Awards

The selected projects within the February 2014 Call are:

• Uberflow

  OpenFlow is a simple protocol that allows switching hardware to be unbound from routing decisions. OpenFlow is the de-facto standard protocol for software-defined networking (SDN). The intelligence is moved to a central controller that is responsible for multiple switches in a network. Through OpenFlow, the controller is dynamically notified of flow creations (as with NetFlow and IPFIX), and can respond with actions that are to be taken by switching hardware in the data path: route the flow elsewhere, change fields, etc. This dynamic altering of network state is what makes OpenFlow, and SDN in general, very attractive in a number of fields.

  The API for manipulating the network state within OpenFlow is currently being standardised by the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) as NBI (which stands for 'North-Bound Interface'). As an emerging standard NBI has significant potential to create the ecosystem for network architectures.

  More about Uberflow

• SIPcollab

  Collaborative editing on documents is required (or at least very helpful) in a broad range of use-cases. Collaborative editing capabilities between peers gets rid of the need of server and enables usage in places and circumstances where it was not possible before.

  The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) in combination with ZRTP and OTR offers encrypted multimedia (or "whatever-media") communication channels between individuals and groups. Common usages include voice and video conferencing, instant messaging (MSRP) and desktop sharing. While the latter technically allows people to present and share documents, it is brittle, bandwidth heavy and broadcast only - meaning that only a single user can edit a document. In order to provide more agile and interactive capabilities, this project adds collaboration facilities based on the collaborative webODF editor and the SIP/SIMPLE client SDK. Multiple users will be able to view and edit a document (such as a presentation or text document) with a group of people in parallel. The project will produce both a simple standalone version based on QML and an integrated version as a plugin to the Blink Qt project.

  More about SIPcollab

• Open Crypto Project (cryptech.is)

  Cryptech.is is a project that want to design an open-source hardware cryptographic engine that can be built by anyone from public hardware specifications and open-source firmware. Anyone can then operate it without fees of any kind.

  Recent revelations have cast a doubt on the integrity of some of the implementations of basic cryptographic functions and devices used to secure communications on the Internet. There are serious questions about algorithms and about implementations of those algorithms in software and particularly hardware.

  The algorithmic issues are in the domain of the heavy math cryptography folk. But we must also deal with the implementation issues. The Open Crypto project is pursuing the development of an open-source hardware cryptographic engine that meets the needs of high assurance Internet infrastructure systems that use cryptography. The open-source hardware cryptographic engine must be of general use to the broad Internet community, covering needs such as secure email, web, DNS, PKIs, etc.

  The project solicits functional requirements from a wide range of organizations. It will focus on the classic low level cryptographic functions and primitives, and not get drawn into re-implementation of application protocol layers.

  More about Cryptech.is