18th July 2007

Award of Malta Internet Foundation Prize

The Malta Internet Foundation, also known as NIC(Malta), offers an annual prize in favour of academic work making a significant contribution to Internet technologies. The eligibility conditions, the subject matter, and the nature of the prize vary from year to year.

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. A challenge facing the community today is to take initiatives that facilitate introduction of the newer technology.

A cash prize of Lm 250 has been awarded to Mr David Bailey, who was reading for the BSc IT (Hons) at the University of Malta 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.

Prof. Juanito Camilleri presenting the award to Mr David Bailey

The award ceremony was held at the University and attended by representatives from the Maltese IPv6 Task Force, the University Departments of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, and NIC(Malta).

18th July 2007