Inter-network Science

Dr Chris Marsden
University of Essex
Essex Centre for Comparative and
European Law (EXCCEL)
TAFI final workshop
DG INFSO Brussels
22 November
What might Inter-network science be?
 ‘Network' in terms of nodes on the engineering side
 the 30-40,000 Autonomous Systems
 Descriptive: what is the internet, in engineering terms?
 Network: machines & humans in each AS
 Explanatory: how does it work, what goes wrong, how we fix that?
 Analyzing together
 not been properly done before?!
 Specific regulations and policies
 most useful ('efficient', just, practical)
 to ensure maximum social value from the network.
 Privacy, interoperability and freedom of speech vital
 Types of network effects & social/economic/public values
 A future Internet of European values
What are needs and exclusions?
 Transdisciplinary
 Good network scientists and social scientists
 Monodisciplinarians need not apply!
 That eliminates most lawyers and engineers
 Not ‘web science’
 Branch of ‘graph theory’
 Applies largely to content/apps layer
 Very important WSI work done at Southampton/MIT
 Semantic web as Web3.0?
 Not Internet studies
 What some in US call ‘Internet science’ is really ‘studies’
 See AoIR – ten years of flourishing critical media analysis
Creating academic
interdisciplinary expertise
 We’re too old
 ‘We weary pygmys of DOS, dial-up and CD-ROM’
 Kids never watch TV without a laptop...
 Its the ‘Born Digital’ who are creative
 Young engineers as social and cultural entrepreneurs
 Multi-disciplinary, multi-national, multi-lingual individuals
 They code in different languages in different time zones
 They take commercial exploitation of technology as natural
 Born since IETF, PKI (even W3C) were born:
 Diffie and Cerf’s grandchildren; Python, Torrent and Linux children
 Fund next generation of pre- and post-doctoral researchers
 best hope for Europe to compete!
 Most universities and departments opposed
 Silos still keep us apart, research evaluation reinforces our borders
Build on ‘Best of breed’
 FIRE Station
 Future Internet excellence accessible
 PARADISO
 sustainability in widest sense, as with TAFI
 diverse group of industrial and academic partners
 Cambridge-MIT Institute
 Communications Research Institute
 International
 Pan-European
 Best of ‘The Rest’ – US FINE
 Brazil, Japan, Korea, China, Russia et al
A work plan for Internet Science
 Not just an integrated investigation but new methodologies
 building upon the integration of expertises.
 Methodologies may be investigated ‘per se’
 but must be applied to some practical cases as well.
 Pedagogy, ‘learning by doing’ for next gen researchers
 Identify cases of interest
 (i.e. applications, services, technical scenarios)
 Traffic management for specialized services a good example?
 Investigation by exploiting new methodologies
 quantitative and qualitative analysis
 social impact of such technology
 evaluation of the effects on human interaction and communication.
 Sociological and semiotic analysis:
 re-design technology to solve impracticalities and/or inefficiencies
Assessing Internet science by needs
 Risks and costs of ‘build it and they will come’
 TAFI demonstrates need for socio-economic research
 Complexity theory
 Network of networks presents complex modelling task
 Game theory
 N-sided markets of networks and content providers
 Real options
 Medium term policy direction a major financial consideration
 Thank Euro-process for no US-style duopoly/competition flipflops
 Cynical lawyers
 Play a real role – warriors turned peace-makers
 Knowing that law cannot solve problems turns our attention to real (yet
intellectual!) property disputes
 (Charter of Fundamental) Rights implications of technologies
Three Wise Monkeys of
Net Neutrality
Dr Chris
Marsden,
Director
LL.M.
Internet Law
Essex
EuroParl/EC
11 Nov 2010
New articles this month
‘Three Wise Monkeys’
 www.globalpolicyjournal.com/
‘Mobile Net Neutrality’
 ejlt.org//article/view/32
More ssrn.com/author=220925
 www.essex.ac.uk/law/staff/profile.aspx?ID=832
Managed services FRAND
Fair
Reasonable and
Non-discriminatory
Access
 means Murdoch, Berlusconi and Disney
 can’t cut exclusive deals to freeze out competitors
 Universal service must also be considered
 As well as Public Service must-carry
Europe leads on mobile neutrality
 Essential – for dongle users
 ‘Fixed-mobile’ convergence demands equivalence of regulatory
treatment
 Subject to reasonable traffic management
 Critical for developing nations
 5.3 billion mobile users today
 3b people will only access the Internet via mobiles by 2015 -
ITU
That begins at transparency
 Realistic 3G & LTE speeds
 Who told DSL Prime about 50Mb/s LTE in 1000 German
villages by end-2010?
 What’s the minimum speed at peak-time?
 Not ‘up to’ lab-tested maximum!
 NOT blocking Skype
 Building High Definition VOIP fast lanes
Cambridge: 'control point analysis'
 EIFFEL
 Note sustainability of EIFFEL as ‘think tank’ for network
design
 School of Architecture: original EIFFEL initiative in 2006,
 International curriculum for architecture research & education.
 Evolving developed methodology in combination with
 system dynamics modelling,
 to derive design strategies,
 regulatory policy recommendations
 and
 possible investment policies
Economics
 Spectral geometry
 Game-complexity theory
 Warwick:
www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/ug/modules/3rd/ec301
 EPSRC workshop
 www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/maths/research/events/2009_2010
/symposium/gamwks/