An experience in IPv6 networking supporting Ecumene Web information system for cultural heritage

People interested in Cultural Heritage constitute a community of users characterized by a high degree of mobility. Users visiting cultural sites hosted by local institutions expect to access information pertaining to cultural/artistic heritage from anywhere at anytime, as they can through the desk at their own homes or offices. The Ecumene Web Information System, developed in the groundwork of the Ecumene Project, offers a framework for accessing the artistic and cultural information through a Web application. In this paper, we expose the underlying communication network architecture, based on the IPv6 protocol and investigate the benefits of its adoption, in terms of mobility and security support. Indeed, the need of granting different access rights to different user classes enforces the security requirements of the system. Lastly, the open issues related to the practical integration of an experimental testbed with Mobile IPv6 and IPSec support are detailed and possible solutions are presented.

1. Introduction

An effective dissemination of knowledge about Cultural Heritage can be achieved through the exploitation of modem Web Information Systems (WIS) or by means of the so called digital libraries [1], capable of exposing large amount of data in a well-structured, accurate way to an ever increasing community of users. The world of cultural heritage constitutes an interesting area of experimentation in the field of mobility and security, due to the user needs and to the characteristics of the web application.