28/06/11 LUNS recent activity in the Open Source community

Supporting Open Source Software

At LUNS, we live and breathe open source software – every day we make extensive use of open source software to deliver world-leading services to our customers, to monitor and support our networks and to help streamline our back-office operations.

In addition to making extensive use of open source software we pride ourselves on contributing to open source projects and allowing others to benefit from our contributions. Our team includes developers of both the Moodle and Mahara open source projects and we work together with other developers world-wide to enhance the functionality of the projects, rapidly fix bugs and participate in the official project forums. By being closely involved with these projects and being members of the respective projects’ Security Teams, we can offer a secure and robust service, often patching vulnerabilities before public disclosure.

Some notable examples of our contributions to open source projects this month have been:

• Supporting the world leading open-source ePortfolio Mahara, release 1.4:
  • As mentioned in the 1.4 release announcement LUNS were the second largest contributor to the Mahara 1.4
  • We now host and support the mahara.org continuous integration server: https://jenkins.mahara.org/ which is being used as part of the Mahara Development Cycle
  • LUNS staff now make up 50% of the Mahara Review team fixing bugs and improving the Mahara releases
• Enhancing and improving the messaging system in the soon to be released Moodle 2.1
  • LUNS were commissioned by The Open University to extend the Moodle Messaging framework introduced in Moodle 2.0 to give more power to administrators and plug-in authors
  • We developed and successfully integrated the improvements to the Messaging system which are due to be included in Moodle 2.1 expected to be released later this month.
• Supporting OpenNMS on IPv6 Transition
  • As well as being one of the leading worldwide organisations participating in World IPv6 day, LUNS participated in the OpenNMS IPv6 “remote poller testing” to help ensure OpenNMS readiness for the forthcoming IPv6 Transition.

LUNS are committed to open standards and open source software, we believe that using open source software provides benefits to our customers in providing cost effective solutions and maximum flexibility to meet business needs. If you’d like LUNS to help you with development, integration or support of open source solutions, please Contact Us.

22/06/11 Latest Version of Mahara Released!

The final release of version 1.4 of the Mahara e-Portfolio platform was released this month with special credit given to LUNS. Mahara is a popular Open Source ePortfolio platform that can be used standalone or integrated with a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) such as Moodle. LUNS have extensive experience in the integration, development and deployment of both platforms. Two of the LUNS development team are in the top ten of contributors to the code for this global release which demonstrates LUNS commitment to the development of Mahara and the wider Open Source community; we are also in the top ten of contributors to the latest Moodle 2.0 release. Along with the contribution to the development of these e-learning systems LUNS have also provided robust hosted delivery of these services to over 250,000 users. If you would like to find out more about our services please Contact Us for more information.

9/06/11 LUNS survives IPv6 Test Flight!

Along with other major service providers, such as Google and Facebook, LUNS underwent a 24-hour IPv6 ‘test flight’ on World IPv6 Day yesterday to carry out a global-scale test of the new Internet Protocol. The test successfully demonstrated that the LUNS infrastructure including www.luns.net.uk is ready for the move to IPv6. The current Internet Protocol (IPv4) has been around for nearly 30 years and acts as the addressing system for devices on computer networks across the world. The IPv4 address space is close to being exhausted due in part to the recent exponential proliferation of Internet-enabled devices. IPv6 will accommodate 340 undecillion address (1 undecillion = 10 followed by 35 zeros in the British numbering system). To read more about the IPv6 test flight please visit http://www.worldipv6day.org/.

LUNS, through its involvement with parent company Lancaster University, has had a long involvement in the development and roll-out of IPv6. Early contributions from the university included inputs into the v6 protocol standardisation process, and the first ever implementation of the Mobile IPv6 protocol stack. This led to Lancaster working on behalf of Cisco Systems to develop their first implementation of the MIPv6 home agent.

8/06/11 World IPv6 Day is underway…

Along with over 400 other major web sites and organisations, LUNS are performing a 24 hour IPv6 test flight on the global Internet today. With the existing IPv4 address space set to be exhausted in 2011 the goal is to perform an international test of IPv6 enabled web sites and to raise awareness of IPv6 and accelerate its adoption internationally. For more details on World IPv6 day see www.worldipv6day.org. To test your IPv6 connectivity, visit http://test-ipv6.com. For more information see the following BBC article covering the event.

LUNS is well positioned to provide both native IPv6 connectivity and to help with the transition and testing of IPv6 networking and services.

12/05/11 See us at the Northern Grid Conference 2011!

LUNS is exhibiting at this year’s Northern Grid for Learning Conference in Newcastle on Friday 24th June. The event is billed as the most important and relevant professional development event of the year. The focus of the Northern Grid is using technology to support teaching & learning. LUNS will be there to promote our Moodle Virtual Learning Environment solutions which we have been providing to the education sector for the last five years. LUNS are amongst the most experienced suppliers in the delivery and development of Moodle throughout the world. To find out more about this year’s conference please click here. The event is free for Northern Grid members and tickets are available on a Buy One Get One Free basis via the Northern Grid website.