The Stanford InfoBus and Its Service Layers: Augmenting the Internet with High-Level Information Management Protocols

The Stanford InfoBus is a prototype infrastructure developed as part of the Stanford Digital Libraries Project to extend the current Internet protocols with a suite of higher-level information management protocols. This paper surveys the five service layers pro vided by the Stanford InfoBus: protocols for managing items and collections (DLIOP), metadata (SMA), search (STARTS), payment (UPAI), and rights and obligations (FIRM).