Network Computer Reference Profile (NC reference profile, NCRP) was a specification for a

network computer The Network Computer (or NC) was a diskless desktop computer device made by Oracle Corporation from about 1996 to 2000. The devices were designed and manufactured by an alliance, which included Sun Microsystems, IBM, and others. The devices were ...

put forward by

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

, endorsed by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, ...

, IBM,

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

, and

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was on ...

, and finalized in 1996.

NC1

The first version of this specification was known as the NC1 Reference Profile. NCRP specified minimum hardware requirements and software protocols. Among the software requirements were support of IP-based protocols (

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

, etc.),

www The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

standards (

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

protocols,

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradi ...

file format A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...

security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...

standards.

Operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

s used were

NCOS A non-commissioned officer (NCO) is a military officer who has not pursued a commission. Non-commissioned officers usually earn their position of authority by promotion through the enlisted ranks. (Non-officers, which includes most or all enli ...

JavaOS JavaOS is an operating system based on a Java virtual machine and predominantly used on SIM cards to run applications on behalf of operators and security services. It was originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Unlike Windows, macOS, Unix, or Un ...

. The minimum hardware requirements were: * minimum

screen resolution The display resolution or display modes of a digital television, computer monitor or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is ...

of 640 x 480 (

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the Personal computer, PC industry within three years ...

) or equivalent *

pointing device A pointing device is a human interface device that allows a user to input spatial (i.e., continuous and multi-dimensional) data to a computer. CAD systems and graphical user interfaces (GUI) allow the user to control and provide data t ...

* text input ability * audio output Although this initial NC standard was intended to promote the

diskless workstation A diskless node (or diskless workstation) is a workstation or personal computer without disk drives, which employs network booting to load its operating system from a server. (A computer may also be said to ''act as a diskless node'', if its dis ...

model of computing, it did not preclude computers with additional features, such as the ability to operate either as a diskless workstation or a conventional

fat client In nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers specifically to triglycerides (triple es ...

. Thus, an ordinary

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tech ...

(PC) having all the required features, could technically be classified as a Network Computer; indeed, Sun noted that contemporary PCs did indeed meet the NC reference requirements.

StrongARM

The reference profile was subsequently revised to use the

StrongARM The StrongARM is a family of computer microprocessors developed by Digital Equipment Corporation and manufactured in the late 1990s which implemented the ARM v4 instruction set architecture. It was later acquired by Intel in 1997 from DEC's o ...

processor.

Intel

After a trip by Ellison to Acer Group headquarters in 1996, he realised the importance to industry of having products based on

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

( x86-compatible) processors. NCI president Jerry Baker noted that "nobody orporate usershad ever heard of the ARM chip".{{cite news, author=Guth, Rob, title=Network World, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eBsEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA12, accessdate=7 January 2013, date=21 April 1997, work=

Network World International Data Group (IDG, Inc.) is a market intelligence and demand generation company focused on the technology industry. IDG, Inc.’s mission is centered around supporting the technology industry through research, data, marketing technol ...

, page=12, issn=0887-7661

Options

Many NCs operated via protocols such as

BOOTP The Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) is a computer networking protocol used in Internet Protocol networks to automatically assign an IP address to network devices from a configuration server. The BOOTP was originally defined in RFC 951. While some p ...

DHCP The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a cli ...

, RARP and NFS. Both for

ISP An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privatel ...

-bound and

LAN Lan or LAN may also refer to: Science and technology * Local asymptotic normality, a fundamental property of regular models in statistics * Longitude of the ascending node, one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in sp ...

-based reference implementation NCs, a

smartcard A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...

option was available. This allowed user

authentication Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicat ...

to be performed in a secure manner, with

SSL SSL may refer to: Entertainment * RoboCup Small Size League, robotics football competition * ''Sesame Street Live'', a touring version of the children's television show * StarCraft II StarLeague, a Korean league in the video game Natural language ...

providing transport security. The smartcard also provided minimal local storage for ISP dialup configuration settings. This configuration data was not required for LAN-based NCs.

References

Network computer (brand) Networking standards

NC1

StrongARM

Intel

Options

See also

References