Category Archives: Overview of standards and protocols

As shown in the above diagram 3 Tier Client /Server Architecture is the proposed solution for our social network

Our social network provide 3 main features:

• Anonymity
• Instant massaging
• Live chat

– Data anonymization  

Our application is based on anonymity, which deals with hidden information such as user’s identity. Even though we ask for university email in the registration, just for verification, system will not store users emails in the database. System will use user nickname to identify users. Even the nickname can be hidden from other users by using “stranger” as identification. In addition, End-to-end encryption will be used to avoid IP identification.

k-anonymity: can be used to personalize application users without compromising individual privacy. Personalization can helps to provide better services and to identify their interest or issues.

-Instant messaging

I2P: is a serverless instant messenger provided by QT software. The main characteristic of this protocol is fully anonymous based instant communication. No server can be between 2 user’s conversations. No ISP can log. No information provide about whom the user chats. It is prevents any node between the two users from having access to the chat. So, I2p is ideal instant messaging solution for our social network. In addition, I2p support file transfer between the two parties.

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) can be used as instant messaging protocol for our social network. This protocol is open standard. however, it doesn’t support End-to-end encryption. To overcome this problem, Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) can be used to provide encryption.

– Live chat

VPchat can be used to support live chat room. VPchat protocol uses a TCP connection.

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) it is protocol for signaling media streams. This could be used in our social network to support voice call in conjunction with Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP)

References:

• Sweeney. k-anonymity (2002) a model for protecting privacy. International Journal on Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-based Systems, 2; 557-570.
• Zantout, B., & Haraty, R. (2011, January). I2p data communication system. In ICN 2011, The Tenth International Conference on Networks (pp. 401-409).

• I2p-bote features [online] http://i2pbote.i2p.us
• Neal, L. (1997, November). Virtual classrooms and communities. In Proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work: the integration challenge (pp. 81-90). ACM.
• Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston, A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., … & Schooler, E. (2002). SIP: session initiation protocol.
• Frederick, R., Jacobson, V., & Design, P. (2003). RTP: A transport protocol for real-time applications. IETF RFC3550.
• SIP [online] http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/SIP