Prospero

A tool for organising Internet resources. Prospero allows

each user to organise the contents of remote file servers into

his own virtual file system with his own hierarchical name

space consisting of links to remote objects. Remote indexing

services are made available by treating the results as a

virtual directory. A "union link" allows the contents of the

link's target directory to appear as part of the directory

containing the link. Arbitrary filters can be associated with

links to modify the representation of the target directory as

desired. Prospero directories can be shared between users.

The Prospero protocol is used for communication between

clients and servers in the archie system.

A prototype of Prospero has been available since December

1990. It interfaces with Sun NFS, the Andrew File System

and FTP (with local caching) and Archie. Support for

World-Wide Web and WAIS is planned (1992).

E-mail: [email protected].

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