In addition to its membership, Netscape Communications is submitting its SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) security protocol to the W3 working group for online security and will be working within the group to develop and standardize future security, authentication and online transaction protocols. The establishment of security standards will accelerate the growth of electronic commerce by creating an open software environment and enabling secure products from multiple vendors to interoperate.
"The W3 Consortium's efforts to set protocol standards are important to the long-term evolution and growth of the Internet," said Marc Andreessen, vice president of technology and co-founder of Netscape Communications. "We are committed to supporting those efforts through our membership and ongoing participation in W3 working groups and advisory board activities. We also hope to accelerate these efforts by proposing open technologies that can be evaluated immediately."
"We are pleased that Netscape Communications is joining MIT and the other consortium members in developing the W3 protocol," said Tim Berners-Lee, director of the W3 Consortium and the inventor of the World Wide Web at the Center for European Particle Research (CERN). "Through such industry participation, we hope to make the W3 protocol compatible, widely used, and useful in a wide range of applications including commerce, education, entertainment, and research."
In September, Netscape Communications announced its first commercial offerings: the Netscape(TM) network navigator and Netsite(TM) server line, high-performance software products for easily exchanging information and conducting commerce on the Internet. The new software products are built on existing Internet standards such as the TCP/IP communications protocol, the HTTP server protocol and HTML document format, and standard formats for handling multimedia data. Netscape Communications is committed to supporting other standards as they evolve and to participating in efforts such as the W3 Consortium to collaborate on future standards.
Netscape Communications products are designed to be fully backward compatible with existing Web browsers and servers. This means that its Netscape network navigator, for example, can communicate seamlessly with the installed base of over 10,000 existing HTTP-based servers, as well as FTP, Gopher, and NNTP-based Usenet (news) servers. Netscape is also compatible with other HTTP-compatible clients, including Lynx, Cello, and NCSA Mosaic and its derivatives. It can display multimedia data in a variety of widely used formats including GIF, JPEG, and MPEG.
Similarly, the Netsite server line is backward compatible with other servers based upon HTTP, including the NCSA and CERN httpd servers. Netsite serves documents based upon the HTML and a variety of other popular multimedia formats. Netsite servers can communicate with the installed base of over 3 million HTTP-compatible clients, including Netscape from Netscape Communications, Lynx, Cello, and NCSA Mosaic and its derivatives.
Using an implementation of RSA Data Security technology that it calls the SSL, Netscape Communications has integrated security into its Netsite Commerce Server and Netscape navigator. This technology delivers features such as encryption and server authentication, enabling users to take advantage of such commercial services as online publications, financial services and interactive shopping. It is this technology that the company has submitted as a security proposal to the W3 Consortium.
Netscape Communications Corporation is a premier provider of open software to enable people and companies to exchange information and conduct commerce over the Internet and other global networks. The company was founded in April 1994 by Dr. James H. Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics, Inc., a Fortune 500 computer systems company; and Marc Andreessen, creator of the NCSA Mosaic research prototype for the Internet. Privately held, Netscape Communications Corporation is based in Mountain View, California.
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