The anycasting communication paradigm is designed to support server replication by allowing applications to easily select and communicate with the "best" server, according to some performance or policy criteria, in a group of content-equivalent servers. We examine the definition and support of the anycasting paradigm at the application layer, providing a service that maps anycast domain names into one or more IP addresses using anycast resolvers. In addition to being independent from network-layer support, our definition includes the notion of filters, functions that are applied to groups of addresses to affect the selection process. We consider both metric-based filters (e.g., server response time) and policy-based filters.

The wide accessibility of the World Wide Web makes it a perfect base for developing computer science courseware modules. Since learning involves more than just receiving transmitted information, courseware must be interactive and encourage student engagement, which is a challenge on the Web architecture. This article describes an ongoing effort to develop World Wide Web-based computer science courseware modules that will use interactive components as integral parts of the material, in order to promote student involvement. It also discusses the proposed usage of new technology such as HotJava in this framework.