Web Services in RP 2007 Part 1: Innofonelab Philippines

One of our corporate members in the DigitalFilipino.com Club is Innofonelab Philippines. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Innofone Inc. USA providing IPv6 solutions and services. The company is offering a roster of Web Services that are all IPV6 ready.

 

In this ongoing article series on Web Services, we interviewed Alexander Ramia, Vice President of Innofonelab Philippines to discuss their efforts in this area.

 

1. Why did InnofoneLab decided to build Web Services immediately embracing IPV6 and Next Generation Internet?

Alex: It is a known fact amongst the core network operators that the address space allocated for the World Wide Web was not really designed for the way it’s being used now. The address design was for a “big box” network that had structure, visibility and most of all TRUST. In the early days of HTML2.0 predictions were made that the Internet would reach $300 million + in financial transactions by the year 2000. We are currently at $5 trillion per year. Innofone realizes that developing applications around the old address method is not a difficult task and offers very little in the way of differentiation and potential growth since the address space currently being used has limited abilities. Innofone also realizes that applications developed on this old address platform would have very little new services to offer and be extremely competitive. Our focus on the new address platform IPv6 allows us to develop applications that stand out, offer unique services, unparalleled security, functionality from end to end and TRUST.

 

2. What business goals do you want your IPV6 Services to accomplish?

Alex : Our goals are focused on the new network devices that utilize this network stack which provide safe secure communications to these new edge devices. They include mobile phones and other communications portals starting to emerge. Due to the secure nature of the platform we are developing on, we can focus on safe secure commerce to these edge devices. I see a future where our Ipv6 services operate as the core to access and perform safe financial transactions, secure access to network sites and seamless access to personal files images and movies globally.

 

3. Who are the users of your IPV6 Service? What are their needs?

Alex: This question is needs to be split up so I will answer it this way. The IPv6 user community is growing as I answer this. Since 2001 every Nokia Phone supported IPv6 and since January of 2007 over 30 million Windows Vista users are actively searching for Ipv6 enable sites. Microsoft has finally joined the Linux and Apple community, and is now embracing Ipv6 as its core operational protocol. The most popular OS in the world has extend its policy to the mobile platform windows 5. This clearly defines the user base for IPv6 to every person and device on the network today and the foreseeable future

 

What the user community needed has been delivered by Microsoft, now it will take companies like ours to develop or port over applications to this new stack.

 

4. Your IPV6 Service is accessible by wireless devices. How and why did you decided to integrate it?

Alex: The integration was needed due to the lack of reliable performance and the requirement to remove anonymity from network edge device. We have approximately 3.8 billion devices on our current internet, sharing less than 2 billion IP address. Something is always breaking and not connecting and it’s just going to get worse as more devices come online.

 

Now is a good time to start the migration to an inevitable change.

 

5. What platform did you use for your IPV6 Service? What made you choose that platform? What were the others you”re considering and why you did not choose them?

Alex: Our first migration path was Linux based. This choice was simple, it was the only OS to provide full Ipv6 support. This direction has now included windows since January 07. The Vista Platform offers the same if not more opportunities to develop and grow.

 

6. What external standards are you committing to with your IPV6 Service?

Alex: We support the IETF standards for the use and deployment of IPv6. Our applications and service will use IPSEC by default for secure communications but we will accommodate users that want to have anonymity. The only difference is that this anonymous mode will not be permitted on certain types of networks. We are closely monitoring the roll out of mobile IPv6 and will support their recommendations and standards for deployment. We will even recommend some standards of our own which we will offer the network community, as they are tried and tested in our lab.

 

7. Did you ever think that your IPV6 Service was built too early or ahead of its time? What advantage/disadvantage has it given you?

Alex: Every day I wake wondering when the network community will realize what they are using, and embrace the new platform. I think that ignorance and a tunnel vision has occurred. The adoption of this medium as the global standard for communication and information dissemination has caused us to forge ahead recklessly, thinking that the network will support the demand. I think that Ipv6 was LATE and never early. It is still LATE, imagine if we had Ipv6 today rather than Ipv4 we would have a far more advance communication network, much more security, new jobs, more commerce and possibly a more united planet. The IP network has grown faster than any other network ever in the history of man. From Morse code to the telegraph to our public switch network (PSTN). Ipv6 is definitely late to the party.

 

The advantage for Innofone is that we have studied the new topology, assess the high ground, and the low hanging fruit. We have identified key areas were Ipv6 will launch now and others that will be slower to adopt or transition from IPv4.

 

8. What do you think is the future of IPV6 Services globally? Why should companies consider it at all?

Alex : Ipv6 is here to stay. It”s required to enable equal access to the all countries of the world, to a global communication platform. History repeats itself over and over again. Imagine for a moment that we are still using 4 digit phone numbers! Could we have built the world we have today. The future of IPv6 is our future. For the first time in humanity, we have addressed the needs of the entire planet to communicate, not just the needs of one government. For the first time we have the ability to offer EQUAL access to a technology pipe irrespective of when you actually start to use it. We are in an era when our devices need to inform us of situations in real time and companies need to communicate reliably around the globe with voice and data. Any company not addressing this move now, will be left behind, or playing an expensive catch up game.

 

(Innofonelab is aggressively hiring people at this time.)