Lancaster University actively uses Microsoft Windows source code to support experimental aspects of its research. In early 2002 they achieved notable success by having LandMARC project source code adopted by two of Microsoft’s product groups: the Windows Server IPv6 group and the Windows CE .NET Core-OS group.

Situation

The Department of Computer Science at Lancaster University is one of the leading centers for networking and distributed multimedia research in the United Kingdom. As with most others in the academic field, Lancaster researchers traditionally employed one of the Unix operating systems—typically NetBSD, FreeBSD, or Linux. However, some of the Ph.D. students at Lancaster started to experiment with the Microsoft® Windows® source code as an alternative to the more established research platforms.

By early 1999, a Windows source-code thesis project had been submitted, and senior academics at Lancaster were convinced that the Windows source code offered their team an alternative research platform for experimental work. Lancaster decided to use Windows as the basis for their efforts, and approached the University Relations Team at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England for support.

Started in October of 1999, the outcome of this venture was the Lancaster and Microsoft Active Research Collaboration (LandMARC) project (http://www.landmarc.net/). The most celebrated aspect of the LandMARC project was an implementation of Mobile IPv6 in the Windows operating system.

We embarked upon this project because we thought that the people at Lancaster were good, and the results have fully justified this. In this case the outcome has surpassed anything that we might reasonably have expected, and we are very pleased that it has produced something genuinely useful. Professor Roger Needham CBE FRS, Managing Director, Microsoft Research Cambridge

Solution

One of the objectives of the LandMARC project was to provide an implementation of Mobile IPv6 on the Windows operating system for research purposes. Mobile IPv6 allows a mobile device to retain the use of an IPv6 address after moving from the “home” network for which that address is valid, so that applications wanting to contact the device at that address may do so directly, and so that network connections bound to the address survive movement of the mobile device.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) had been working on defining a next generation Internet Protocol, known as Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). The starting point for the LandMARC development of Mobile IPv6 effort was the MSR 1.4 protocol stack for IPv6, developed and released in source form for research purposes on Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0.  The MSR 1.4 stack did not support Mobile IPv6 machines, and the work of extending the code to do so was initially undertaken by Lancaster University. The result was a working implementation of Mobile IPv6 for Windows 2000, which was released for research purposes from the Microsoft Research Web site in January 2001.

During one of the Lancaster team’s several visits to Microsoft Corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington, the Windows CE product group expressed interest in the Mobile IPv6 project. It was decided that the LandMARC project would be extended to include the Windows CE operating system. What followed was a stellar example of distributed teamwork among Lancaster, Cambridge, and Redmond. In early January 2002, the exercise was declared complete, and ownership of the active source code moved from Lancaster to Microsoft, in time for the next phase of Windows CE development. The Mobile IPv6 source code is now held in the source repositories for Microsoft Windows Server™ and Windows CE .NET.

Benefits

From an academic perspective, the joint endeavor can be declared a success on the strengths of the number of papers published and the number of Ph.D. candidates who have used or now are using Windows source to obtain their degrees.

Microsoft invests heavily in research, maintaining five substantial research labs of its own in Redmond, Beijing, Silicon Valley, Bay Area, and Cambridge. The work is both theoretical and applied, and Microsoft, determined to support innovation, employs a dedicated, experienced staff to help put research teams and product groups in contact with each other and to facilitate the technology transfer of research ideas between groups. Phil Fawcett, an experienced Microsoft veteran of multiple product releases, is particularly responsible for the Windows Division, Digital Media Division, and the Cambridge Research Lab. Speaking to Microsoft researchers in Cambridge, he explained how people within the Microsoft development groups tend to view research: “They might ask you how many papers you’ve had published and they may or may not care. They might even ask you how many patents you’ve obtained; and they might care, but usually not much. What they really care about is this: the impact your technology and research will have or has had on any of the product lines and Microsoft customers.” 

The Microsoft Research Source Licensing Program (MSRLP) authorizes faculty, staff, and students in the licensed institution to use, reproduce, and modify source code and related confidential information provided by Microsoft for educational purposes or sponsored government and commercial research. The LandMARC project clearly demonstrates the potential for rewarding technology transfer from academic research into business applications.

The success of the work at Lancaster University proves that talented university researchers can successfully utilize Windows source code—either defined by conventional academic criteria or as measured by the criteria that Microsoft applies to its own professional research groups. It also demonstrates that university researchers can establish a close rapport with research and development groups inside Microsoft, and that both sides can work conjointly in developing top-quality operating system code.

For More Information

For more information on the Mobile IPv6 Systems Research Lab (MSRL) project, visit:

http://www.mobileipv6.net/

For more information on the Microsoft Research University Programs, visit: http://www.research.microsoft.com/ 

For more information on the Interactive Distributed Multimedia Systems 2001 conference, visit:

http://www.idms2001.org/ 

For more information on the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), visit:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows.netserver/technologies/ipv6/default.asp

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