The Internet of Trash

It’s often a clear signal that we’re in in deep trouble when politicians believe that they need to lend a hand and help out with regulations. A bill has been passed by the US Congress, and now signed into law, that requires the National Institute of Science and Technology to…


Going Postal

When a service is constructed using diverse components, then the way in which service revenues are distributed to the various suppliers of the components of the service can follow a number of quite distinct models. There are various forms of revenue redistribution models where the revenue per transaction is distributed…


On Cyber Governance

APAN (Asia Pacific Advanced Network) brings together national research and education networks in the Asia Pacific region. APAN holds meetings twice a year to talk about current activities in the regional NREN sector. I was invited to be on a panel at APAN 50 on the subject of Cyber Governance,…


The Making of an RFC in today’s IETF

I’m a co-author (or is that “co-editor” in today’s politically correct environment?) of an Internet Draft that is closing in for publication as an RFC. It has gone through the Full Monty of the current IETF standardization process, including the steps of document review for Working Group adoption, further cycles…


Technology Adoption in the Internet

How are new technologies adopted in the Internet? What drives adoption? What impedes adoption? These were the questions posed at a panel session at the recent EuroDiG workshop in June. In many ways this is an uncomfortable question for the Internet, given the uncontrolled runaway success of the Internet in…


No So Private Thoughts at IETF 105

At IETF 105, held in Montreal at the end of July, the Technical Plenary part of the meeting had two speakers on the topic of privacy in today’s Internet, Associate Professor Arvind Narayanan of Princeton University [1] and Professor Steven Bellovin of Colombia University [2]. They were both quite disturbing…


Network Protocols and their Use

In June I participated in a workshop, organized by the Internet Architecture Board, on the topic of protocol design and effect, looking at the differences between initial design expectations and deployment realities. These are my impressions of the discussions that took place at this workshop. 1 – Case Studies In…


Internet Economics

One year ago, in late 2017, much of the policy debate in the telecommunications sector was raised to a fever pitch over the vexed on-again off-again question of Net Neutrality in the United States. It seemed as it the process of determination of national communications policy had become a spectator…


Has Internet Governance Become Irrelevant?

A panel session has been scheduled at the forthcoming Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Paris in November that speaks to the topic that Internet Governance is on a path to irrelevance. What’s this all about? Background When the Internet outgrew its academic and research roots and gained some prominence and…


The Law of Snooping

There is a saying, attributed to Abraham Maslow, that when all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. A variation is that when all you have is a hammer, then all you can do it hit things! For a legislative body, when all you can do…