Internet project earns prize David Bailey, who was reading for the BSc IT (Hons) at the University of Malta, has won a prize of Lm250 for a final year project entitled IPv6NST – a Network Simulation Tool for IPv6 which was judged to demonstrate the use of IPv6 technology and to promote the take-up of IPv6 by the local internet community.

The award ceremony, by the prize donor, the Malta Internet Foundation, was held at the university and attended by representatives from the Maltese IPv6 Task Force and the University Departments of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence.

The Malta Internet Foundation, also known as NIC (Malta), offers an annual prize for academic work making a significant contribution to internet technologies.

This year, the theme of the prize was IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6), a new protocol designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force, which resolves various problems faced by the old IPv4 protocol, notably the shortage of IP addresses, and also offers improvements in areas such as routing and network auto-configuration.

Although the two protocols will certainly coexist for a number of years, it is expected that IPv6 will eventually replace IPv4.

One of the challenges facing the community today is to take initiatives that facilitate introduction of the newer technology.