Every place in the cyberspace got its own look. Its own feel. Its own charm. Just as the look of the places changes, also their properties do. Some systems bet on speed. Others are geared at providing maximum security. When intruding a system one should have a careful look at how it is designed. A procedure or library that is top of the line on one field might be quite bad on another.

There are countless fields. Every machine that is connected to cyberspace got its own one. Just describing the looks of each would be pagefilling. Procedure designers account for that and write their stuff in a way that it adapts to different environments. However some characteristics of the location are still important to know.

These are the Hidden Properties, the Speed of the subsystems, the Error Correction and the Instability. For these 4 sets of values a standard template exists.

Click to open sample field in separate window.

First in the template you can see the name of the system and a short description of its looks.

Next in line is the Hidden Properies. It usually has 2 values:

• ICE Rating: The type of ICE (or Black ICE) that is part of the system's defenses.
• Special Rules: Special rules that only apply to this system.

Second denoted one can find the speed of the parts a system is composed of; or to view it from the other perspective the lack of security measures. A high speed always results in low security. Ideal perquisites for a procedure to run. A low speed corresponds to high security. So it is almost impossible to run a malicious procedure. It might however be possible to overload the security with a denial of service attack. Valid values for speed are none, low, medium, high and extreme.

Next on the template follows the Error Correction. Under certain circumstances the system speeds as noted above can be changed. This can be the result of a virus or also the result of a general instability of the system. The error correction rating of a system determines how fast a system can fall back to its initial state.
Valid values are from 0 to infinity. The higher the faster a system will recover.

Third in the list is the Instability value. As mentioned a system that is under a lot of stress might become unstable. This is especially true if there are many tasks (or procedures) that run on the same subsystem. If this system load reaches a high level the subsystem is forced to react. Either by loosing security and so becomming faster or by tightening security and kicking some stuff out. The values on the template show how extreme a system will react if under 100% load.