IPv6 Wireless Internet Initiative

The Road Warrior offers an IPsec based secure connection for nomadic users connecting to the network on different points of attachments with different IP addresses. While the majority of IPsec implementations provide security between two IPsec gateways (tunnel mode) or two IPsec clients (transport or tunnel mode), the Road Warrior is an extension for the provision of security between a client and a gateway, using the IPsec tunnel mode. The term Road Warrior more specifically identifies the IPsec client itself, but specific functionality is needed for the Road Warrior on both sides of the security association, on the client as well as on the gateway side.The Road Warrior developed within 6WINIT is an IPv6 based extension to the IPsec implementation from FreeS/WAN and consists of both, client and gateway code for Linux systems. In 6WINIT the Road Warrior has been used for securing nomadic clinical and home environment applications, in principle it would be adequate for securing any nomadic application running over IPv6 on Linux systems.

The GANS system is a real-time telemedical system for acute consultancy in medical emergencies. The concept was conceived by RUS- and 6Winit- partner UKT, Universität Tübingen and technically designed and implemented by RUS. While applicable also in a WAN context, in 6Winit the GANS concept was applied to an ambulance-to-hospital consultancy scenario, i.e. to the specific 6Winit technical goals, i.e. Mobile IPv6, MIPv6. Using results from other 6Winit partners, the Linux-based MIPv6 component is provided by Ericsson, the audio system was delivered by TZI, Universität Bremen. Tests and demonstration were successfully carried out between Tübingen and Düsseldorf (IST2001), Tübingen and Washington (INET2002) and forthcoming in Stockholm (final review at the Ericsson UMTS testbed). A preliminary study performed in the realistic patient simulator environment of UKT showed from a medical point of view an increase of patient outcome by 50 %! It should be also mentioned, that GANS is a fairly generic application of the type ''real-time communication and data acquisition between a vehicle and its base station'' in 3G and B3G networks.

This implementation of a tunnel broker is based upon the IETF RFC 3053 ''IPv6 Tunnel Broker'' by A. Durand et al, January 2001. A tunnel broker is a mechanism to aid deployment of interconnected IPv6 devices and networks in a predominantly IPv4 world. The key elements of a tunnel broker are the tunnel broker web server, which receives web requests from users who require a tunnel service (passing back a script to set up one end of the tunnel) and the tunnel server, which creates the remote endpoint for the tunnel from the user. This tunnel broker is implemented on FreeBSD, based on open source components. The web server is Apache2, which is by default IPv6-enabled, the IPv6 tunnel server communication uses openness, while the tunnel parameters and data are held in an IPv6-enabled OpenLDAP database. The implementation is one of only a handful of tunnel broker implementations available. The current most popular application of the result is to provide tunnelled IPv6 services from the university IPv6 network to staff or students in their homes, when mobile, or in their (student) halls of residence. The broker is being made available in other projects, including 6NET (www.6net.org).

During the 6WINIT project, ETRI implemented an IPv6 multicast based video/audio conferencing tool, HVCT (High-quality Video Conferencing tool) which is based on the MPEG video and audio codec. HVCT uses an MPEG-4 codec for video encoding and decoding and an MP3 (MPEG-1 audio layer 3) codec for voice data encoding/decoding. Also, HVCT supports an IPv6 multicast as well as unicast communications for the conferencing work. HVCT uses a Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) [RFC1889] and MPEG-4 video on the Windows 2000 operating system with SP1 (Service Pack 1). It also allows users to monitor the traffic per participant basis and has an adaptive bandwidth control (Frame Rate control) according to the network status. The HVCT software has been released by ETRI in 2002 and is available at http://www.6neat.net/hvct/.

The TZI-Gateway is a signalling and media gateway for both SIP and H.323 with support for IPv4 and IPv6. It enables implementations of SIP and H.323 based conferencing systems in different network layer domains (IPv4 and IPv6) to interoperate. The gateway also provides content adaptation features and media transport enhancements such as adding error resilience to media streams. These features allow for different interesting application scenarios such as multimedia communication between IPv4 and IPv6 endpoints, transparent trans-coding to accommodate otherwise incompatible system capabilities and conferencing services such as media mixing. The media adaptation services are especially useful for wireless environments where individual participants of a conferencing session that reside on potentially low-bandwidth wireless links with higher bit-error-rates, require an adaptation of the media stream in order to participate in a conference. The SIP-proxy is compliant to RFC 3261 and provides SIP-proxy and SIP-registrar functions. The SIP-proxy is interoperable with a broad range of IPv4 and IPv6 based SIP implementations and can be configured as a standalone proxy/registrar for a domain and as an IPv4/IPv6 translation gateway. The integrated media processor can process the RTP streams of multimedia conferences and can apply media trans-coding and other adaptations, e.g., in order to provide more robust audio transmission or to mediate between incompatible end-systems. As an example for a media transport enhancement, the gateway supports audio redundancy coding (RFC 2198) in the media processor. Since most (commercial) endpoints do not support this mechanism, it can be provided by two gateway systems that are configured accordingly. For example, two gateways, each of which is responsible for a certain SIP domain, could be configured to use audio-redundancy coding for all calls between these domains, e.g., in order to bridge an unreliable wide-area network. Due to the integration of regular SIP registrar and proxy server functionality, the gateway can be operated as a general purpose SIP proxy that can - if required - provide protocol translation and media adaptation. This is an important property, because a growing heterogeneity of SIP endpoints can be expected in the future: The currently installed base of endpoints mostly supports IPv4 only. However, IPv6 endpoints implementations begin to emerge, and not all of them can be expected to be multi-protocol-capable. For operating such a heterogeneous environment network it is advantageous to have one SIP domain that is served by one proxy/gateway supporting both IPv4 and IPv6 endpoints. The gateway software has been released by TZI in 2002 and is available at http://www.dmn.tzi.org/software/tzi-gw/.

The WLAN (802.11b) based positioning is able to locate objects carrying WLAN equipment at an average accuracy of 2 meters. The method is most appropriate for indoor use where GPS satellite positioning is not available. Compared to other indoor positioning methods WLAN positioning has the benefit of not requiring any specific infrastructure or hardware - a normal well-designed wireless network is enough. The accuracy is not sufficient to function as the only navigation method for example for an autonomic robot, but is well enough for many location dependent services indoors e.g. in offices, industrial plants or public buildings. In some cases its usage area can be expanded also to outdoor use, e.g. to city centres. So far WLAN positioning has been used as part of a navigation tool (i.e. a map service), to facilitate location enhanced communication between people (i.e. Presence and Location Instant Messaging platform developed by Telematica Institut) and as part of a location aware service (i.e. home environment).

This description of results summarises two clinical applications: an electronic health record server and a DICOM image viewer for portable hand-held devices. The electronic health record server developed by University College London comprises a set of Java middleware components interacting with an Oracle database, for storing, retrieving and interrogating any arbitrary clinical information. It conforms to clinical and medico-legal requirements, and its internal reference model conforms to the CEN standard for EHR Communications. Its design team have contributed to a decade of EHR research, through several EU Health Telematics projects. The record server is operational at the Whittington Hospital in London, supporting anticoagulation, chest pain and heart failure outpatient services. Through the 6WINIT project its architecture now supports access via wireless IPv6.The DICOM image viewer can allow doctors to access medical images on their handheld equipment. The Java language has been chosen for the implementation. Its portability between multiple PDA platforms and ease of integration with Jini/Jiro technology were the most important advantages. It allows users to display and zoom DICOM examinations, view DICOM textual tags and mark annotations. The communication with the server is realized using HTTPS protocol running over IPv6 giving secure data transfer and authentication of both participating sides. The application has been integrated with existing NetRAAD system running in John Paul II Hospital in Kraków and intensively tested.

Voice is the application that has become necessity of life and has become part of citizens� day-to-day life. Voice application across the network is one application that people need, independent of other applications. Voice across IPv6 was a matter of research and development from major companies promoting IPv6 technology. Finally, TELSCOM A.G in Switzerland has solved the problems related to Voice over IPv6 and has released the Beta version of VoIPv6 application based on Session Initiated Protocol (SIP). The application has been named as 6VOICE and is made available for public use and has been launched on the companies website. The same was also tested with video signal, so that our application and basic software can be configured for point-to-point videoconference. Telecom is interested to have licensing agreements with interested service providers for exploiting the salient features of 6VOICE application.

The UK6X is an IPv6 Exchange. Its main purpose is to facilitate and assist with the interconnection of IPv6 networks. The actual exchange of data between the various interconnecting organisations is done via a switch. Routing could follow the data but to achieve complete interconnectivity this would require a complete mesh of BGP peering. This is not a scalable solution and so a route server has been introduced. A route server is a device that all interconnecting parties peer with. The route server combines all the routes and advertises them to everyone. Upon receiving the complete combined routes they are filtered to delete routes where commercial agreements to exchange traffic are not in place. A route server therefore has numerous advantages: makes the exchange scalable; reduces the complexity of BGP peering; largely separates the commercial peering arrangements with the technical interconnection. The exchange of data between two parties now relates to altering filter lists rather than establishing BGP peering. It should be noted that a route server does not add to the BGP hop count between two parties i.e. it is a zero hop element. To simplify the use of the UK6X further, numerous access mechanisms have been introduced: Native IPv6 over ATM at Telehouse UKNative IPv6 over ATM interconnected to the TEN 155 networkIPv6 tunnelled over the global IPv4 Internet. The tunnelled access is via a firewall to protect the exchange from attacks from the IPv4 Internet. The tunnelled access also involves some additional configuration of BGP via the next hop and multi-hop attributes. Overall, the UK6X eases the interconnection of IPv6 networks by providing a number of access mechanisms and simplifies the route advertisement process via the introduction of a route server. Public members of the UK6X to date include: UK6x, BII Group, Caladan Communications Ltd, KORNET, SpaceNet, Korea Telecom, Andrews & Arnold, Dataline Software, FCCN, Rmnet, NDSoftware, BTexact Technologies, Kewlio.net Limited, Tiscali, UKERNA, France Telecom, Telianet, NTT, Asnet, T-Systems, Business Internet Trends, XS4All, AoL, Chello, JENS, Transmedia, Hurricane Electric, Ignite Germany, Japan Telecom, Grnet, LINX, Vodaphone PT, GATEL, C&W Germany, COMv6, ipng.org.uk, Barclays, Dune, Lucent UK, TDOI.org, Lithuanian Open Source, Cyconet, Consulintel, UID-Zero, Ignite Spain, NJH, net-com.ds, Microlink, KOREN, T-net, and Telefonica.

This result (application) is based on the Southampton Framework for Agent Research (SoFAR), which has been developed in the IAM Research Group at the University of Southampton. The Slite framework is a lightweight agent distributed agent architecture adaptation of the Southampton Framework for Agent Research. The framework is based on Speech Act theory, using a set of performance-based communication primitives to support auction based and argumentative agent negotiation strategies for Distributed Information Management tasks. The Slite framework consists of a number of agent platforms. A platform is an instance of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), and hosts a number of agents. Each platform has a special agent, an agent launcher, which oversees the launching of agents and registration into their capabilities to the platform. SoFAR is described in ''SoFAR with DIM Agents: An Agent Framework for Distributed Information Management'', L. Moreau et al,. In Proceedings The Fifth International Conference and Exhibition on The Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agents (2000), pages 369-388.With release 1.4.1 of the Sun Java Development Kit (JDK), the JDK has included IPv6 support for basic connectivity (unicast and multicast). The full agent framework (SoFAR) has been tested to operate with IPv6, and the lightweight agent framework (SoFAR Lite, or Slite) was developed with IPv6 multicast as a key feature for local communication and service advertisement and discovery. There are currently very few people using IPv6 for agent-based computing. There is no reason why this number should not rise, especially when devices (in addition to people) begin to use agent technology. More importantly, the Grid community, now using Java in the OGSA-based Globus Toolkit 3, should embrace IPv6 for inter-device communication. These demonstrators should that that is possible. The applications are currently running on Sun JDK1.4.1 on the RedHat Linux (7.1) platform. The code is being used for experimentation within the local Departments agent-based computing group.

The Secure IPv6 home environment was designed for controlling home appliances such as TV, video, lighting, heating etc. The system allows accessing and controlling all devices using a single control device and user interface. The devices can be controlled via PDAs, laptops, PCs, speech or gestures. The original application was made in Interactive Intelligent Electronics (IIE) strategic research project and in VHE ITEA-project. In 6WINIT, the application was ported to IPv6 and enhanced with remote access. The application was designed for homes but it can be used elsewhere too (e.g. in offices). It can also ease the life of special groups such as elderly people or disabled.

Streaming is an increasingly popular technology with which to view and listen to multimedia contents. This technology is seen as one of the new value-adding Internet services and competition in this area and continues to be intense. Especially, also the streaming services will be more useful for various application areas, for example entertainment, education and so on. ETRI implemented the IPv6 video streaming server and its client during the 6WINIT. Basically the platform for the streaming server is Linux, and the clients support Linux and Windows 2000/XP operating system. The supporting media types for clients are MPEG-1, 2(PS only) and MPEG-4 videos (Divx). It supports a streaming over both IPv4 and IPv6 protocol and also supports the RTP and HTTP based streaming. The streaming client software has been release by ETRI in 2002 and is available at http://v6stream.6neat.net/.

Telscom has implemented MObile IPvv6 and IPv4 networks based on IETF standards. The implementation is based on Helsinki University work in Finland. Full documentation of the implementation is available at our website www. telscom.ch The inter-working across IPv4 and IPv6 networks, and multi-access is the special feature of the expertise that is available as a result of this work and consultancy services would be available for interested parties. Mobile IP networks are integrated into our test bed to demonstrate heterogeneous network environment across fixed-wireless networks with multiple applications running in the test bed both across IPv4 and IPv6. Features implemented are QoS, security and multi-access.

Together with other partners in the 6WINIT project T-Systems has worked to provide the necessary IPv6 backbone connectivity to the project partner networks. Connectivity has been provided by different means such as tunnelling or dedicated access. In order to emulate further native IPv6 offerings, T-Systems has build a near production level IPv6 trial network in Germany, connecting three POPs in Münster, Darmstadt and Berlin. Native IPv6 has been provided over 2.4 Gbit MPLS links based on Cisco 6PE implementation. This network runs in an production like environment and provides the necessary interconnections to other IPv6 related activities in- and outside Germany, such as: - 6bone - 6net - Euro6IX The network has been offered to participants in the 6WINIT project to be used as part of the Pan-European backbone of the 6WINIT project. Certain IPv6 services were offered in conjunction with the possibility to obtain IPv6 address space. For people without direct access to the POP locations a Tunnel Broker offers the possibility to gain tunnelled access. In order to stress test the network several trials were conducted such as an IPSec trial. Directly using the developed results from other partners of the project. Experience has been gained into IPv6 operational issues such as address and user management. Further work is necessary in order to match IPv6 services with the quality and reliability currently deployed in the IPv4 environment and expected from the Network Operators.

Policy controlled Active Software components, referred to as Proxylets, used to distribute, manipulate, and/or record group sessions. The two primary proxylets developed under this effort are an IPv6-enabled Transcoding Active Gateway (TAG). TAG is a software gateway used to bridge or transcode multicast flows through unicast-only networks. Functionality can be added based on policy defined for its operation. One such function involves performing media adaptation at boundaries. The current implementation only does rate limiting, though this can be policy controlled. This feature represents a rudimentary form of back off in when a flow is experiencing loss (presumably due to congestion). Finally, TAG can add a watermarking policer that examines digital watermarks embedded within a flow and determines if the correct credentials exist to allow TAG to continue forwarding packets to other destination(s). Control and management of TAG is accomplished through a policy-based management system developed under this project and described in subsection 2.1.4. The proxylets was developed in the ANDROID project, but was developed further under this project for use in a wireless environment - complete with a dynamic form of loading near access points of a wireless environment. It includes also resource discovery functionality. The TAG needs considerable more sophisticated policies and functions. It also needs to be deployed further to get experience on what further functionality is required before it can be used in earnest.

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