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Improving HF Communications Now and in the Future Whitepaper.

NATO plans to move BRASS (Broadcast and Ship to Shore) HF services to the new BRE1TA (BRASS Enhancement One Technical Architecture) which was initially set out in 2008. There have been important technical developments since the BRE1TA vision was set out, in particular the work on Wideband HF (WBHF). There is also increased technical understanding and experience with some of the technologies associated with BRE1TA. This has led to a number of detailed technical discussions, such as those set out in the Isode White Paper [Architecture for IP Application Services over HF Radio: Point to Point, Multicast and Broadcast], which was written to support NATO BRE1TA planning.

A new whitepaper on the Isode website [From BRASS to BRE1TA: Improving HF Communications Now and in the Future] gives a higher level summary of what is going on, with the aim of providing an explanation to those interested in BLOS (Beyond Line of Sight) communication, but who do not have detailed understanding of HF technologies. The paper looks at BRASS capabilities and sets out what can be achieved beyond core BRASS with technologies that can be purchased today. This includes four of the five BRE1TA goals and a few capabilities beyond BRE1TA. Finally the paper considers capabilities that are anticipated, but are not yet ready to deploy. This includes the fifth BRE1TA goal of providing generic IP services over HF.

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R16.6 Now Available

The latest release of our complete product set, R16.6, is now available for customers and evaluators. In this blog post we look at some of the key changes, you can find a complete list on the Isode website.

New Product: Harrier Email Client

Harrier is a web-based secure email client with capabilities that make it ideal for use in support of military messaging deployments (including ACP127). Harrier includes support for security labels, time-related controls (reply by, expire on, deliver by) and Subject Indicator Codes (SICs).

Harrier can also operate as a general purpose client, providing a high performance, easy to use web interface to an IMAP/SMTP service.

New Messaging Server Capabilities

R16.6 sees a substantial extension of ACP127 support in M-Switch to provide a comprehensive ACP127 gateway and relay service. We’ve also added a range of capabilities in support of NATO BRASS (Broadcast And Ship to Shore) including support for BRE1TA (BRASS Enhancement One Technical Architecture).

New management capabilities include views in our MConsole management GUI to support management of ACP127 features, message history and operator alerts. A new web interface is provided for message correction, especially useful in military deployments where errors are handled by central operators and not returned to the sender.

M-Store X.400 has been enhanced to significantly improve performance and scaling, with message indexes now handled directly by M-Store (in previous versions this was held in M-Vault). M-Store R16.6 can store 100 million messages in a server, with mailboxes holding up to 100,000 messages.

Instant Messaging Enhancements

R16.6 sees a number of improvements to our M-Link XMPP server/gateway product including enhanced clustering to improve performance and simplify administration, control of messages based on maximum message body size and improved account provisioning for user information held in our M-Vault directory.

Download Today

R16.6 is available for download now from the Customer and Evaluator sections of the Isode website, both of which require you to enter your Isode login and password. If you have misplaced your login details (or wish to obtain a login in order to evaluate this release) please contact your Account Manager or reply to this email.

Documentation for this release is available from documentation page, which does not require a password.

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STANAG 5066 Extension Protocol Series

STANAG 5066 is a NATO Standard “PROFILE FOR HF RADIO DATA COMMUNICATIONS” providing a link level service for HF Radio. The latest version is Edition 3 of December 2010.

There are a number of issues with the current STANAG 5066 specification, particularly in relation to its use with the new Wideband HF (WBHF) specifications. NATO is aware of the need to update STANAG 5066 and has expressed intention to do so.

The S5066-EP series is intended to address the open issues prior to STANAG 5066 official update. This series of documents provides a set of extensions that can be used in conjunction with STANAG 5066 edition 3. The intent is that vendors and those procuring systems can reference these specifications, prior to this capability being available to NATO.

It is anticipated that this functionality will be folded into a future update of STANAG 5066 and at that point the series can be obsoleted.

Isode is managing the S5066-EP series as a community service. The initial S5066-EP documents are written by Isode but we encourage other individuals, organizations and vendors to contribute documents to this series.

Exchange of Information on STANAG 5066 EPs

The STANAG 5066 are all published on the Isode website.

There is an open mailing list for discussion of current and new S5066-EPs: s5066-ep (at) isode.com. To join this list or manage your subscription, please send a message to s5066-ep-request (at) isode.com.

Document Requirements

S5066-EPs must be openly available specifications that NATO may incorporate into a future edition of STANAG 5066.  They must be free of IPR or Patent restrictions that would prevent this.

These specifications are intended for implementation and must provide sufficient clear information to be implemented in context of STANAG 5066 Ed3.

S5066-EPs must have a clear publication date, and (apart from this document) a referenceable version number. S5066-EPs must have a status value which is one of:

  • Experimental: A new proposal for consideration.
  • Implemented: A specification that has at least one implementation that has demonstrated viability of the proposal.
  • Interoperable: A specification with two independent implementations that have been shown to inter-operate.
  • Informational: A document that does not have interoperability considerations.

The First in the Series: STANAG 5066 Padding DPDU

This document introduces a new STANAG 5066 DPDU to pad transmissions, which enables enhanced performance with no overhead. You can read the full extension on the Isode website.

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Upgrading from R15.1

Isode provides full support for Major and Minor releases of Isode’s server products, management tools and APIs for five years from the date of release. As of the end of November 2016, R15.1 came off of full support.

Release Notes for fully supported releases (currently R15.2, R16.0, R16.2 and R16.3) provide instructions for upgrading from R15.1. If you would like Isode advice on your upgrade and you have a current Isode support contract, then please get in touch and we’ll be happy to provide assistance with this and answer any questions you may have relating to R15.1 and support.

You can contact us either by emailing the support department or by using the Isode Self-Service Portal.

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Reporting from the Nordic HF Conference – New HF ALE (Automatic Link Establishment)

Isode CEO, Steve Kille, is attending, presenting at and reporting from the Nordic HF Conference (HF 16) on the island of Faro, Sweden.

Professor Eric Johnson led Wednesday morning’s session with an excellent presentation on new ALE work, called 4G ALE or Wideband ALE (Wideband ALE – The next generation of HF). This was followed by a presentation by Harris on preliminary measurements. Eric noted the importance of work in this area to support new WBHF and to reduce setup times. This is key technology for HF.

This work is being done by US DoD, with support from key US vendors (in particular Harris and Rockwell Collins). I asked when details of this work might be made available, and the answer was “not clear” and perhaps end of next year. This will likely be at the point when the work is published as a US Mil Spec. Then it will be shared with the rest of the world, and presented as a fait accompli for NATO to standardise. This may be a good way to achieve a solid standard. However, it feels to be locking out non-US involvement and giving unfair competitive advantage to US vendors.

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Reporting from the Nordic HF Conference – Wide Band HF

Isode CEO, Steve Kille, is attending, presenting at and reporting from the Nordic HF Conference (HF 16) on the island of Faro, Sweden.

WBHF is a key new development, and there were two good papers at Nordic HF on measurements during Session 2 on Monday.

Vivianne Jodalen, Terje Mikal Mjelde and William M. Batts reported on measurements made in the arctic (Wideband HF in the Arctic) and measurements made across the Atlantic (Performance of a transatlantic long-haul wideband HF system).

The good news is that a range of successful measurements were made in over-the-air environments. The practical results suggest that 6kHz channels (wider than 3 kHz narrowband) can often be achieved, but it was often not possible to realise the maximum of 24kHz. Throughput was generally quite a bit less than the “top end”.

While this is useful information and gives performance much better than narrow band, it is a long way short of the top end 120 kbps. I think there is a real risk that people have been over-sold WBHF and will be disappointed with the reality. This would be a pity, as it offers useful improvements.

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Swift 4.0 (Beta): What’s new

Those of you keeping an eye on the Swift or Isode Twitter accounts will have noticed that a beta release of the new Swift 4.0 is now available for download from the Swift website .

Swift 4.0 includes a number of important functional changes compared to Swift 3.0 as well as a significant change to the look and feel of the product.

The main changes are listed in the changelog but there are two big changes that you’ll notice immediately on launching this Swift beta.

Better Chat Monitoring

Swift already makes it very easy to monitor events in multiple chat rooms through the use of keyword highlighting rules. In response to requests from a number of users we’ve supplemented this with the addition of a “trellis” layout option, allowing multiple chats and rooms to be tiled instead of being exclusively displayed as tabs within a single window.

Swift in A 2x2 tiled view showing 1 MUC room and 3 1:1 chats with security labels and delivery receipts
Swift in A 2x2 tiled view showing 1 MUC room and 3 1:1 chats with security labels and delivery receipts

This new option (Change Layout from the View menu) allows the user to define the number and arrangement of tiles to be displayed simultaneously and then move chats or rooms into an appropriate position. The trellis layout option and the existing tabbed layout option can be flexibly combined.

New Chat Design

We’ve introduced a new, cleaner chat design which we believe will enable users (especially in MUC rooms) to keep better track of their own contributions to conversations allows for better display of message receipts and better indication of unread messages.

The Swift 4.0 beta is available for Windows, MAC OS X, Ubuntu & Debian Linux. Please email (swift@swift.im) or tweet @swift_im any feedback you have to help us further improve Swift.

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New opportunity at Isode

We are currently recruiting an engineer to work as part of the Instant Messaging and Presence team. The ideal candidate will have experience of several of the used technologies (C, C++11, Objective-C, Java, HTML/CSS/Javascript, Qt, iOS, Android, XMPP), with C++ being a core requirement, and an enthusiasm for learning other aspects of the stack. They will care about the provisioning of an entire system to provide users with the features they need while providing a great experience and ease of use.

They must be happy working with a partially distributed team, seeking advice and architectural guidance as needed. Several aspects of the suite are open source, and the candidate should be comfortable interacting with the external open source community.

Other desirable skills include working with general development environments such as Git, shell scripts, scripting languages, Windows, Linux, Mac; and those relating to the products such as SASL, TLS, and LDAP.

The role will include:

  • Design and development work across Isode’s XMPP chat/realtime messaging offerings, covering aspects of the server, and multiple (web, desktop, Android, iOS) clients.
  • Other development work as needed, e.g. test tools, load generation.
  • Customer support
  • Testing
  • Documentation
  • Peer patch review

The successful candidate will enjoy a competitive salary together with a good benefits package including profit related pay and share options.

CVs should be sent to careers@isode.com.

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NITEC16 and Harrier (Web)

NITEC is the annual flagship event of the NATO Communications and Information Agency, organised this year in cooperation with the Ministry of Defence, Estonia.

NITEC is both a conference and an exhibition and this year Isode took a small exhibition stand to show demonstrations of a wide range of our server and messaging software. NITEC was also the first public outing of the web-based version of our Harrier military messaging client.

Our demonstration setup (illustrated below) showed email, text chat and forms data exchange between two domains, using different security policies over a constrained network link.

Isode demonstration setup for NITEC

The constrained network link was simulated using MoRaSky, an Isode test tool which emulates (HF) Modems, Radios and Sky (Ionosphere).

Attendees were shown security label mapping and conversion, clearance-based message control in email, 1:1 chat and multi-user chat using Isode’s message clients (Swift for XMPP & Harrier for Email) and servers (M-Switch & M-Link).

NITEC was the first public showing of Harrier (Web)

NITEC proved to be a great source of feedback on Isode products, especially Harrier, and we’re looking forward to incorporating that feedback into future versions of Harrier and future demonstrations.

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We are recruiting

Isode Ltd is a UK software product company whose server software products form a key part of messaging and directory solutions in the military, aviation, government and intelligence industries worldwide. Isode works through partners and Systems Integrators to deliver solutions incorporating Isode products but also maintains a strong technical relationship with end users, who frequently approach Isode for evaluation material and technical advice on ongoing and new projects.

Strong growth of interest in Isode’s products, particularly in the military messaging market, has led to a requirement for an additional dedicated Pre-Sales Engineer to work in the Commercial Team. This position involves assisting Isode staff and Isode’s Partners with technical sales activities in new and existing opportunities, helping to remove technical barriers to a sale, including:

  • Leading the technical relationship with key prospects
  • Delivery of technical presentations to key prospects and customers
  • Contributing to bid documentation and sales proposals
  • Taking ownership of evaluation material and resources
  • Maintenance of demonstration systems
  • Development of proof of concept systems
  • Assisting with technical product support
  • Delivering product training to partners

The successful candidate, who will have worked in a technical role, will need:

  • Operating System skills on Windows and/or Linux/Solaris
  • Experience with enterprise-level software
  • Excellent interpersonal skills
  • Experience in a client or public facing role
  • Good verbal and written presentation skills
  • Strong time-management, prioritisation and planning skills
  • Experience with messaging server software and/or one of Isode’s target markets would be advantageous
  • At least 2-3 years commercial experience (Isode also welcomes applications from suitably experienced ex-military personnel)

This role will require occasional travel to Isode’s main geographical Markets (Europe, N.America, Mid-East).

CVs can be sent to careers@isode.com , but please note that it is company policy that we do not use recruitment agencies and we will not return calls or emails from recruitment consultants.