Internet servers, safe-language extensions, and structured resource control

Abstract

The growing role of server systems, especially in the context of the World Wide Web, requires providing flexible and inexpensive mechanisms for accounting for and controlling of resources consumed by individual requests. To a large extent, the Internet server models currently deployed fail in this respect. The focus of this work is to alleviate some problems related to resource management in server environments. In particular, we propose a structured approach to binding threads (execution entities) to resource accounts (abstractions encapsulating rights to using particular amounts of particular resources). The approach advocates separation between protection domains (processes) and resource management; we argue that this is more appropriate for server systems than traditional approaches. Resource accounts address some issues related to trust and to dividing complex requests into separate sub-requests.