Monitor your location 24 by 7

Here is an example of a location-based application. Tim Hibbard has carried a GPS phone in his car for the last year. His position was updated and plotted on a Google map every 15 seconds. Soon, all cell phones will be location aware. Would you like to be tracked this way? Would you like to track your kids this way? Should we track criminals? Everyone? See where Tim is now and where he has been during the last year.

UN report calls for developing nation backbones

(disclaimer -- I am the author of this report).

UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, has published a report documenting the deepening digital divide between developed and developing nations. Conventional policies focused on privatization, competition and independent regulation are not closing this gap, so the report calls for publicly funded, neutral-access backbone networks with points of presence in every rural village -- a similar strategy to that used by the US National Science Foundation in connecting universities in the late 1980s.

Summary:

1. A decade of pilot studies and projects has shown that Internet applications can improve the quality of life in rural villages which, as a side effect, would slow the growth of urban slums. There are many success stories in commerce, medicine, education, news and entertainment, etc.

2. During the last two decades, we have encouraged a policy of telecommunication privatization, competition, and independent regulation (PCR), but the digital divide persists. PCR policy has been beneficial, but has run its course, and will not raise the capital to bring the Internet to rural areas of developing nations.

3. Therefore, we should build and operate neutral-access backbone networks (not access networks) providing high-speed Internet connection points in every village at public expense. The Internet is a general purpose communication technology that encourages substantial private investment, innovation, content creation and the sharing of knowledge by users and service providers.

4. Building these backbone networks would be a daunting challenge involving research and development as well as procurement, but we have faced such grand challenges before in other fields. We can follow the policies that guided construction of the US National Science Foundation backbone in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Links: Report highlights, and Full report.

Internet performance monitoring report

Physicists share very large data sets on the Internet, so performance is important to them. As such, they measure performance by regularly timing small data transfers between computers around the world. The 2006 Performance Monitoring Report shows continuing improvement in packet loss, data transfer rate and latency in all parts of the world. Performance in developing nations continues to lag that of developed nations.

2006 Digital Economy Factbook available

The 2006 Digital Economy Factbook is a good source for background data. It includes data and statistics on e-commerce, the communications industry, the hardware sector, digital media, the global use of the Internet and threats to the digital economy. Earlier versions are also online for viewing trends.

Wikipedia evaluation

We recently created an online survey on the accuracy and completeness of Wikipedia articles.

So far, 50 respondents have evaluated a Wikipedia article in an area of their expertise. Of those, 76% agreed or strongly agreed that the article was accurate and 46% agreed or strongly agreed that it was complete.

Of the 50, 18 compared the article they reviewed to the article on the same topic in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Thirty four percent of those people found the Britannica more or substantially more accurate and 39% found the Britannica article to be more or substantially more complete.

• Detailed survey results
  
• The survey
  
• Other information on Wikipedia accuracy and completeness
  

Please complete the survey yourself (for as many articles as you wish) and forward the link to others.

VOIP in the WAN

We saw that VOIP has grown rapidly within organization LANs. It is also making inroads in the WAN. This has led Verizon to cut VOIP prices in response to diminishing profits, caused in part by competition from VOIP service providers like Vonage.

Market research firm TeleGeography reports that 5.4 million U.S. households now subscribe to a VOIP service. This is up from 2.7 million one year ago. More worrisome to Verizon -- 2.8 million households have cancelled their local phone lines and are using cable-based VOIP. TeleGeography projects that by year-end 2010, VOIP will have attracted over 21 million subscribers--nearly one in five of all U.S. households.

Skypecasting

We have been talking about VOIP and using Skype. Skype just announced the ability to do "skypecasts," conference calls with up to 100 participants. Try that with your Verizon phone service.

Tests of early 802.11n products

Tests of early 802.11n products are in. The following shows speed versus distance for three of them:



For unobstructed, short distances, speeds are similar to CAT5 Ethernet.

Mobile connectivity options

We have been talking about options for mobile connectivity, and this notebook has a 3G radio built in. This mobile router combines EVDO with WiFi for an instant mobile hotspot.

China

We spoke of the tension between government fear of the cultural and political impact of the Internet and the necessity of the Internet in a modern economy, and listened to a comparison of Web surfing in China and the US. This article looks at Internet censorship in China in more depth. This editorial also summarizes important issues dividing the US and China. (Students -- if these articles are no longer accessible, contact me for a fair use copy).

WiMax deployment: 3 Mbps for $18.99 per month

We have been talking about portable (not mobile) connectivity and WiMax. An early WiMax deployment has just been announced in Muskegon County Michigan. This will be a public-private partnership, and data rates of 10 Mbps and higher will be available at higher cost.

Ad-supported connectivity

We have been talking about municipal wireless networks, and a coalition between Google and Earthling recently won the bidding for the San Francisco network. Google plans to offer free connecivity by presenting ads to users based on the location of the access point they are connected to, the nature of the establishment with the access point and the personal profile of the user. They have applied for a patent on this form of advertising.

Attend conferences -- virtually

There are many interesting conferences that are relevant to our class. You can "attend" many of them virtually on the Web. For example, there is a very complete Web site for Microsoft's recent MIX Conference. You can see the keynote talks and other sessions, read blogs and comments, see demos and video recaps, download beta software given to attendees, etc. (Atlas, Microsoft's new AJAX development tool was presented and is available for download).

Another excellent source of conference coverage is IT Conversations which posts audio recordings of the sessions at excellent conferences, most of which are relevant to CIS 471. You can listen to these on your PC or download them to an MP3 player for portable listening.

Applications of blogging in business

Scott Anderson, Director of Enterprise Brand Communications at Hewlett-Packard, gave a talk on HP's use of blogs. He spends some time on using blogs for internal collaboration, but focuses primarily on their use in maintaing a two-way relationship with customers.

Britannica refutes Nature's comparison with Wikipedia

The BBC publised an article on Britannica's article-by-article refutation of the Nature study comparing Encyclopedia Britannica with the Wikipedia.

Municipal WiFi networks

WiFi was invented for indoor LANs in homes and offices, but it is also being used in cities. One report esitmates that 320 cities are building networks and another estimates that 126,000 square miles will be covered by 2010. See our class notes on municipal WiFi and the Hermosa Beach wireless project.

Five podcast excerpts

I've put five new excerpts from podcasts on our Web site. They cover the Wikipedia, sources of content for Internet applications, municipal WiFi in San Francisco, the impact of the Internet on the newspaper, and a discussion of mashups.

• Wikipedia entries for members of Congress
  


• Interview of Yahoo CEO Terry Semel on sources of content
  


• San Francisco moves closer to free wi-fi from American Public Media
  


• The best blogging newspapers from American Public Media
  


• Mashing up Web sites to create something new from American Public Media
  

Breaking the end-to-end principle

We have talked about the end-to-end principle of network design and the idea that routers treat all packets the same. Now that a few telephone and cable companies control much of the ISP business in the US, they are seeking legislation that will allow them to program IP routers to examine packets. This would allow them to bill for specific services and give delivery priority to their content or that of those who pay a premium. Here is Vint Cerf's advice to congress on this bill. You can also listen to a brief roundtable discussion of this effort.

Lobbying against municipal networks

Telephone and cable companies have lobbied for State legislation to outlaw municipal networks for several years. They are also doing so at the federal level. Russell Shaw shows AT&T (SBC) contributions to the sponsors of the legislation. You can also listen to a short roundtable discussion of this lobbying effort.

Considerations for Pasadena city wireless network

We have talked about municipal networks, and Pasadena, California recently received bids for a citywide WiFi network. The bidders raised many questions while working on their proposals. Note that they are generally not concerned with technology, but with mechanical mounting of the radios, power supply, and other "nuts and bolts" issues. That is typical.

AOL goes P2P for video

AOL will use peer to peer technology to deliver video over the Internet. Would you give AOL permission to store files on your hard drive in return for the ability to download?

A lot of people think of AOL as a network for beginners, but do not forget that they are part of Time Warner. AOL may become an Internet video powerhouse.

Vint Cerf talk

Vint Cerf gave a talk entitled The Internet Today and Tomorrow at Stanford University. He covers some of the topics we will in our Network Applications and TCP/IP sections. Cerf was co-inventor along with Bob Kahn of TCP/IP.

Interview of Bob Kahn

I have posted an excerpt from a NerdTV interview of networking pioneer and TCP/IP co-inventor Bob Kahn. At the start of the excerpt he is talking about the ARPANet. The ARPANet was a single network, like a large LAN. The next step was to inter-connect multiple networks, to create an inter-network. Kahn and his colleague Vint Cerf invented TCP/IP to do that. The initial goal of TCP (later split into TCP and IP) was to connect the ARPANet with two other networks each of which had different packet sizes, data rates and communication protocols. TCP/IP has ended up connecting millions of dissimilar networks (3 minutes 33 seconds).

Recommended paint program

This week's Creative Cow podcast recommended a paint program called ArtRage. There is a free version and a full edition for $19.95. I have not tried it out. If you do, let us know what you think of it or show us some of your work using it.

We paid $200 billion for broadband connectivity -- where is it? (Make that $400 billion).

Bruce Kushnick just published The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal in which he shows that in return for promising to install fiber for high-speed connectivity to US homes, the Bell companies received $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks -- about $2,000 per household. The promise was not kept. Today we are the 19th ranked nation in household broadband connectivity rate, just ahead of Slovenia.

In the latest (2009) edition of his book, Kushnick has upped the title to "$300 billion".

The total is now up to $400 billion -- see Kushnick's latest The Book of Broken Promises.