We are going to add compression to our 128 bit SSL streams. This will improve connection speeds on the whole but unfortunately break previous client binaries. In short, members of our current default network before the next upcoming release will have to uninstall, re-download and install the next upcoming client release that supports the new compression feature in order to sign in to our platform. Automatic upgrade is not available for this new release.

Our testings have shown that we are able to improve connection speeds by an average of 5.4 seconds using a common 512KB down stream 256KB up stream broadband line. We are pretty excited about this new improvement and hope that this new and improved technology will help better improve your experience on Hiitch. Therefore as an advance warning, you might want to take this into consideration in regard to your private network implementations of the Hiitch platform.

Do feel free to contact us if you have any questions, collaboration proposals or need better support from us with regard to your own network implementations using our platform.

Hiitch introduces new features for different virtual networks to merge so that their members can communicate with each other while maintaining separate or shared resources such as instant messaging (IM), news broadcast, community live boards and etc. It will allow the administrator to create totally separated virtual networks and/or merging those that may require their members to interact within a single physical server to form a larger network. The main idea is to give a greater degree of control, flexibility and privacy by defining distinct network groups and their resources but still allow members from different groups to mix and match when desired.

Members of virtual networks that are standalone can only communicate among their own registered members and access resources such as IM, news broadcast, community live boards and etc that belong to their own network. Hence these standalone networks are considered totally private and isolated. Shared virtual networks allow access from members of different virtual networks based on separate individual network access control lists. Future developments will include support for these features across different physical servers.

Hiitch now supports virtual networks on a single server. What this basically means is that you can now host multiple distinct desktop social networks on a single Hiitch server. The main advantage of this new feature is sharing and reducing both hardware and bandwidth cost. This new feature is useful when you have distinct social groups which you may want to keep separated without running multiple servers. The cool part about our virtual network feature is that a new network can be added while the other existing networks are up and running at the same time. No reboots, no need to reconfigure or restart the server.

The Hiitch server can accept runtime administration instructions such as adding a new network, removing an existing user and so on while the server is still actively running. These runtime administration instructions are just simple XML files that tells the server what to do when an instruction is issued. Issuing an instruction is as easy as placing the XML instruction file into the runtime instruction folder of the server’s setup directory.

Our New Networking Services

With the introduction of this new virtual networking feature, we are also planning to launch our private network services soon. These services will allow your company/club/organization to purchase a dedicated network from us for a low monthly fee. We will setup and manage everything for you such as hardware, bandwidth, security and upgrade & maintenance. Hence everything is handled for your company/club/organization and there is no effort from your part or the need for any dedicated manpower such as programmers, geeks and administrators. Do let us know if you are interested in purchasing such a service.

Hiitch has now introduced voice mail to our social networking platform. You can now send voice mails to your family and friends right from your desktop. We have also introduced a new voice introduction feature on our member’s profile cards so that you can now listen to what they have to say in person. It is a totally cool feature!

We are also working on introducing VOIP (Internet Telephony) on Hiitch too but we have limited resources to implement it at the moment. Do stay tuned to us as we bring you more fun and interesting technology at your finger tips.

If you use Hiitch and want internet telephony on Hiitch for your family and friends, then give us a shout of encouragement here to work harder for you!

We have described the general server design and threading model in our last article. Today we will go under the hood to explore the engineering details of how data is transferred between the server and the client. On the high level, instruction requests are harvested in sets and queued for processing by the worker threads. The worker threads resolves the XML instruction requests into a set of executable instructions on the server and processes them after correctly authenticating the source. The complexity of this system is based on a simple but advanced communication protocol designed for today’s needs.

Communication Protocol
The communication protocol between the server and the client is in XML. The client aggregates a list of instructions that they want executed on the server and then transmits that to the server. The sequence of the execution is determined by the ordering of the client’s XML request, which is done bottom up. The last instruction at the bottom of the XML request is the first to be executed on the server, followed by the last second and so on. The format of the protocol is not entirely XML based. The protocol divides all the data received or send into two segments. The first segment hold the XML instruction, the second segment hold raw attachments, if any. Attachment segment may hold additional file contents that are not XML based (eg. binary data). The first 8 bytes or 64 bits dictate the total data block size. The second 4 bytes or 32 bits indicates the first segment size, the remaining data belong to the second segment.

This protocol design although simple will allow us to provide a basic mechanism to transfer vast amount of differing types of data depending on the XML instruction request defined by the first segment. You can view the first segment as the instruction manual to process the request or sets of requests and the second segment as any other additional data required to fulfill the request or sets of requests. It may seem that this protocol is nothing special on first inspection but we think otherwise. Many of the protocols used today (eg. web server) are done using fixed Id values and headers which are less flexible and robust. The reason is that these older protocols mainly focuses on the format of transferring data and stopped there. Data that we communicate to each other today demands more than just being transferred but also properly processed to have any real value.

A simple example will be a file transfer using this more advanced high level protocol. The first XML segment can define a file transfer indicating how big the file size is in the attachment, the file name, destination location and etc. The protocol can also handle multiple file transfers in a single request. This will then allow the server to save the file to some predefined location. The XML segment might also define a decompression instruction that will result in the transferred file being uncompressed at the end of the entire exchange. The XML segment might also further define what is to be done with the uncompressed data and etc. This results in a more flexible and robust system that can be self descriptive and automated at a high level.

If you use our work, we ask that you remember to give us the credit that we deserve. Our hope is to develop better technology through open sharing so that future generations can benefit. Research and development for newer and better technology is still in great need as our generation moves towards the digital age, so join us in this fight towards the cutting edge of information technology.