Security

Allowing any client on the Internet to establish a connection to the server process may make some users nervous. In light of the fact that security and authentication technology is ever-changing, IMPI is designed to have a modular and upgradable authentication scheme. This scheme is described in Section 2.3.3.

Rationale.Security has become a real concern for all users of the internet. With the wide-spread popularity of network scanning tools, an open TCP/IP port on the server node is liable to be discovered by a malicious user, and potentially exploited (especially if the same port is used repeatedly). Many other meta-computing systems offer some form of authentication, ranging from a simple key to more complex protocols to protect against such occurrences. (End of rationale.)