case of unattended operation such as a midnight download. Flexible user configuration This refers to the users ability to schedule connections and allocate resources. On key to making push application successful is to ensure that the user is still in control of his PC, and can configure the interaction of that PC with the internet to provide non-obtrusive collection of information. The publisher or push vendor should provide the user with ability to schedule connection time, length and so on. It should also be concerned with the type of information to be transferred , its size, place of storage etc.

13

Push Technology

Seminar Report

Content customization profile This refers to the subscribers customization of his information profile, and the publishers customization of both the content and the delivery parameters of the contents. From the subscribers point of view, the ability to select topics and sub-topics from a channel publishers or content provider in order to select and filter information for download will be important.

Persistent file transfer This refers to the ability to stop a data transfer at any point and continue from that point when connection becomes available again. This feature is most important when delivering larger files because push application excel at the transfer or rich multimedia, many are designed to go to one step further than the standard information transfer mechanisms such as FTP or HTTP.

Security This refers to the ability to ensure asset integrity and authorship, and also only the intended client receives those assets. It must also be ensured that assets invoked on the end-users system are secure with that system.

Efficient bandwidth usage Client centric: The client maximizes the use of available bandwidth via the use of idle-time downloading. If we use BackWebs software, it uses a technology called polite agent that can use idle time to download files from the server.
14

Push Technology

Seminar Report

Server centric: The server performs succinct and specialized information transfers such as minimal updates the ability to send minimal data by reusing components that already exists at the clientend. One vendor, Marimba, uses message digest 5 MD5 checksum as a distinct signatures for a file. Thus even if two files are named differently, their likeness will be noted and the component will be reused instead of downloading and additional copy. Application protocol This refers to the IP protocol family upon which internet is based. The main protocol transports within this family are TCP and UDP. Although TCP is reliable, it is not timely because its main focus is on making sure that packets arrive at their destinations. It may degrade performance to achieve that goal. UDP cares little about reliability and more about moving packets through the network as quickly as possible. The advantage of push vendor developed proprietary protocols is that they allows some key features to be used persistent file transfer, efficient bandwidth utilization techniques, etc that are much more difficult to implement via HTTP.

15

Push Technology

Seminar Report

7. BENEFITS OF PUSH
Most push products are fun use. Getting all sorts of information sent to the user on a timely basis for free, wrapped up in an attractive package is fun. Some of other benefits are as follows: Push saves time Push technology can save a great deal of time, compared to surfing the web. The user can do something else while the information he need is download to your PC. Then he can surf through the new information at hard disks speeds, ten or more times faster than the web. An hours web surfing can be replaced by a few minutes of push surfing. Push is free Push client software is almost free. And most of the information that the user can tune into using push client software is free as well. User can discover a lot about push and get a lot of value out of it without ever spending a dime. Push is adaptable to Intranets and extranets. Push technology can be quickly adopted by companies and other organizations to get information out to employees (intranets) and other companies such as suppliers and corporate customers (extranets). Both web surfing and using push contribute to the users being well informed, which is valuable in and of itself. Well-informed people have more information available to use in making decision and in conversing with others. Push also gives advantages to the companies that create push software that provide push content. The companies that give away free client software self server software, programs for creating, ads, and anything else that makes that money to other companies.

16

Push Technology

Seminar Report

8. PUSH PROBLEMS
Overburdening the Internet connection. If the user uses a dial-up modem, the user may be connected to the internet for several hours a day downloading push channels. If the user has a network connection, the administrator may be stopping by soon the see the user about overloading the network. Either way, the internet connection handles a lot more data with push and that may cause problems. Annoying the user Too much software is well pushy. It forces information on the user that he doesnt want. Better than being annoying a lot of pushed information is interesting but not strictly necessary. Setup and management hassles. Trying to figure out how to use each push client effectivelywithout overloading the users hard disk, for instance- takes time and mental energy that would really be better spent elsewhere.

17

Push Technology

Seminar Report

9.

CONCLUSION
As the World Wide Web grows in size and complexity the

importance of new information delivery models such as push increases. The push delivery model provides an easy way for end-users to get the information they want from internet, and creates a more effective way for content publishers to reach users. The internet is a great way to deliver timely information, and push technology carries timely content delivery one step further. Push technology helps the delivery of multimedia content on the internet through the use of local storage and transparent content downloads. Traditional applications can be enhanced with push technology by providing an excellent mechanism to deliver new content updates to the end user.

18

Push Technology

Seminar Report

REFERENCES
IEEE COMPUTER MAGAZINE DARWIN www.ieee.org www.marimba.com www.pointcast.com www.backweb.com

19

Push Technology

Seminar Report

ABSTRACT
As the need for internet grows the importance of new information delivery models such as push increases. With staggering volumes of content on the web, users often find it difficult to locate information of interest. In the traditional web environment, the user has to request for a particular piece of information, which will then be fetched from the internet server on which it resides. The browser will request the server to open a connection with the client and display the contents on your browser. This is called pull environment. But in case of push environment as the name suggests it just pushes the contents to users desktop directly, by simply installing push vendors software. Thus a set of technologies referred to as push technology may help by delivering and pushing information directly to our desktop. This technology finds its use mostly in business environment. For big corporations there are communication problems: getting the right information to right hands, to make them know about the current updates etc. This is sometimes viewed as organizations most important and difficult tasks. This can be made simpler using standard push systems

20

Push Technology

Seminar Report

CONTENTS
1. 2. INTRODUCTION THE PUSH PROCESS WORKING APPEARANCE REQUIREMENTS 3. INFORMATION DELIVERY MODELS PUSH SERVER MODEL WEB SERVER EXTENSION CLIENT AGENT MODEL 4. MAJOR PUSH PRODUCTS POINT CAST MARIMBA BACKWEB INTERMIND 5. 6. COMPONENT MODEL FOR PUSH SYSTEM PUSH TECHNOLOGY FEATURES 7. 8. 9. BENEFITS OF PUSH PUSH PROBLEMS CONCLUSION REFERENCES

21