Abstract
The authors implemented a field monitoring system on the Loess Plateau (Yulin College, Shaanxi, China) and provided data through IPv6 after authentication by GRID.
It is difficult to obtain fixed IPv4 addresses, which are not private but global, in developing region such as the Loess Plateau, China. The authors therefore used 6to4 technology with a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to make the IPv6 protocol available on IPv4 networks from the Loess Plateau to Beijing (Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences), and provided the observed data to the world. The data were transferred after authentication by a GRID computing middleware, Globus. The authors were able to securely provide the observed data to Osaka University, whose security policy does not allow the use of private addresses.
It is, therefore, not necessary for users to manage IPv4-specific functions such as NAT (Network Address Transfer), private addresses, DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). Instead, they can simply connect to an IPv6 network and then receive data. In the future, field monitoring covering a number of developing regions are expected to provide observation data to developed regions, which would be a realization of global ubiquitous computing.
