The Ubiquitous Web: A Position Paper Donald S. Retallack The Boeing Company February 2006 Prepared for the W3C Workshop on the Ubiquitous Web Boeing is the world's leading aerospace company and the largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft, with capabilities in rotorcraft, electronic and defense systems, missiles, satellites, launch vehicles and advanced information and communication systems. Our reach extends to customers in 145 countries around the world, and we are the number one U.S. exporter in terms of sales. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., Boeing employs more than 153,000 people in more than 67 countries. Boeing is organized into four business units: Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, Boeing Capital Corporation and Connexion by BoeingSM. Supporting these units is the Shared Services Group, which provides a broad range of services to Boeing worldwide, and Boeing Technology, which helps develop, acquire, apply and protect innovative technologies and processes. Boeing has been heavily involved with the Web since the early 1990’s, using the Web extensively in our products, processes and services. Boeing is a member of the W3C but is not a Web R&D originator. Rather, we are interested in Web developments that can assist us in advancing aerospace design, manufacture, service and support. We see the ubiquitous Web as a progression in our already large capabilities. Because of Boeing’s global manufacturing, aviation and space experience, we suggest three interlinked use case topics that might not otherwise be raised by Workshop attendees. 1. Location. Ubiquitous means present everywhere. We see a need to extend the usual concept of the World Wide Web in two additional ways, both eliminating confinement to fixed ground locations: (i) Rapidly moving users: This means agile applications extensions to discover and bind resources as the connection changes, drops or re-attaches. In military applications, there may be hundreds or thousands of Web devices and they can move very quickly. Ubiquitous wireless connectivity requires rapid connection, management and maintenance of network applications. (ii) The Web above 10,000 meters: Connexion by Boeing is bringing the Web to commercial and business airplanes. The Web has been, and will be used on near earth and planetary missions. Protocols for an Interplanetary Internet have been proposed. Very large network latencies are the norm. 2. Security. The ubiquitous Web must deal with requirements for security at many levels. Recent concerns with terrorism, privacy invasion and eavesdropping emphasize that the Web must do a better job at protecting users, particularly as the movement to wireless networks increases. But enterprise information protection, and regulatory requirements, mean slightly different needs. Boeing operates globally, often with requirements to share sensitive or export-restricted information with partners and suppliers. We are migrating to an information architecture where all devices are treated as "foreign" all the time, requiring federated security that is not intrusive. Some key drivers are: THEN ==============> NOW Static, long-term business Dynamic, global business relationships partnerships Assets protected by Internal and external threats perimeters from external amplified by cross-enterprise threats requirements Traditional computing environment Mobile and wireless devices used by an office-based used by a virtual workforce workforce Data relies on operating system Data exposed by XML, web services controls and applications for and grid computing environments protection We see a need for increased security technologies and techniques that depend not on centralized authentication and authorization services but on federated trust relationships. Particularly difficult may be authentication/authorization of Web applications (rather than users). 3. Devices. New devices offer challenges for the ubiquitous Web. Multiple human readable display formats are the usual targets for alternate representations of Web information, from cell phone, PDA and tablet to laptop, desktop and multimedia HDTV. However, in many environments (eg. factory) there is a need to accommodate printing, plotting, scanning, imaging, audio, intelligent tooling and many different sorts of sensors. The ubiquitous Web will be most valuable when it allows things to talk to things, using common languages. We expect airplanes to be part of a factory network as they are assembled, then seamlessly transition to daily operation using the World Wide Web. For our enterprise information infrastructure, we also have an ongoing strategy to reduce complexity by getting application footprints off the desktop onto a Web-based or thin client.