New Whitepapers

Two new whitepapers have been published on our website. The first sets out Isode’s Strategy for HF, STANAG 5066 and Applications over HF, looking at Isode’s product set for HF, with particular focus on innovative capabilities, research and Isode led standardization.

The second looks at the challenges of Operating XMPP over HF Radio and Constrained Networks, describing standards that have been developed to support constrained network operation and how these are supported in our M-Link family of XMPP server and gateway products.

STANAG 5066 Extension Protocol Series

STANAG 5066 is a NATO Standard “PROFILE FOR HF RADIO DATA COMMUNICATIONS” providing a link level service for HF Radio. The latest version is Edition 3 of December 2010.

There are a number of issues with the current STANAG 5066 specification, particularly in relation to its use with the new Wideband HF (WBHF) specifications. NATO is aware of the need to update STANAG 5066 and has expressed intention to do so.

The S5066-EP series is intended to address the open issues prior to STANAG 5066 official update. This series of documents provides a set of extensions that can be used in conjunction with STANAG 5066 edition 3. The intent is that vendors and those procuring systems can reference these specifications, prior to this capability being available to NATO.

It is anticipated that this functionality will be folded into a future update of STANAG 5066 and at that point the series can be obsoleted.

Isode is managing the S5066-EP series as a community service. The initial S5066-EP documents are written by Isode but we encourage other individuals, organizations and vendors to contribute documents to this series.

Exchange of Information on STANAG 5066 EPs

The STANAG 5066 are all published on the Isode website.

There is an open mailing list for discussion of current and new S5066-EPs: s5066-ep (at) isode.com. To join this list or manage your subscription, please send a message to s5066-ep-request (at) isode.com.

Document Requirements

S5066-EPs must be openly available specifications that NATO may incorporate into a future edition of STANAG 5066.  They must be free of IPR or Patent restrictions that would prevent this.

These specifications are intended for implementation and must provide sufficient clear information to be implemented in context of STANAG 5066 Ed3.

S5066-EPs must have a clear publication date, and (apart from this document) a referenceable version number. S5066-EPs must have a status value which is one of:

  • Experimental: A new proposal for consideration.
  • Implemented: A specification that has at least one implementation that has demonstrated viability of the proposal.
  • Interoperable: A specification with two independent implementations that have been shown to inter-operate.
  • Informational: A document that does not have interoperability considerations.

The First in the Series: STANAG 5066 Padding DPDU

This document introduces a new STANAG 5066 DPDU to pad transmissions, which enables enhanced performance with no overhead. You can read the full extension on the Isode website.

Draft & Release for Military Messaging: An Open, Online Approach

In military communications, messages are frequently sent to organizations (e.g., a Command) rather than to an individual or to a role.

The receiving organization will process the message using a Profiler, which looks at meta-information (such as a Subject Indicator Code “SIC”) in the message in order to dispatch it to the appropriate recipient. This process of examination and dispatch is known as draft and release and is, today, mostly done using a mix of paper and online systems. A number of deployments have sought to introduce entirely online systems for draft and release but the approaches used in those deployments all have weaknesses.

In a new whitepaper on the Isode website, “Open Online Draft & Release“, Isode proposes a new open standards based approach to online draft and release, combining the best practices of existing systems with capabilities for message review which can be used independent of draft and release.

ACID Multi-Master Replication in M-Vault

In our latest release, R16.3, we added a multi-master replication capability to our M-Vault directory server, to complement the single master approach of previous releases.

A new whitepaper looks at the approach we took to support multi-master and how that approach addresses the ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) database transaction reliability requirements.

The whitepaper then sets the approach in the context of other techniques used in distributed directories. For more information, follow the link to “ACID Multi-Master Replication in M-Vault Directory“.

New Whitepaper: Isode’s Solution for BRASS

HF Radio is an important naval communication channel for ‘beyond line of sight’ (BLOS) communication, BRASS (Broadcast and Ship to Shore) is an approach used by Navies, particularly those of NATO countries, to communicate between ships and shore using HF.

In a new whitepaper (Isode’s Solution for BRASS) we give an overview of BRASS and describe our strategy and solution for this area. The whitepaper looks at how our products can support the protocols and interoperability for currently deployed BRASS systems and move them forward to state of the art capabilities that can extend the services offered over BRASS.

Announcing two new products

This month, we’re pleased to announce two new products reaching preview release stage. We have been supplying secure, robust military messaging server software to the Militaries of NATO and Allied nations for over 10 years and these new products are a result of our continuing efforts to anticipate market needs.

Harrier is our Android Military Messaging client. The choice of up-to-date user interfaces for Military Messaging is limited and at Isode we believe that the importance of mobile access to military messaging is increasing. We picked Android as the OS for Harrier because we believe it is likely to be the dominant platform for mobile military usage.

The first release of Harrier will include all of the core functionality required of a military messaging client, and Isode has a roadmap to extend both platform support and military feature support.

Harrier is now in Beta release, you can apply to join by contacting us.

As well as Harrier we are introducing Icon-5066, Isode’s modem independent STANAG 5066 server, which includes a number of desirable capabilities not found in HF vendor provided S5066 servers (including Wideband HF and multiple platform support).

The first in our Icon (Isode Constrained Networking) product family, Icon-5066 includes drivers for RapidM RM6/RM8 modems and modems from the Rockwell Collins VHSM 2500 family. As modem drivers are written in Lua, a high performance embedded scripting language, new drivers can be easily developed, modified and maintained by Isode and Isode partners

You can find out more about Icon 5066 here.

M-Switch ACP127 Gateway to STANAG 4406 and MMHS over SMTP

ACP127 is an older military messaging protocol, which remains in widespread use along with a number of similar protocols such as DOI 103 and ACP 128. Isode’s M-Switch already provides full server side support for STANAG 4406, ACP 145 and MMHS over SMTP. We’ve now added support for ACP127 and selected related protocols to the M-Switch product enabling gateway connections between SMTP and STANAG 4406 services and ACP127 systems.

Product information is available on the M-Switch ACP127 product page.

Creating & Managing a Security Label Policy (new whitepaper)

Security Labels are a key component of systems providing security, particularly for military and government use where they are used to provide protective marking on information and as the basis for access control. Security Label Policy (generally simply termed “security policy” in most security label standards) controls the detailed structure of security labels and how they are used to provide access control.

A new whitepaper on the Isode website explains our open standards approach to supporting security policies in extremely complex environments. It also shows how our tools can be used to support simple environments using open standards, avoiding the need for a proprietary approach.

The whitepaper introduces some of the key concepts in this area and then describes the capabilities of Isode’s Security Policy Information File (SPIF) Editor in a way that enables a quick evaluation of the product.

Whitepaper Update

We’ve also made significant updates to an earlier whitepaper Using OSCP, LDAP & HTTP for Certificate Checking in a Large Scale Distributed Environment and over Constrained Networks adding a new section, Management Tools, that illustrates our product capabilities in this area.

New “Military forms using XMPP” whitepaper and access to our Military forms Demo

Forms are important for military operations, and there is often a need to handle forms quickly and share with a large number of users, such as Medical Evacuation (MEDEVAC) alerts.

XMPP based open standard instant messaging is widely used by military organisations and is a sensible framework for sharing forms. Our new whitepaper [Military Forms using XMPP], published on the Isode website today, looks at the requirements for military forms and how the XEP-0346 “Forms Display and Publishing” (FDP) can be used to provide real time military forms. It looks at how capabilities provided by M-Link support military forms using FDP, and how gateways can enable integration with other services. FDP is supported in the most recent R16.2 release along with FDP Management in M-Link Console.