Nokia announces an open smart home platform

Nokia announced an open smart home platform yesterday. What makes this move interesting to me is not so much the home automation stuff (although that is also interesting development), but the fact that the platform is basically an open Linux-based WiFi (801.11n) router platform.

If Nokia manages to keep this platform as open as the Maemo platform, it enables developers and third parties to participate very efficiently into innovating new services for home environment.

I also find the business aspects and opportunities of this move interesting. Although Nokia does not mention it anywhere, this kind of home gateway devices would extend the Nokia's possible service platforms straight to homes of the consumers and since the device already has WiFi capability, could this also be a move in the future to offload mobile Internet traffic to broadband connections instead of cellular networks? This remains to be seen, but it is interesting anyway.

Pervasive Networks and Connectivity research report now available

The seminar reports of Special Topics in Networking Spring 2008 seminar are now available as a research report from Tampere University of Technology Department of Communications Engineering. The research report can be found in digital form from: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~bilhanan/TLT2656_2008-Final.pdf

Utilising IPv6 in home networks

Recently I wrote a paper for Terena Networking Conference 2007 about utilising OpenWRT, OpenVPN and 6to4 to bring IPv6 connectivity both to home network and for mobile terminals connected to the home network. The paper seemed good enough to be accepted into the Emerald Publishing's Campus-Wide Information Systems journal and this Friday I finally received printed versions of the journal and article.

In case you are interested in IPv6 connectivity, OpenWRT or OpenVPN, the paper should also be available here (seems to require Emerald Publishing's subscription):
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/10650740710834653

Earlier and free versions of the presentation available here:
http://tnc2007.terena.org/programme/presentations/show.php?pres_id=107

The presentation was a part of the video archived session stored here:
http://tnc2007.terena.org/programme/sessions/show.php?sess_id=80