The Inside Track

Marie Jose Montpetit was interviewed on June 29 on NPR’s WHYY Radio program, Voices in the Family, as part of a show on the psychological effects of social media. The mp3 is available at http://www.whyy.org/91FM/voices.html.

A revised edition of the book, Internet Policy and Economics: Challenges and Perspectives, co-edited by Bill Lehr of MIT and Lorenzo Pupillo of Telecom Italia is now out in paperback and includes a number of new essays. Information about the book can be found at: http://www.springer.com/business/business+information+systems/book/978-1-4419-0037-1

Bill Lehr and Nancy Jesuale’s (Net City) paper, “Spectrum Pooling for Public Safety,” has been published in the March issue of IEEE Communications Magazine. (http://www.comsoc.org/livepubs/ci1/public/2009/mar/index.html)

A critical first step toward a DSA-enabled future is to reform spectrum management to create spectrum pools that DSA-enabled devices, such as cognitive radios, can use, under the control of more dynamically flexible and adaptive prioritization policies than is possible with legacy technology.

Bill Lehr and Tony Smith-Grieco produced a report for the John Adams Innovation Institute of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative on broadband metrics and measurement issues titled “MIT Report to MBI: Measurement and Assessment of Broadband Availability (2009).” The report has been posted on the MassTech site at: http://www.masstech.org/broadband/docs/LehrJan09.pdf

This report links to an earlier report on best practices in broadband measurement (February 2008) and the study Bill Lehr completed with Sharon Gillett, Marvin Sirbu, and Carlos Osorio on the economic impact of broadband. Links to all three reports are at: http://www.masstech.org/broadband/resources.html  

MIT and Harvard recently received an $8M award from the U.S. Army for a five-year study of cyber international relations.  The challenge is to understand the threats and opportunities that cyberspace presents for our national security, welfare and influence.  David Clark is involved as a senior technology advisor, but most of the research team are from political science and law. Harvard is represented by the Kennedy School of Government. The study is not yet started, and it will be a while before there are results to report, but it is interesting to note that the Internet is now so deeply embedded in society that the U.S. Department of Defense is reaching out to political scientists and lawyers to help it understand tactics and strategy in cyberspace.

Those of you who have been in the CFP for a while will have heard occasional reports from David Clark on the FIND program being run by the U.S. National Science Foundation. There have now been three years of funding awards in support of FIND. Clark has been helping the NSF to organize this program since it started, and will be continuing in this role for the next three years.The latest news is that NSF has expanded this program: FIND is now part of a new, multi-disciplinary program called Network Science and Engineering, or NetSE. Broadly speaking, NetSE offers a challenge to the research community to work toward a deep understanding of the fundamentals that underlie the large-scale networks of today and tomorrow and to lay the foundations for methodical design of future networks. NetSE has three principle focus areas: the science of networking, the engineering of future networks, and the study of the relationship between networks and society.The first solicitation for NetSE research is now out, and you will hear more about this expanded program in the coming months.On a related note, some of you will also remember hearing about the GENI project, an infrastructure development project intended to provide experimental facilities to support research such as FIND.  The original plan for GENI was to structure it as an activity that could be funded through the NSF Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction program (MREFC). This program is capable of funding very large construction projects (e.g. particle accelerators) but has constraints on the nature of what it can fund. NSF has concluded that for the moment, the approach of using MREFC funds for an experimental network facility is too constraining.  It is continuing its exploration of design options for such a facility, and the GENI Program Office (GPO), which is run for NSF by BBN, is in the process of awarding a number of contracts to allow development of prototype components of such a testbed, as a way to reduce risk and better understand how to construct such a facility. Those grants will be announced soon.Click here for background on the NSF FIND program.

 David P. Reed / August 1, 2008On July 17, 2008, I testified at the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. The hearing addressed Broadband ISP use of Deep Packet Inspection, with the title “What Your Broadband Provider Knows About Your Web Use: Deep Packet Inspection and Communications Laws and Policies.” I addressed the core technologies sold by companies such as NebuAd and Phorm, and spoke about both the privacy risks and the significant risks to the Internet’s stability and growth posed by non-standard interception and modification of data in transit between Internet endpoints. The hearing record, including a full video record and written statements by witnesses is available on the House Energy and Commerce website at: http://energycommerce.house.gov/cmte_mtgs/110-ti-hrg.071708.DeepPacket.shtml

On February 26, 2008, I appeared as a witness on the technical panel of the FCC en banc hearing on reasonable network management practices at Harvard Law School. I have posted my opening statement at:http://www.reed.com/blog-dpr/?page_id=19