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Version 96 (modified by whited, 7 years ago) (diff)

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Welcome to the SPIRE project site

The SPIRE project will tackle policy, middleware and software issues to facilitate a community of authenticated peer-2-peer early adopters within UK HEIs. The SPIRE project is run by  TALL in partnership with  Penn State University funded by  the JISC.

The project will install the Penn States  Lion Share collaborative working tool within Oxford University. Having done this we will make Lion Share available to the wider HE community.

Please contact  david.white@conted.ox.ac.uk if you are interested in using authenticated peer-2-peer in your institution or if you have a technical question.

REQUEST A USER ACCOUNT FOR LIONSHARE:

Early Adopter LionShare network is now available for UK users Click Here to request a user account.

Latest Developments

  •  Link to a powerpoint and mp3 of the SPIRE talk relating to the possible use of P2P as the quickest was to disseminate research findings from the 'hard drive' to the wider web. Given to the CETIS Metadata and Digital Repositories Sig, Bath 2006-06-28.
  • Download a power point of the SPIRE talk relating to institutions possible relationship with 'Web 2.0' type technologies, including P2P given at an Oxford University 'ITSS' talk 2006-05-25.
  • Download a power point of the SPIRE talk relating to the concepts of formal and informal repositories given at the Digital Repositories Workshop in Edinburugh 2006-05-22.
  • Download a pdf outlining the workflow for searching using LionShare in the  Reload LD editing tool. The project is doing this to provide a proof of concept that P2P can be part of the content creation workflow.
  • Initial plan for year two: LionShare to become an option for resource finding in [httpwww.reload.ac.uk Reload].

Official Documentation

For clarity the project has been split into three main areas: Policy, Appliction and Technical

Policy

2006-01-29

  • University of Oxford allow limited use of Skype P2P system!  Click here for official policy. This is because of pressure from numerous groups around the University and probably because the content is transitory and does not need tracking or archiving (i.e. conversations)

2005-09-26

  • We have the offcial go ahead from Alan Gay of the Oxford University Computing Services to use LionShare as part of a limited research project in the department for Continuing Education. The next step is to get LionSHare accepted for the whole university.
  • Oxford produces specific  policy for Peer-2-Peer systems in which LionShare appears to be excempt. We are in the process of checking this.

2005-07-07

  • One of the major challenges of this project will be influencing the policy within Oxford University to allow the use of Lion Share. Currently users without Oxford authentication are not allowed to use the Oxford network.
  • See  rule 13.(6)(a):

"No computer connected to the university network may be used to give any person who is not a member or employee of the University or its colleges access to any network services outside the department or college where that computer is situated.".

  • In theory a Shibboleth authenticated user from a trusted institution using Lion Share would not fall foul of this ruling because it falls under the 'exceptions' outlines in the next rule.

"Certain exceptions may be made, for example, for members of other UK universities, official visitors to a department or college, or those paying a license fee."

We are investigating further.

2005-07-15

  • We are allowed to connect to the Universities Kerberos Realm and get started! This is good news, although there is alot of technical work to be done to get up and running (see Technical below).
  • We suspect that the central IT services are not yet aware that we are working with a peer-2-peer system. However, as we don't have it working yet it is not a problem.

Application

2006-05-24

  • Should the institution run informal services such as p2p or should they be outsourced in a simmilar manner to the BBCs blogging service. How can institutions delver collaborative / social services?

2006-01-31

  • Discussion with the University Library Services: P2P may be best used 'behind the scenes' as a mwthod of load balancing for digital library / repository systems.

2005-09-24

  • What are the likely uses for Lion Share in the UK. Who could stand to benefit from this method of working the most? Groups that work with large amounts of imagery seem to be the first port of call, such as the Archaeologists and Medics in Oxford. How does this relate to copyright issues?
  • How can peer-2-peer search and retrieval be used within existing open source software such as  Reload? Could peer-2-peer be useful for collaborative authoring?
  • Narrative Use Cases 2005-08-18 help to clarify likely user groups and methods of working.

Technical

  • After many failed attempts to get our Active Directory based version of LionShare running we have decided to go with LDAP as an alternative (2006-05-31)
  • Our Active Directory install is unstable with LionShare, currently looking into this (2006-01-31)
  • Possible problems with proxy server settings and LionShare.
  • Currently (2005-10-06) waiting for the promised release of verison 1.0 of LionShare befor procceding with any more infrastructure work as the new version also has a re-write of the SASL-CA server.
  • The SASL-CA server written by the LionShare team is a manditory component of the LionShare infrastructe as it provides network certificates for the LionShare desktop client. Here is the Diary of Mike Taylor as he goes through the process of linking up with the Oxford University Kerberos system and attempting to get the SASL-CA off the ground.
  • Issues at 2005-07-19
  • During the JISC Joint Programmers Conference I (David White) outlined the SPIRE project and gave a talk about using WIKIs for project management. These talks generated interest in the SPIRE project from Anne Robertson of the GRADE project at  EDINA and Wolfgang Greller of the  University of the Highlands and islands. It became clear that authentication issues would hold up collaboration . This caused a flurry of e-mails discussing the issues with non-web apps and shib + Athens / herald accounts.
  • Issues at 2005-07-06

To kick of the new round of JISC and related projects at Oxford we hosted an informal afternoon meeting on 2005-07-05. Project managers from SPIRE,  WCKER ASK and Guani Xi attended and gave short intros to these projects. About 15 people attended from various parts of the university. It became clear that there was interest in LionShare for the ASK project and for Oxford departments that routinely generate alot of images.

Jpg of the poster displayed at the JISC conference 2005-07-07 / 08

Information about Trac

For a complete list of local wiki pages, see TitleIndex.