The TSSG is at the heart of EU funded research into the Future Internet. The TSSG also has Irish funding (from the HEA and SFI that funds related basic research into the management of future networks). Therefore the TSSG was well represented by attendees and presenters at the recent event in Slovenia: Future Internet Assembly (31st March - 2nd April 2008). This post tries to summarise TSSG Future Internet activity, EU-funded and Irish-funded, and how this range of expertise links to events like the one in Bled.

The key point of this posting is to illustrate how the TSSG is at the centre of Future Internet activity in Europe. In addition to the active projects, and participation in the EU Technology Platforms, the TSSG has also led the way in building events that integrate the North American view of the Future Internet with the European view, in particular through the TridentCom event (held this year in Austria in March, chaired by Miguel ponce de Leon, and next year in Washington DC) chaired by our colleague and visiting Professor in Waterford IT, Thomas Magadanz (Fraunhofer FOKUS and the Technical University of Berlin).

The TSSG's engagement in Future Internet activities builds upon our prior experience in communications infrastructure and services (and in particular the management challenges of heterogeneous environments including wireless access networks), and our experience in EU FP4, FP5, FP6 and FP7 projects from 1996-2008.

It was all a long time ago, but the voices and images conjured by the new time machine at Culloden linger hauntingly in the memory.

On April 16th 2008, the National Trust for Scotland has organised the Grand Opening of the new Culloden Battlefield centre and exhibition. This will also include the new ZolkC service 'The Culloden Battlefield Guide'. Led by Paul Savage, a number of TSSG staff are attending this event.

The innovative Battlefield Guide developed by Zolk C Ltd is the world's first GPS triggered electronic guide in use in tourism and heritage sites. With specially created audio, video and supporting illustrations (including key content from the BBC), the multimedia content is triggered automatically as visitors explore Culloden Moor, at their own pace, allowing them to understand and appreciate better what actually happened on 16th April, 1746.

Visitors to the exhibition at the new STG 9million Culloden centre can enhance their experience by walking the Moor with the Battlefield Guide. They will receive unobtrusive, location specific multimedia content while they soak up the atmosphere of the battle in situ. Initially in English and Gaelic the guide in time will be available in a range of languages from Spanish to Japanese and will be offered to all those visiting the moor.

Why use satellite technology? A key objective of the Culloden project was that the battlefield site should be restored, as close as possible, to that seen by the forces on that fateful day in April 1746. More traditional techniques such as interpretative panels or markers were not felt to be in keeping with the sanctity of the Moor as a war grave. As well as the multimedia content that is automatically triggered, addition information is available on a menu that changes depending on the visitor's position on the battlefield, allowing them to gain a more complete understanding of the events of 16 April, 1746.

Who is Zolk C?

Zolk C is a new venture based in Waterford, Ireland and Inverness, Scotland. Its remit is to create and operate technology solutions that enable interpreters to deliver a better, more effective user experience at tourism and heritage centres internationally. Zolk C provides full project lifecycle including design, development and management of interpretive solutions. The company is a joint venture between the Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (TSSG) of the Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT), who specialise in the research and design of pervasive, mobile technologies and of Zolk Ltd, an Inverness based company specialising in the design, deployment and management of online services. The Zolk portfolio includes Learning Works, Careers Scotland and UHI Millennium Institute. Zolk C has used their combined expertise to design, develop, deploy and manage the Battlefield Guide for the NTS.

For further information contact: Paul Savage, Zolk C Ltd. on +353 51 302923

For more information on the Culloden Battlefield project click here.

The work presented by the TSSG at the workshop was the research currently conducted from the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) project “Autonomic Management of Communication Network and Services”, where the work presented was on Bio-inspired Autonomic Networks. In addition, the TSSG also presented the work on Biological Cell Computation supporting protocols for Nano/MEMS communications. For more information on the workshop, please click
here. The list of presenters and their presentations can also be found here.

The judging panel, consisting of ITLG Board, Enterprise Ireland, Invest Northern Ireland, IDA Ireland and the Irish Times, selected four progressive Irish technology companies as finalists. The winner will be announced this week in Stanford University, San Francisco.

Commenting, Hélène Haughney Nubiq CEO, said - “This is a real honour for us, it is great to receive recognition in the industry from such highly regarded sources. We see this nomination as an indication of their support for Nubiq’s vision of international growth and success”.

Also attending the event in San Francisco this week is the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment; Michéal Martin. Minister Martin, who recently met Nubiq at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, commented at the time “The involvement of Nubiq, which has a team of 9 people in Waterford, is further proof that specialised Irish companies are at the cutting edge in this sector and are ensuring that Ireland is being recognised as a centre of excellence for new technology.”

Nubiq, who provide Web2.0 and mobile Web2.0, discovery, directory and mobile website creation services, were also nominated last year for the European ICT award and received first place at a recent investment driven Irish pitching competition in Silicon Valley. The company is this week set to launch the latest version of their consumer mobile Web service – Zinadoo.com; with Industry figures citing this as a two billion user market by 2010, Nubiq looks set to succeed.

About Nubiq

Nubiq Ltd. is a spin-out campus company from the TSSG, a research and innovation centre attached to Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT). Combining both Web2.0 and mobile Web2.0 technologies, Nubiq breaks down the barriers to mobile web adoption.

Nubiq are working with a number of European Mobile Operators and are actively involved with the dotMobi Advisory Group (MAG) to define best practices and best models for mobile advertising.

About ITLG

Established in October 2007 and based in Palo Alto, California, the ITLG is a group of Irish and Irish American senior executives based in Silicon Valley, active in the global technology industry, committed to ensuring that Ireland remains a strategic area of investment and opportunity for US technology companies, and who are keen to support the growth and development of Irish-based technology companies.

For further information Contact:
Hélène Haughney (hhaughney@nubiq.com)
Tel: +353 51 302900
Nubiq Website
Nubiq Mobile Website

The purpose of the ENABLE project was to enable deployment of efficient and operational mobility as a service in large scale IPv6 network environments, taking into account also the transition from IPv4. The main areas of research included the enhancement of Mobile IPv6 to enable transparent mobility in large operational networks with multiple administrative domains, heterogeneous accesses and a rapidly growing number of users, enrichment of the basic mobility service provided by Mobile IPv6 with a set of premium features (fast handover, QoS, etc.) and analysis of goals and design principles for the evolution beyond Mobile IPv6 in the long term.

Along with this research ENABLE had over 30 papers submitted and accepted at various conferences/journals, had strong contributions to IETF (RFCs and I-Ds) and produced a book on these activities (see below).

The TSSG carried out significant investigations on longer-term mobility approaches, such as the integration of SHIM6 with MIPv6 (M-SHIM6), which will be the basis our contributions to the IETF MEXT working group, and had a part to play in the assessment of solution alternatives for IPv4 interworking with MIPv6, extension of Dual-Stack MIPv6 and in the investigation / design of a HA reliability solution.

Download Book From Here

The event was chaired by the recently appointed host of RAW, Dr Cormac O'Raifeartaigh (Waterford Institute of Technology).

The topic for this month was 'The BioFuel Dream is Dead'.

Abstract:

Debate rages over whether biofuels are a vital part of the range of renewable technologies needed to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels or an environmental disaster in the making. Approximately 1% of the world’s arable land is currently devoted to biofuels and that figure is set to grow. But is there enough land to grow energy crops or water to irrigate them, given the demands on global agriculture? Can biofuel really reduce climate change without causing serious damage?

The speakers included:
· Professor Keith Smith (The Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Science at the University of Edinburgh),
· Dr Rocio Diaz-Chavez (Centre for Environmental Policy and Technology, Imperial College),
· John Travers (Chief Executive of AER Biofuels)
· David Korowicz (FEASTA).

For more information please go to www.sciencegallery.ie

The TSSG wishes to extend its congratulations to Headway Software, a TSSG spin-out company led by Chris Chedgey as CEO, that has just won a prestigeous Jolt Award for Structure 101, its software design and modelling product. We always knew that Headway's approach, analysing an existing codebase and deducing its structure, was a great way to get at the real structure of existing software; we're glad that the Jolt Awards agree with us!

Jolt Awards

6. Design and Modeling Tools
Jolt Winner:

• Corticon Business Rules Modeling Studio (Corticon Technologies)>/li>

Productivity Winners:

• Structure101 for Java (Headway Software)
• BigLever Software Gears (BigLever Software)
• Enterprise Architect (Sparx Systems)

From the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, Nubiq Ltd announced the launch of their whitepaper - “The Growing Use of Mobile Websites for Business Communication and Promotion”. The paper provides an in-depth analysis of the lucrative business opportunities that are now available on the Mobile Web.

The Nubiq paper addresses the opportunities that are available over the Mobile Web and how businesses can leverage this, the best practices in doing so, and the next generation of the Mobile Web. The paper is available for free download from here.

Speaking at the Mobile World Congress last week, Hélène Haughney – Nubiq CEO commented; “With this paper we aim to provide a real insight into what is happening in the Mobile Web space, and how a business can best leverage the many opportunities now available”. The Mobile Web already seems to be causing a stir at the World Congress this year and with analyst predictions indicting growth scales faster than the PC Web, businesses must act now.”

Commenting on the release of the Nubiq paper Michael J. O’Farrell, Chair and Executive Director of the dotMobi Advisory Group stated “This paper gives a good indication of how the Mobile Web is evolving and the important role that industry best practices and published standards play in its development. Nubiq has demonstrated their commitment to supporting Mobile Web industry guidelines by diligently incorporating them into all of their highly-innovative product and service offerings.”

Nubiq, who demonstrated on the Irish pavilion at the Mobile World Congress last week, offer Mobile Web services for people in their business and personal lives. Recent announcements from Nubiq have included a partnership with O2 Ireland and T-Mobile the Netherlands.

About Nubiq:

Combining both Web2.0 and mobile Web2.0 technologies, Nubiq breaks down the barriers to mobile web adoption, by providing a directory service of 1 million mobile websites. Not only does Nubiq break down the barriers to mobile web adoption, they also seed entry into the mobile web by providing a mobile web presence creation service

Nubiq are working with a number of European Mobile Operators and are actively involved with the dotMobi Advisory Group (MAG) to define best practices and best models for mobile advertising.

For further information:
Hélène Haughney (hhaughney@nubiq.com)
Tel: +353 86 8504 947
Nubiq Website
Nubiq Mobile Website

Minister for Enterprise, Trade, and Employment, Mícheál Martin visited the IMS-Arcs stand at 3GSM today. While at the stand the Minister was shown a demonstration of the IMS service concepts being developed by the project and spoke with members of the IMS-Arcs team about the technology.

Please click here for a statement by the Minister.

Pictured above from left-to-right: Mícheál Martin (Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment), Robert Mullins (Project Manager, TSSG)

This year at 3GSM (Mobile World Congress) in Barcelona, TSSG are running Ireland's IMS Innovation booth at the Ireland stand (Hall 1 Stand 1F17). See here for more info from Enterprise Ireland

This booth will be powered by the FeedHenry platform and will show some of our latest Web 2.0 / Mobile 2.0 / IMS services in addition to some incredible new IMS services from the IMS ARCs team.

Helene Haughney and Grace O'Dwyer from the Nubiq team also have their own booth at the Ireland stand (Hall 1 Stand IF17) and will be showing the all new video based Zinadoo and will also be releasing MobiSeer to the public. Mobiseer is a wonderful Web 2.0 service that can be used to find the best new mobile content and services. You can then personalise your mobile phone with these.

Paul Savage and the IMS-Stream team will be demoing at a dedicated pod on the Intel stand (Hall 8 stand 8B109). They will be showing IMS-Stream's new middleware and service solutions built on BEA and Intel technology. Check out this Pod for eye-popping NGN services.

Barry Downes will also be pitching and demoing FeedHenry at the Oracle Pavilion (AV44 just outside of Hall 8 on the main avenue starting Wednesday the 13th at 9:00 am).

The Nubiq team will also be running a second Nubiq pod on the Dot Mobi stand (Hall 7 stand 7HS17) for a couple of days during the event.

Nubiq, a member of the tech fanatic tycoon group christened “Paddy’s Valley” visiting Silicon Valley this week, received the award for their two minute business pitch, which was followed by a four minute questions and answers session.

Commenting, Helene Haughney, CEO - Nubiq, said, “This is a very encouraging outcome for Nubiq, the mobile web space is really heating up and investors are looking to capitalise on what has been dubbed “the next big thing”. We will be going after funding in early 2008, so it is great to get positive feedback from such reputable venture capitalists.”

The innovation driven group were greeted by Mr. Michael Collins, Irish Ambassador to the United States, who welcomed the group to California and supported their endeavours in Silicon Valley.

Also commenting at the event, Dr. Maggie Daleo, Senior Vice President New Media, Entertainment and Telcoms - Enterprise Ireland, said, “Nubiq is a prime example of the exciting, new mobile technologies coming out of Ireland. Their dynamic technology will re-define the mobile content discovery industry”.

It has been a busy few months for this up and coming mobile Web services start up, who recently announced a partnership with O2 Ireland and just this week launched a new version of their mobile website creation service– Zinadoo.com.

About Nubiq:

Nubiq Ltd. is a spin-out campus company from 3CS, a research and innovation centre attached to the TSSG in Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT). Nubiq develops software solutions that enable communities to use mobile technology in their business and social lives. Nubiq is an active member of the dotMobi Advisory Group, an accredited independent not for profit organisation forum.

For further information:
Hélène Haughney (hhaughney@nubiq.com)
Tel: +353 86 8504 947
Nubiq Website
Nubiq Mobile Website

In July 2007, Jim Clarke was also elected to the Permanent Stakeholders’ Group (PSG) of the European Network and Information Security Agency ENISA Is a Centre of Excellence for the EU Member States and EU Institutions in Network and Information Security, giving expert advice and recommendations. The PSG is considered a sounding board/group of leading experts that gives advice to the Executive Director in drawing up a proposal for the Agency's work programme, as well as in ensuring communication with the relevant stakeholders on all issues related to the work programme. The experts have contributed with their view on the ENISA Work Programme for 2007 and their longer-term visions for future activities.

For more information, please read: Business Wire Press Release

To read the paper, please visit: Mobile Advertising in a .mobi World

For more information on Nubiq, please visit: Nubiq Website, Nubiq Mobile Website

The Eugene Lawler Graduate School of Computing will consolidate the place of applied research at the core of the work of the Institute, according to Dr. Mícheál Ó hÉigeartaigh, Head of the Department of Computing, Mathematics & Physics at Waterford Institute of Technology.

The late Prof. Eugene Lawler was highly respected as a visionary teacher at the University of Berkeley and made fundamental contributions to computer science. He made a number of research and personal visits to Ireland and had a profound impact on the development of computer science in Ireland.

His family has expressed its appreciation to WIT for honouring his contribution to science through the establishment of the Graduate School of Computing.

While remembered as a visionary teacher, his efforts went beyond admissions, to mentoring and advising. He carefully followed his students to make sure they found a research adviser and received financial support. He gave generously of his time, counselling students with patience, good sense and wisdom, Dr. Ó hÉigeartaigh explained.

“The Eugene Lawler Graduate School of Computing will consolidate the place of applied research at the core of the work of the department. It will enable it play an augmented role in the development of high technology industry in the S.E. Region and offer a range of new academic programmes.

“It will also contribute to the sustainability of industry in the region and be a resource that will be very significant in attracting new high technology industry to the region. The facility will allow the department double its postgraduate student numbers. This will lead to a significant increase in research output,” Dr Ó hÉigeartaigh said.

Professor Kieran R. Byrne, Director of WIT, paid tribute to Paul Barry, Head of the School of Science, WIT, to Dr Mícheál Ó hÉigeartaigh, Head of Department of Computing, Mathematics and Physics, WIT and to all involved in the establishment of the new school, and said that the southeast region now more than ever badly needs fourth-level education facilities, such as those provided at the new Eugene Lawler Graduate School of Computing.

“WIT has taken up the challenge of providing fourth level education to meet the expectations of the southeast so that the region can contribute to the national economy in ways that are connected to the national and global economy,” said Prof Byrne.

“The Eugene Lawler Graduate School is also an important support in WIT’s aspirations to become the University of the South East, an aspiration based on commitment and earned reputation.

“We are now in a period of considerable transition and with the support of institutions such as WIT and the Eugene Lawler Graduate School, we will provide the means to ensure that the transition is both smooth and successful,” added the Director.

The dedicated research facilities and support measures provided will create a critical mass of activities that will greatly encourage the faculty in the department to take up higher degrees and engage in research work, he believes.

“It is anticipated that the Eugene Lawler Graduate School will attract considerable funding from non-exchequer sources and will, in time, need to be replaced by an augmented facility that will provide an enhanced range of services to industry in the SE Region,” he suggested.

Mícheál Ó Foghlú, Research Director at the Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG) said it was critical that all at WIT continue to work in partnership. “We wish the new Graduate School success, and promise to support it. It will be a critical pillar in our institution's approach towards university status, and it will ensure that our department can mature to support Level 9 and 10 research and teaching,” he said.

Currently 60 Masters and 10 Doctoral students are undertaking higher degrees in the department in association with the centres. In addition, the department runs three taught Masters programmes: M.Sc. in Computing (Communications Software); M.Sc. in Computing (Multimedia & ELearning) and M.Sc. in Computing (Information Systems Processes).

• DSOM 2007 - 18th IFIP/IEEE International Workshop on Distributed Systems: Operations and Management
  (Oct 29-31)
• MMNS 2007 - 10th IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Management of Multimedia and Mobile Networks and Services
  (Oct 31 – Nov 2)
• IPOM 2007 - 7th IEEE International Workshop on IP Operations and Management
  (Oct 31 – Nov 2)
• MACE 2007 - 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Modelling Autonomic Communications Environments
  (Oct 29-30)
• EVGM 2007 – 3rd IEEE/IFIP International Workshop on End-to-End Virtualization and Grid Management (formerly known as AGNM)
  (Oct 29-30)

The general theme of this Manweek 2007 was "End-to-End Virtualization of Networks and Services", a topic that captures the imagination of industry and researchers alike. In addition, there were several keynote speeches, a welcome reception, a social event at the San José Tech Museum of Innovation, and a social event at Santa Clara Mission Gardens. This year's Manweek also featured two tutorials ("Device Instrumentation for Active and Passive Performance Monitoring", "Basic and Advanced Concepts in Wireless Networking") free of charge for registered Manweek attendees.

(Barry Downes, Commercial Director TSSG and Gearoid Mooney, Informatics Commercialisation, Enterprise Ireland)

The award was presented by Micheal Ahern T.D, Minister for Innovation Policy to Barry Downes, Commercial Director of the TSSG, at the Enterprise Ireland Technology Showcase which took place today (3rd October) in the Radisson Royal SAS Hotel in Dublin's city centre. "The TSSG has been pursuing a range of spin-in opportunities, where we attract companies to locate in Waterford to collaborate with us, and spin-out opportunities where we establish a new companies to commercialise our success. This award recognises our achievements to date in acting as a catalyst of ICT innovation in the south east of Ireland," said Barry Downes upon receipt of the award.

The showcase event focused on eight technology products and services that have been developed by academic researchers which are ready to be snapped up by investors in the advanced technology industry.

In addition to these pitches, a targeted attendance of investors, entrepreneurs and technology trend-watchers also met with senior researchers from nine third level institutes who between them demonstrated a further thirty technologies with commercial potential at the showcase.

Presenting the award, Minister Ahern said "the TSSG are to be congratulated on this success, not just in winning the Commercialisation Award, but for bringing the fruits of their research to the marketplace. The TSSG at Waterford IT have demonstrated real innovation in the commercialisation space through their formation of a true joint venture with an entrepreneur to create the new company Hash 6 which is now contributing to the local economy of Waterford. This innovative spirit is one of the core pillars of the Governments Strategy for Science Technology and Innovation."

The TSSG prides itself on the dynamic linkages it maintains between research and commercialisation, across the research and innovation spectrum. "The TSSG is unique in Ireland in placing equal value on commercialisation, applied research and basic research," said Mícheál Ó Foghlú, Research Director of the TSSG, "This award demonstrates that we have already begun to make an impact with our commercialisation strategy. Our recent success in the European Seventh Framework, with 6 new funded projects, the biggest success in Ireland, demonstrates that our applied research strategy is winning; our recent success in the HEA PRTLI Cycle 4 announced by the Minister of Education Mary Hanafin in August, demonstrates that our basic research strategy is winning."

See also Enterprise Ireland Press Release and EI Informatics Showcase (Event Details).

Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG)
Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT)

RE: Waterford Chamber of Commerce—Award for Manufacturing Excellence and TSSG recent funding success.

Pictured above (l-r): Paul McDaid (Vice-President, Waterford Chamber), Barry Downes (TSSG), John McGrath (Vhi Healthcare), Siobhan Flynn (Mothercare), Nigel Pim (Pims Business Systems), Robert Finnegan (Waterford Harbour Sailing Club) and Michael Broderick (Vhi Healthcare).

The Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG, http://www.tssg.org) is delighted to accept the “Quarter 2 Award for Business Excellence in Manufacturing” from the Waterford Chamber of Commerce (www.waterfordchamber.ie); VHI Healthcare sponsors this award.

The TSSG is a unique Research and Development (R&D) centre located in Waterford Institute of Technology’s new West Campus in Carriganore, Co. Waterford. The TSSG’s research focus is on the dramatic changes occurring in the telecommunications software industry, and indeed on the wider converged communications industry, particularly in managing networks and in developing innovative new services for those networks. The unique aspect of the TSSG’s approach is that it embraces a wide range of research and development cultures, from blue-sky basic research through to commercial activity, each with a critical mass of activities. This integrative emphasis came from the original vision of its founder Dr. Willie Donnelly, who is now also the Head of Research in WIT.

The TSSG has established itself as the leading catalyst of high technology Information Communications Technologies (ICT) in Waterford and the South East having brought in 40 Million EUR of funding to WIT since its foundation in 1996, over €12 Million of this in 2007 to date, and having consistently employed over 100 highly skilled researchers and developers in recent years. The TSSG receives no base-line funding, all its funding comes from competitive tendering processes for research funding. The Waterford Chamber of Commerce Award underpins the key emphasis in the TSSG of impacting on industry internationally, nationally and regionally.

Further details available here:
Download file

For more information on the TSSG see:

• TSSG A4 FLYER (October 2006)


• TSSG eStrategies Europe overview article (March 2007)

The EU 7th Framework Programme (FP7) (2007-2013) is the largest research funding programme in the world. The TSSG is happy to announce that it has been called to negotiations in 6 separate proposals submitted to Call 1 of the Information Communications Technologies (ICT) part of the framework. This makes the TSSG the most successful ICT research centre in Ireland in terms of participation in the new programme.

• EFIPSANS - apply self-governing principles to network management of IPv6 networks and services
• 4Ward - architecture and design of the future Internet
• PERSIST - personal self-improving smart spaces
• Autonomic Internet - self-managing virtual resource overlay that can span across heterogeneous networks, support service mobility, quality of service and reliability
• ThinkTrust - think tank for converging technical and non-technical consumer needs in ICT trust, security and dependability
• Inco Trust - international co-operation in trustworthy, secure and dependable ICT infrastructures

In the previous 6th Framework Programme (FP6) (2002-2006) the TSSG was also the most successful participant in EU ICT projects in Ireland with 19 projects funded (including regional funding), a total funding to the TSSG over over €6.5 Million. These projects included: Daidalos I and II (pervasive services), ENABLE (IPv6 mobility), SEINIT (IPv6 security), SecurIST(creating a strategic research agenda for ICT security and dependability) and ESFORS (linking our SecurIST work to the security and dependability requirements of emerging software service platforms).

The benefits of this engagement in EU-funded research go far beyond the individual aims and objectives of each project. Participation develops a network of contacts and a deep understanding of the key issues facing the European ICT (tele)communications industry. Over the past 5 years the TSSG have worked directly with over 150 European companies and universities addressing these issues, and therefore we have very well developed links to the key equipment vendors, fixed and mobile operators, and third party service providers in the (tele)communications sector. It should also be noted that many key Asian, North American, South American and African partners also participate in these projects as they see it as a key way to engage with European industry and academia, especially in our area mobile (tele)communications, where Europe is a world leader.

For more information on the TSSG see:

• TSSG A4 FLYER (October 2006)
• TSSG eStrategies Europe overview article (March 2007)

TSSG basic researchers are pleased to announce that we have been awarded €6.5 Million in funding from the Programme for Third Level Institutions (PRTLI) Cycle 4 under the Higher Education Authority (HEA). This award is in two sections:

• Recurrent: €3.1 Million for a TSSG led basic research programme "Serving Society: " with Irish academic partners in NUI Maynooth (The Hamilton Institute and the Dept. of Sociology) and UL (The Interaction Design Centre), and external links to a number of international universities.
• Capital: €3.4 Million for a new integrated research building in WIT's West Campus in Carriganore with new space dedicated to the TSSG's expansion.

The formal announcement of this success was made by Minister Mary Hanafin at the start of this month, here is a link to the HEA press release. The TSSG look forward to working with our partners to produce some real contributions to knowledge with a focus on how to realise future communications services and infrastructure that reflect changing individual and societal preferences, and that can be effectively managed to ensure delivery of critical services.

For more information on the TSSG see:

• TSSG A4 FLYER (October 2006)
• TSSG eStrategies Europe overview article (March 2007)

The TSSG also won a substantial recurrent and capital award in the previous Cycle 3 (2002-2006), which funded the M-Zones programme and contributed to our the costs of building our current building that was officially opened by An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in October 2006.

IMS ARCS is an Industry Lead Research Programme (ILRP) lead by the Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG) in Waterford. The IMS ARCS project is building a platform to facilitate the creation of IMS based services so that companies can tap into this market more quickly and easily, while ensuring consumers are not swamped by the resultant proliferation of services. As part of this work, a world class IMS Test Bed will be set up by TSSG.

For out more at http://www.ims-arcs.ie/

GAISS is a project intended to aid in real-time operations involving geographically-dispersed teams. The example chosen for the proof-of-concept is Mountain Rescue, but it is intended that GAISS will be of use in other similar areas (utilities companies, event organisation, etc).

The GAISS system makes use of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers connected via lowbandwidth radio data communications to an Incident Command Post (ICP). At the ICP, the search co-ordinator will use the GAISS software for visualisation of search team progress, and for search planning. To aid in the search planning task, the GAISS software provides assistance with resource allocation tasks, and near-real-time location tracking of rescue teams and other search assets.

GAISS is a proof-of-concept funded by Enterprise Ireland, with a total budget of e83280. The project ran for 12 months, beginning 2nd. October 2006, and finished 28th. September

Find out that latest on the All Things GAISS Blog 

Over 115 people attended the successful SecurIST networking session held at IST Helsinki 2006 on 22nd November 2006. The SecurIST Advisory Board presented some of the Grand Challenges as identified in their recommendations report [1] and this was followed by a number of presentations on project proposals for FP7 Call 1. The SecurIST project co-ordinators will facilitate further collaboration on proposals for Call 1 of FP7 where interesting parties can contact FP7proposals@securitytaskforce.org  An information session may be organized in January 2007 to further advance proposal discussions and networking.

Strand 2: Consortia building: Short – Medium term vision.

A number of short presentations were made by researchers on identified gaps in current research in Europe within ICT Trust, Security and Dependability areas and potential project proposals for Call 1 of FP7. WIT/TSSG will facilitate this co-ordination group as we continue preparation for FP7.

[1] Lechner, S. et al., “ SecurIST Advisory Board Recommendations for a Security and Dependability Research Framework”, June 2006. see www.securitytaskforce.eu for a copy.

Cyber Trust Summit Organising Committee; Michel Riguidel (ENST), David Du (NSF), Jacques Bus (EC), Thomas Skordas (EC), Karl Levitt (NSF), William Donnelly ( Waterford IT), William Sanders ( Univ. of Illinois) and Brian Randell ( Univ. of Newc astle ).

The aim of this workshop, and a planned subsequent workshop to be held in Illinois in April/May 2007, was to gain a shared understanding of priority critical issues and promising dependability and security research directions, and to foster collaboration between EU and US research teams.

The organising committee of the workshop developed the programme around the following themes within Trust, Security and Dependability (TSD) of future networked systems including: Architecture and design issues, scalability and context awareness, security and privacy in dynamic wireless networks, evaluation modelling and approaches and future testbeds.

The workshop discussions and conclusions identified and initiated ideas for joint actions. In particular, some of these challenges include:-

• Architecture and design issues for TSD of Future Networked Systems including new attributes for next generation systems enabling digital convergence. The need for a Multi- mode (“Fluid”) Environment (MME) or dynamic networked environment approach for TSD systems, application aware/application specific trusted computed platforms, and long term cryptology challenges. The need for s
• calability and context-awareness challenges including large scale routing strategies, the need for better realistic abstractions for scalability, security in context to include all levels - infrastructure, applications, services and human processes, citizen empowerment i.e. giving the citizen the control and awareness of TSD to enable trust and the need for automated fault detection and remediation on a massive scale;
• Security and Privacy in dynamic wireless networks challenges including risk management approaches, control, configuration, and usage of ubiquitous devices, security infrastructures, security evaluation techniques and threat models, trust management while giving user more control over their risk levels and adaptable context, and u sability of security systems, especially in complex heterogeneous sensor systems;
• Modelling, simulation, predictive evaluation, assurance cases for evaluating the TSD of networked systems including semantic learning and understanding, using economic theory and security evaluation to make multi-objective trade-off decisions, systems to enable involvement of all stakeholders (corporate, policy makers and end users) determining accurate, quantifiable TSD metrics and models to quantify and analyse the business case and adversary attacks probability;
• Monitoring, operational assessment, auditing for e valuating the TSD of Networked Systems including network information sharing techniques at all levels (including a ttacks observed, keystrokes of users, network traffic capture in an anonymous fashion and others), overcoming barriers to information sharing, and the need for network data sharing model to include strong education element;
• Establishment of interconnected and/or common test-beds constituting existing or future international large-scale experimental facilities for supporting the testing and evaluation of new dependability and security architectures, technologies, protocols, privacy protection mechanisms, etc., together with support towards global standards. It was felt that this could lead to a significant increase in the extent and effectiveness of transatlantic co-operation in this research domain. One area of potential collaboration discussed was a future test-bed for software and services to allow experimentation at the application and services level. It was felt that such a facility would enable other classifications of users, who ordinarily would find it very difficult or even impossible to set up their own application and service provisioning environments, e.g., Academia and SMEs, to effectively try out their ideas in these environments without the overhead, time, expense and skill base required in setting up the required underlying infrastructure from scratch. Therefore, a test-bed of this kind that allows realistic experiments to be run would open up valuable opportunities for these parties to venture into service-oriented solutions.

All presentations and position papers are available on www.securitytaskforce.eu

A workshop report will be published by the end of January 2007 and will be available on the website.

The project commenced in November 2004, and will complete October 2008. For more information please contact Mícheál Ó Foghlú, mofoghlu@tssg.org.

Ireland's prime minister, An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, came to our building in Waterford Institute of Technology's (WIT) new West Campus in Carriganore, Co. Waterford on Monday 16th Oct to officially open it.

ArcLabs, WIT's Research & Innovation Centre, houses two sets of complementary activity:

1. The TSSG (Telecommunications Software & Systems Group): a research centre comprising basic research (10 faculty and postdocs, 15 students), applied research (30 researchers) and pre-product development (50 researchers and developers) looking to explore the synergies between these approaches (there are a further 10 staff in support roles);


2. The WIT Innovation Centre comprising entrepreneurship programmes such as the SEEPP and managing incubation space in the building for spin-out and spin-in companies.

Dr. Willie Donnelly, Director and founder of the TSSG and Head of Research in WIT, welcomed this event, "This opening represents the recognition of over 10 years' work in the TSSG in building a critical mass of basic research, applied research, and pre-product development in the area of communications software and telecommunications management."

Mícheál Ó Foghlú, Research Director and co-founder of the TSSG and Director of the Irish IPv6 Centre, also welcomed the Taoiseach's visit, "The Research Division in the TSSG has secured both HEA funding, that helped build this building, and SFI funding thus establishing itself at the forefront of basic research in ICT in Ireland; the TSSG also has the best record of any institution in Ireland, commercial or academic, with respect to winning EU FP6 IST funding. It is good that we now have a permanent home in the ArcLabs in WIT's West Campus in Carriganore."

Barry Downes, Commercial Director of the TSSG and Director of the The Centre for Converged IP Communications Services (3CS) also welcomed the opening, "The TSSG, and 3CS, have established themselves at the heart of the regional economy in the South East with a number of successful spin-out and spin-in companies to date, and a further set of new company launches planned in 2007. We work closely with Enterprise Ireland to ensure that our research activity is linked creatively to potential commercial exploitation through creation of new companies, and through licencing IPR to other companies."

Eamonn de Leastar, co-founder of the TSSG, commented that "We have grown from a small group of faculty and students located in an office with no windows on WIT's main campus to being vibrant 115-strong mix of computer scientists, engineers, product managers and software developers sharing a common vision of the challenges facing the new converged communications ecosystem where telecommunications, the Internet, home entertainment and other media all converge to use the Internet's building blocks of TCP/IP. This is a huge opportunity for software development, as it creates a new platform for a new generation of services based on the expanded area - communications software is no longer about desktop PCs but is now also about smart phones and home cinema systems!"

The TSSG now has over 30 active projects running with 115 staff and students spread over basic research, applied research and pre-product development. The TSSG has a history of a further 30 completed funded projects. The TSSG has secured a total of over EUR 25 Million in its 10 year history from 1996-2006. The TSSG receives no support other than these competitive research funded projects, with all its staff being fully funded from these projects. The funding agencies who have helped the TSSG in this remarkable success story include the HEA, the SFI, Enterprise Ireland, the EU Commission, and the Irish Council of Directors.

Some images of the new building are available on various Flickr sites:

Networked and Electronic Media (NEM) is one of the European Industrial Initiatives, also known as Technology Platforms. It was established by relevant key European stakeholders, which address the convergence of media, communications, consumer electronics, and IT as a wide opportunity for future growth, by taking advantage of generalized broadband access, increased mobility, availability of richer media formats and contents, as well as new home networks and communications platforms.

Dr. Donnelly has been very active within the Steering Board and was co-author on a recent October 2007 NEM publication entitled Networked Media of the Future.

This is the press relesase from 3CS:

The Centre for Converged Services (3CS) based at the Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) will see another spin off company come to fruition in September – Nubiq Ltd. Funded by Enterprise Ireland, the new campus company, which specialises in community mobile solutions, will launch its first product, zinadoo.com around that time.

Zinadoo provides a service that enables end-users to create their own mobile website from their computer. The service provides a full solution to end-users to enable them to take existing website content and create, deploy and manage new mobile services and mobile websites. Users don’t have to write software, develop and manage connections to operator’s networks and gateways, or host, manage and monitor the service.

In addition to mobile website creation, an end user can create their own text services to promote their site, invite people to see it and use it and to build community services. The zinadoo services range from group texting, to text voting and automated text response services, which set it apart from its competitors. It is an easy and effective way for people to express themselves through the creation of websites using their mobile phones.

Since February of this year, sporting clubs such as Gaelic football clubs, golf clubs and more recently the Waterford branch of the Youth Information Services Organisation have taken part in the new mobile services trials. These trials aim to bring mobile services to community groups and SMEs looking for an easier way to keep in touch with friends, family and customers.

Helene Haughney, Chief Executive, Nubiq said: "Until now internet users who create content and services on the web, be it social networking, journaling or using sites for photo distribution, have had no way of doing so for mobile apart from simple blog support.

As a solution to this, we developed zinadoo to be used by individuals, social clubs, high growth SMEs, anyone in fact, to build innovative mobile websites and community services. It allows businesses and communities to communicate using the most effective means available today - the mobile phone."

"So far uptake for this service has been high and the reaction to it from our end users has been very positive. They have found it invaluable for sending out notifications regarding, for example; golf competitions, concerts and match fixtures," Ms. Haughney continued.

Barry Downes, Centre Director, 3CS added: "Using Zinadoo is as easy as listing an item on eBay and as a result it will tap into the latent demand of end-users to use the mobile channel to publish, share information and engage in social networks. It grants users, previously denied by technical and organisational hurdles, access to an easy-to-operate solution, value added services, international communities and limitless business opportunities."

The zinadoo product is being trialled under the EU funded eTen market validation project. Built by the project coordinator – Waterford Institute of Technology, other partners include: AePONA (UK), Aceno (Ireland), Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS (Germany), OTEPlus (Greece) and Telefonica I&D (Spain).

The Centre for Converged Services (www.3CS.info) main area of research is convergent software services for next generation networks such as IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). 3CS is associated with the Telecommunication Software and Systems Group (TSSG) at WIT and also Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS, in Berlin. 3CS has expertise in the areas of IMS services, Internet Information Management and Syndication (RSS/ATOM) systems, architectures and services, mobile multimedia and Web 2.0 services and frameworks. 3CS currently has 12 active research projects, the funding for which has been won through competitive tenders for national and international research funding.

According to Barry Downes "Nubiq is the first of a number campus companies that 3CS is developing based on its research agenda and its collaborative relationships with industry and the research community. I look forward to Nubiq’s success and future technology transfers based on 3CS’s research that will benefit the Irish economy".

For further information please contact:

Hélène Haughney

Tel: 051 302974

www.nubiq.com

Another TSSG EU IST project, Daidalos I & II, features on the IST Results website this month: Seamless technology provides unprecedented mobile communication.

"The vision of DAIDALOS is to give mobile users seamless, pervasive access to content and services via heterogeneous networks, supporting their personal user preferences and context," says Deutsche Telekom’s Riccardo Pascotto, coordinator of this IST-funded project. "Users will get unprecedented access to a wide range of personalised voice, data, and multimedia services anytime and anywhere."

In the pervasive communication scenarios developed by the project, users can seamlessly access communication services at home, in the car, or anywhere else through PCs, PDAs, mobile phones and other devices without having to change networks. Their device will automatically select the best suitable access network - whether it's wireless LAN, terrestrial Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB-T) or UMTS - according to user preferences.

SecurIST's aim is to prepare, support and facilitate the rapid adoption and transfer of a strategic research agenda for ICT Security and Dependability Research & Development, providing Europe with a clear view of the strategic opportunities, strengths, weakness, and threats in the different dimensions of security-related research.

• Aceno


• Hash6


• Headway Software


• Akruu
  (the company is about to launch).

The TSSG have recently published an updated TSSG Student Recruitment Brochure - it gives background details on activities in the TSSG focusing on the basic research programmes where new research PhD students are recruited.

Applications are currently open for the taught MSc in Computing (Communications Software), which is closely allied with the core competencies and vision of the TSSG. This MSc has been running since September 2005 and its first cohort of students is expecting to graduate later this year. This MSc programme, which specialises in Communications Software, complements the existing research postgraduate programmes provided by the TSSG under the auspices of WIT's Dept of Computing, Mathematics and Physics.

Course Outline

This one-year full-time taught Masters degree programme aims to produce graduates with knowledge, skills and expertise in Communications Software Development. The course will also confer on the graduates a set of personal and professional attributes that will allow them greater flexibility in the development of their own career options. Specifically, the course aims to produce graduates who can:

• Reason and problem-solve to a high level in the context of communications software technology and its role in business, industry and research
• Participate in the development of high-quality communications software products


• Participate constructively in the strategic deployment of new communications technologies


• Undertake research-based projects for industry, providing effective advice and leadership where required


• Manage technology-based projects that require the handling of innovation and change in dynamic environments

The programme is to be delivered in a modular format, as follows:

Semester 1 (September - January)

Agile Software Development, Communications Infrastructure, Network Security, Graph Theory & Applications, Research Methods, Dissertation Proposal

Semester 2 (February - May)

Design Patterns, Converged Communications Services, Communications Management, Combinatorial Optimisation, Ubiquitous & Pervasive Computing, Dissertation Literature Review.

Semester 3 (June - September)

Dissertation

View Module Descriptions

Entry requirements

An honours degree in computing or equivalent. The number of places available on the course will be limited. Therefore an interview process may be required in the student selection procedure. International students are required to meet the WIT postgraduate TOEFL (600)/IELTS (6.5) English Language requirement standard.

Admission Queries

Graduate Admissions,
Registrar's Office,
Waterford Institute of Technology,
Waterford,
Ireland
Tel: +353-51-302670

OR

Mr. Richard Frisby or Mr. Jimmy McGibney
Waterford Institute of Technology
Email: rfrisby@wit.ie or jmcgibney@wit.ie

Fees

The fees for 2006/07 have yet to be confirmed. As a guideline, the fee for 2005/06 was €4225 for EU students. Fees are subsidised by the Higher Education Authority to the tune of a further €3000 for EU students, reducing the effective fee to €1225. There are, however, a limited number of fee subsidies available.

Necessary documents & further information

Download application form (PDF, 69KB)

View Module Descriptions

For up-to-date information, please visit http://www.wit.ie/MScComputing/

This week Ljubljana, Slovenia hosts the annual eChallenges 2005 conference. This year there are nearly 600 delegates from 46 countries with sessions covering a range of issues from eBusiness, through eGovernment to Broadband and Mobile technologies. There is a healthy delegation from the TSSG in WIT:

• Micheal O'Foghlu on the IPC and chairing a few sessions and presenting a paper on IPv6 and security inspired by our work on the Irish SFI funded Foundations of Autonomics programme;
• Brendan Jennings presenting a paper on charging for dynamically composed services;
• John Ronan presenting a paper on the EU IST FP6 SEINIT project: security for heterogeneous mobile network services;
• Robert Mullins presenting on the EU IST FP6 Daidalos project: security framework for mobile services;
• Jim Clarke presenting on the EU IST FP6 SecurIST project: the Security Task Force creating an agenda for security and dependability research in FP7;
• Sven van der Meer presenting a paper on the Irish Enterprise Ireland funded IMPRUVE project: instant messaging as a platform for the realisation of ubiquitous computing (as Sven will not be present, Micheal O'Foghlu will present in his stead).

Waterford Institute of Technology hosted the launch of the Irish National IPv6 Centre on Friday 30th September 2005.

This centre is a consortium led by the Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG) in Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT), with partners in the Hamilton Institute (NUI Maynooth), HEAnet (Ireland's national research network) and BT Ireland (with their links to the BT Exact research laboraties in Ipswich).

The centre was designated by the Irish DCMNR (Department of the Communications, the Marine, and Natural Resources) and opened by Martin Cullen TD, Minister of Transport. The Director of WIT, Prof. Kieran Byrne, and the Chair of WIT's Governing Body, Redmond O'Donoghue welcomed the Minister. The Head of Research in WIT, Dr. Willie Donnelly gave a short address on the importance of the TSSG within the context of WIT's research strategy. As part of the programme of talks for the launch event Mario Campolargo, Head of Unit DG-INFSO F3 Research Infrastructures in the European Commission, gave a presentation via video-link from Brussels.

Each of the partners gave a presentation: Mícheál Ó Foghlú (TSSG, WIT), Dr. David Malone (Hamilton Institute, NUI Maynooth), Mike Norris and David Wilson (HEAnet) and William McAuliffe (BT Ireland). In addition short presentations were given by a number of supporters of the initiative: Dr. Mark Keane (Science Foundation Ireland, who have funded the TSSG and the Hamilton Institute in ways that support the centre), Nick Hilliard (INEX) and Latif Ladid (President of the global IPv6 Forum).

The afternoon included demonstrations of active research projects involving IPv6 in which the partners in the Irish National IPv6 Centre are engaged including Daidalos, and SEINIT.

The Irish National IPv6 Centre is committed to continuing to research infrastructural and service-related issues linked to the use of the IPv6 protcol as the key element of the next generation Internet. In this, the centre will support the on-going mission of the Irish National IPv6 Task Force to encourage and lobby for the deployment of IPv6 in Ireland in the public and private sectors.

Bibliography:
Special Issue of Computer Communications "Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications" Volume 28, Issue 13, Pages 1481-1602 (2 August 2005).

Computer Communications, Vol. 28 (2005) 13, pp. 1575-1585 (2 August 2005). Amsterdam (NL): Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., North-Holland, ISSN: 0140-3664. Editorial online at doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2004.12.035

"Now, with a year-on-year cumulative budget of over twenty million euro, the TSSG has attracted some of the best of breed in senior researchers and research fellows"

The full TSSG profile on the TMForum's website is available here.

At a specially organised public information day hosted at WIT last Friday Dr Donnelly attributed the group's continued success to its culture of professionalism and creativity. "We now have a staff of seventy-five people and are continuing to recruit new members to the group", he said. "Our culture of professionalism and creativity allows people to grow within the organisation and we will continue to subscribe to this culture as the group expands".

Speaking also at the event Mícheál Ó Foghlú, Research Director described the work of the group as a "rich soup of interacting ideas across thirty different projects", reinforcing its strength in applied research, which is recognised by all of the strategic agencies nationally and internationally.

Barry Downes, the TSSG Commercialisation Director, outlined the growth of his unit within the group. "Fourteen months ago, when we started up the commercial unit we had three people", he said. "Now, we have thirty-two people and an estimated turnover of 3.7 million euro over the next two years, dedicated to taking the results of the group's research and turning them into viable businesses, outside of the TSSG."

A series of presentations followed, outlining in more detail the research work that is currently under way. For example, the work of M-Zones; SEINIT, and DAIDALOS was outlined. New products that have been developed as a result of the research at the group were also demonstrated.

Guest speaker at the event, Professor Kieran R. Byrne, Director of WIT, described the work of the group as a "pinnacle of international excellence", which acted as a catalyst for development in other areas within the Institute. "Success at this time has been critical to the way we view ourselves and how others view us", he said.

In addition to this, the TSSG's Mícheál O'Foghlú and Jim Clarke are on the nominated Advisory Board of the CI²RCO project.

The project aims to take advantage of the Information Syndication Revolution that is currently engulfing the Internet. Information feeds of all types, from blogs to news feeds, are fast becoming the standard way of sharing information, ideas, and news. This project will leverage the TSSG's extensive knowledge to prototype a system that will enhance the way in which people subscribe to, read, and share information feeds; while also making it easier to get the information people want, when and where they want it. It advances the state of the art by creating the concept of meta feeds based on what people view and what they are interested in.

More information on the project can be obtained form its inventor Brian Delahunty.

One of TM Forum's regular events is the Team Action Week, which brings together the best and most enthusiastic members to advance the Forum's critical technical work, and also creates a valuable opportunity for TM Forum teams to liaise with other industry groups. The most recent Team Action Week, held in Montreal recently, attracted more than 120 attendees from 50 different companies. Over 20 teams met for the week to progress all aspects of the TM Forum technical program. Along with meetings of leading TM Forum teams, there were a series of joint meetings involving multiple industry bodies. Three members of the TSSG; Dr Sven van der Meer, Principal Investigator, Mícheál Ó Foghlú, Research Director and Keara Barrett, Phd Candidate, participated in the Montreal event.

"The requirement for accepted standards for Network Management is obvious," commented Dr van der Meer. "Without clear, comprehensive and industry supported specifications there is a strong risk of poor or little interoperability, and in the long run the user loses out. Joining the Forum provides us with the opportunity to participate in the creation of these specifications."

This year's Team Action Week has been one of the most successful to date and certainly the largest in recent years. According to Martin Creaner, TM Forum Chief Technical Officer & Vice President, Technical Programs, "this reflects the continuing growth of the TM Forum technical program and the industry uptake of TM Forum standards."

[1] http://www.tmforum.org

IPv4 was designed a long time ago in computer terms (about 1980) and since then; there were many requests for enhanced capabilities. Currently IPv4 serves what could be called the computer market, the driving force behind the growth of the Internet.

Each computer has an address (called an IP address) that allows other computers to communicate with it. IPv4 provides a limited supply of these addresses.

It is anticipated that new types of devices replacing the current generation of mobile phones, pagers, and personal digital assistants (PDAs), will need to communicate with the current generation of computers and the new Internet protocol will need to support this.

With the advance of digital high-definition television comes the possibility that every television set will become an Internet host, blurring the difference between a computer and a television and adding another functionality requirement to the next Internet protocol. It's also possible that the next generation Internet protocol could be used to control devices. For example, the control of everyday devices such as lighting equipment, heating and cooling equipment, motors, and other types of equipment currently controlled via analog switches and consuming considerable amounts of electrical power. The size of this market is enormous and requires solutions, which are simple, robust, easy to use, and very low cost. The potential pay-off is that networked control of devices will result in substantial energy and cost savings.

With all these devices potentially becoming internet hosts, it follows that they will require IP addresses. The number of unique addresses provided by IPv4 has been highlighted as a potential restriction for expanded internet uptake.

IPv6 is an upgrade to the internet protocol, and the main driver for its deployment is its ability to expand the address space of the internet. It has been the proposed standard since November 1994. (IPv5 is already reserved for another protocol, which never really made it to the public, hence IPv6.) As a natural increment to IPv4, IPv6 is designed to be the evolutionary step forward to provide a platform for the new internet functionality that will be required in the near future.

Due to the size and scale of these new markets, it is also probable that they will each develop their own protocols anyway, perhaps proprietary. If this happens then these new protocols would not interoperate with each other i.e. your phone could not talk to your fridge, or your DVD player/recorder and the opportunity to create an immense, interoperable, world-wide information structure with open protocols would be lost.

This is exactly the kind of scenario that the Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG) at Waterford Institute of Technology is trying to avoid. Speaking at the recent IPv6 Global Summit in Barcelona, Kevin Doolin, Competence Centre Manager at the TSSG established that "the challenge was to pick a protocol that meets today's requirements and also matches the requirements of emerging markets such as the ones described".

As a core member of the DAIDALOS project (Designing Advanced Interfaces for the Delivery and Administration of Location independent Optimised personal Services), the TSSG plays an important role in the promotion of IPv6.

DAIDALOS, is a European Union funded research project worth 14.5 million Euros, incorporates 46 partners from industry and academia representing 15 European countries, Singapore and China. The project has a vision to enable users to access a wide range of personalised communication services whenever and wherever they need them.

The event was organized in order to provide a complete view of the progress of IPv6 in the ICT sectors.

For more information see:
http://www.tssg.org/people/tpfeifer/CfP_JPCC_SI_PervMgmt.pdf

or: http://www.troubador.co.uk/jpcc

PERVASIVE 2006 aims to present significant research contributions in the area of pervasive computing technologies, systems and applications. In addition to a highly selective single-track program for technical papers, PERVASIVE 2006 will include a keynote address, late breaking results, videos, poster presentations, workshops, demonstrations, an outreach public lecture and a doctoral colloquium.

The Research Frontiers Programme supports high-quality, novel exploratory research in the third-level sector in fields embracing the Bio Sciences, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science, Physics and Engineering.

This project will apply emerging model-driven software development approaches to facilitate the specification of accounting business logic models at a high level of abstraction and support automated mapping of these models to accounting system configuration code.

Outputs of this work will help accounting system vendors, many of whom have R&D bases in Ireland, improve the speed with which their products can be configured with accounting logic and provide guidelines for evolving these products to support dynamic software service composition.

For more information about the Research Frontiers Programme visit the SFI website

This is great news for the group as two new TSSG led eTEN projects: mMag and Billing4Rent are about to kick off. Three further eTEN proposals were submitted to the European Commission yesterday (Tuesday 10th May) and it is hoped that the group's success in eTEN will continue with a positive result out of these submissions. The purpose of these projects is to perform market validations for products developed in the TSSG and will aid the group in creating Spin Offs and licensing agreements.


TSSG Project Contact:

Daidalos is one of the new types of technology research and development projects supported by the European Commission called Integrated Projects (IP), which are very large scale forward looking R&D projects and both LAKE Communications and Waterford IT are full partners in the project. The meeting was the Work package 5 meeting, which addresses Integration of the technologies in the project and was attended by twenty other Academic and Industrial partners from all over Europe. More information on the project can be found at www.ist-daidalos.org.

Marian Harkin, MEP, TD visited the project meeting and introduced herself to the whole group and Riccardo Piscatto from T-Systems International GmbH, the project coordinator based in Berlin, presented the Daidalos project for Ms. Harkin. The other members of the meeting had the opportunity to introduce themselves to Ms. Harkin.

A new taught MSc that is closely allied with the core competencies and vision of the TSSG has recently been approved by WIT's Academic Council and will run for the first time from September 2005. This MSc programme, which specialises in Communications Software, will complement the existing research postgraduate programmes provided by the TSSG under the auspices of WIT's Dept of Physical & Quantitative Sciences.

Course Outline

This one-year full-time taught Masters degree programme aims to produce graduates with knowledge, skills and expertise in Communications Software Development. The course will also confer on the graduates a set of personal and professional attributes that will allow them greater flexibility in the development of their own career options. Specifically, the course aims to produce graduates who can:

• Reason and problem-solve to a high level in the context of communications software technology and its role in business, industry and research
• Participate in the development of high-quality communications software products


• Participate constructively in the strategic deployment of new communications technologies


• Undertake research-based projects for industry, providing effective advice and leadership where required


• Manage technology-based projects that require the handling of innovation and change in dynamic environments

The programme is to be delivered in a modular format, as follows:

Semester 1 (September - January)

Software Patterns, Communications Infrastructure, Network Security, Graph Theory and Applications, Research Methods, Dissertation - Proposal

Semester 2 (February - May)

Communications Services Development, Communications Management, Combinatorial Optimisation, Ubiquitous & Pervasive Computing, Software Development Tools, Dissertation - Literature Review

Semester 3 (June - September)

Dissertation

Entry requirements

An honours degree in computing or equivalent. The number of places available on the course will be limited to 20 in the first year. Therefore an interview process may be required in the student selection procedure. International students are required to meet the WIT postgraduate TOEFL (600)/IELTS (6.5) English Language requirement standard.

There is a prerequisite that a student successfully completes a bridging module in Telecommunications Software Development if they have not taken an equivalent module already. This module is an intensive introduction to the area of communications software development and is based on the elective module in the current final year of the BSc in Applied Computing at the Department of Physical and Quantitative Sciences at WIT.

Admission Queries

OR

Mr. Richard Frisby or Mr. Jimmy McGibney

Waterford Institute of Technology

Email: rfrisby@wit.ie or jmcgibney@wit.ie

Fees

Necessary documents & further information

Download course description (PDF, 207KB)

Download application form (PDF, 80KB)

View Module Descriptions

For up-to-date information, please visit http://www.wit.ie/MScComputing/]]> http://www.tssg.org/archives/2005/05/new_wit_postgra.html http://www.tssg.org/archives/2005/05/new_wit_postgra.html Front Page News Thu, 05 May 2005 10:56:26 +0000 The TSSG is hosting a plenary meeting of the SEINIT project this week, involving 25 participants from 13 partners.

SEINIT stands for "Security Expert Initiative". It is a collaborative research project funded by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme, in the Information Society Technologies (IST) area. The project runs for two years, from December 2003 to November 2005. For further information, see www.seinit.org

The three main high-level objectives of SEINIT are:

• Providing a trusted and dependable security framework, ubiquitous, working across multiple devices, heterogeneous networks, organisation independent and centred around an end-user


• Maintaining an adequate security level without infringing a user's right to privacy


• Developing a security approach "closer to real life"

The main technological work covers:

• design and development of new components for this security framework


• integration of these components with trials on suitable assessment platforms


• deployment of anomaly detection systems to detect security breaches


• IPv6 issues


• mobility issues


• specific security issues of ambient intelligence or smart spaces
]]> http://www.tssg.org/archives/2005/04/tssg_hosts_meet.html http://www.tssg.org/archives/2005/04/tssg_hosts_meet.html Front Page News Wed, 20 Apr 2005 10:58:36 +0000 Europe's first cross-border e-government service has been launched. RISER (Registry Information Service on European Residents), currently available as a pilot scheme, allows companies across Europe to obtain official address information for Germany, Austria and Ireland. By logging on and registering with the web portal www.riser.eu.com, businesses can verify the addresses of potential and current customers in these countries, as the portal provides access to EU member states' individual civil registry databases.

The TSSG is a member of this initiative, which is supported by the European Commission's e-Ten programme. It is anticipated that the Riser service will gradually expand to include address information from other EU member states as the objective of the RISER project is, to create a Trans-European Internet service offering official address information to companies and citizens. The service will communicate with customers at any location via a secure Internet infrastructure based on open standards. It is supplied with data by the local offices in civil registration all over Europe.

The customers of the service are expected to be mainly solicitors' offices, banking institutions, insurance agencies, mail order companies and eBusiness providers.
RISER will offer widespread economic benefit to these users. Through its scope of service, it will provide verified addresses of customers and debtors irrespective of their place of residence and reducing effort and costs of inquiries. Additional address inquiries will be processed much faster compared to traditional paper and mail based processing.

The protection of personal data and the security of the entire system are of special importance for RISER and these features are based on a matured and (in Germany) already certified technical solution. Through the separation of content and transportation data and by using hybrid encryption, unauthorized use of data is prevented.

RISER is a precursor for other European developments, within the pan-European context, that exchange sensitive and personal data.

For more information about the RISER project at the TSSG contact:
Conor Ryan, Project Manager
cryan(at)tssg.org

]]> http://www.tssg.org/archives/2005/04/first_cross-bor.html http://www.tssg.org/archives/2005/04/first_cross-bor.html Front Page News Thu, 07 Apr 2005 11:01:19 +0000 Dr. Willie Donnelly, the Director of the TSSG, co-founded the South East Information Society (SEISS) initiative in 2000. The original SERPANT proposal for funding from the Irish Department of Communications, the Marine and Natural Resources (DCMNR), which came from SEISS, led to the investment in the regional MANs in the South East of Ireland: a regional approach to the rollout of broadband in six metropolitan area networks in Clonmel, Dungarvan, Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford and Waterford.

These MANs constitute an OAN (Open Access Network) owned by the public body (in this case Waterford Corporation), but leased out to competing operators. At a recent launch event e-net, which has been awarded the contract to manage Metropolitan Area Networks in 19 regional centres across the country was announced as the neutral administrators of this network in the South East. It is as part of regional and national networks of such MANs. Service providers can pay standard rates to e-net to get rack space in the co-location facility in each city/town. This then means that businesses connected can buy services from any of the service providers who have set up like this. The idea is that this reduces the infrastructural investment costs that each service provider has to put up before being able to start offering broadband to customers. It is anticipated that as a result of this broadband infrastructure can be made available in the regions at competitive prices