Mícheál Ó Foghlú's Weblog

IPv6 SHIM6 Interoperability Testing with Moonv6 in University of New Hampshire

Over the summer Irish National IPv6 Centre have conducted interoperability tests with Moonv6 in the InterOperabilty Lab (IOL) in the University of New Hampshire: UNH-IOL Tests IPv6 for the Enterprise.

The university lab partnered with the Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland to extend the testing into less familiar territory. This portion of the testing focused on an innovation not possible with today’s Internet called Site Multihoming by IPv6 Intermediation, or SHIM6 for short. Of special interest in financial transactions, SHIM6 is an IPv6-only failover function that kicks in if one side of a link goes down, automatically rerouting the connection without affecting the download in progress.

IPv6 is the successor to the current IP infrastructure that underlies data in today’s Internet and enterprise networks. The new protocol greatly enlarges the pool of IP addresses needed to network new servers, laptops, phones, printers, etc. While some geographies have already run out of IP addresses, it has been predicted that North America will face IPv4 address space exhaustion between the years 2010-2012. IPv6’s increased address space is expected to make better use of emerging technology areas like VoIP, video and various interactive multimedia applications as well.

Other benefits touted for IPv6 include simplified network architecture, an increase in new services, and increased number of network nodes, built-in security, and the ability to "plug and play" devices that are IPv6 enabled. After first getting involved with the protocol in the late 1990s, the UNH-IOL has been actively testing and debugging IPv6 devices on the Moonv6 network since 2003.

This work is related to the EU FP6 IST project ENABLE that looks at many aspects of IPv6 mobility, and promotes suitable changes to the IETF standards.

TSSG Companies

I am often asked about TSSG spin-out companies (companies we have formed to help commercialise some of our research outputs) and spin-in companies (companies who have either re-located to the WIT or have formed here attracted by the link to the TSSG). I have recently added a section to the TSSG website to list these, and give an indication of the new ones in the pipeline. It's just a simple list for now but we'll expand it with further detail, and its liable to be quite dynamic so watch this space!

September is a new year for academics, and making more effort to publicse our research, including the related commercial activity, is top of my list of priorities for the new term. So it's like a new year's resolution.

Zimbie launches beta Instant Messaging client/server for automated IM-"bots"

Another TSSG spin-out company, Zimbie (not fully launched yet), has just released a public beta of their software that allows users to easily setup automated Instant Messaging "bots" (robots to automate tasks). The idea is that what appears to be another friend on your IM buddy list actually talks to a server that performs some task and returns the result as text in an IM chat. The Zimbie client itself can allow the bot to return more complex data than just text, but you don't have to use teh Zimbe client to access a bot, any IM reader will do. The aim of the beta release is to demonstrate the ease of setting up a bot without doing any programming.

The beta release has attracted some attion on the blogosphere: Blognation Conor O'Neill), Cloudlands (John Breslin), KillerStartups, and more.

Nubiq launches mobiseer

One of the TSSG spin-out companies, Nubiq, has recently launched a new product, mobiseer (mobiseer.mobi from your phone), to help mobile users bookmark and tag useful sites. The main advantage is that it is specifically targetted at mobile browsers. This product is in addition to Zinadoo that helps build mobile websites easily.

Here is a good review of the mobiseer beta release from Conor O'Neilmobiseer is ma.gnolia for mobiles.

Simpsonized

So, as I take some summer holidays, I am pleased to report that have been Simpsonized. Thanks to John Breslin. I will return to reality shortly.