The developing field of Wireless Mesh Networking as a means of Internet access offers an exciting and possibly more secure alternative to the traditional ISP model.  In order to help keep track of progress, and as a resource for our members, ISOC-NY has added a Wireless Mesh Networking resources page to our wiki at https://isoc-ny.org/mesh – please bookmark it, and feel free to add to it. You can also just simply email contributions to mesh@isoc-ny.org. If you are interested in forming an interest group, also get in touch.
For a taste, here are a couple of recent stories:
- 11/27/2013 Mesh network offers potential for free wireless Internet in Oakland (Oakland North)
- 11/15/2013 Power to the People! ISP price hikes and government snooping result in spread of open mesh wireless networks in the US (Telecom TV)
- 11/13/2013 Home Wireless Network Keeps the Snoops Away (NY Times)
On Wednesday February 6 2013 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) held a Workshop on Network Resiliency at Brooklyn Law School. Organized by Henning Schulzrinne, the FCC’s Chief Technical Officer, the workshop focused on the lessons learned from both 9-11 and Superstorm Sandy. It was a full day event. The venue, Brooklyn Law’s Forchelli Center, afforded sweeping views of New York Harbor, which brought an added piquancy to the proceeding.  The event was webcast via the Internet Society Chapters Webcasting Channel with real-time captioning.
Webcast: (Â archived)Â http://bit.ly/fcc-nr2013Â Â (I haven’t uploaded captions yet)
Program: https://edas.info/web/fcc-nr2013/program.html
Twitter: #fcc | networkresiliency
FCC announcement
Cisco’s Virtual Networking Index, in a report Entering the Zettabyte Era (pdf) issued today Jun 1 2011, predicts that annual global IP traffic (Internet and non-Internet) will grow 400% by 2015 to reach 966 exabytes or nearly 1 zettabyte. The chart below represents Internet traffic.
Other predictions for 2015:
- There will be 3 billion global Internet users, with average bandwidth of 27mbps.
- The number of devices connected to IP networks will be twice as high as the global population.
- There will be 6 million Internet households worldwide generating over a terabyte per month in Internet traffic, up from just a few hundred thousand in 2010 (but most of them will be in Asia).
- Traffic from wireless devices will exceed traffic from wired devices.
- Peak traffic will be equivalent to 500 million people streaming a high-definition video continuously.
Over 60% of the traffic will be video, broken down as follows:
Interestingly the report tackles the topic of possible changes to the asymmetric bandwidth status quo:
With the exception of short-form video and video calling, most forms of Internet video do not have a large upstream component.
As a result, traffic is not becoming more symmetric as many expected when user-generated content first became popular. The emergence of subscribers as content producers is an extremely important social, economic, and cultural phenomenon, but subscribers still consume far more video than they produce. Upstream traffic has been flat as a percentage for several years, according to data from the participants in the Cisco VNI Usage program.
It appears likely that residential Internet traffic will remain asymmetric for the next few years. However, there are a number of scenarios that could result in a move toward increased symmetry.
• Content providers and distributors could adopt P2P as a distribution mechanism. There has been a strong case for P2P as a low-cost content delivery system for many years, yet most content providers and distributors have opted for direct distribution, with the exception of applications such as PPStream and PPLive in China, which offer live video streaming through P2P, and have had great success. If content providers in other regions follow suit, traffic could rapidly become highly symmetric.
• High-end video communications could accelerate, requiring symmetric bandwidth. PC-to-PC video calling is gaining momentum, and the nascent mobile video calling market appears to have promise. If high-end video calling becomes popular, this will move traffic toward symmetry again.Generally, if service providers provide ample upstream bandwidth, applications that use upstream capacity will begin to appear.
On 8 June, 2011, the Internet Society will present World IPv6 Day. Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai and Limelight Networks will be amongst some of the major organisations that will offer their content over IPv6 for a 24-hour “test flightâ€. The goal of the Test Flight Day is to motivate organizations across the industry – Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.
Since the day is based on UTC Â it will conclude at 8pm EDT. ISOC-NY will present an informal wrap up meetup at NYU starting at 7pm EDT. Â Among those who have promised to attend will be Sagi Brody of Webair who will give a brief talk on that company’s IPv6 implementation efforts.
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The Oppenheimer 2010 Annual Technology, Media & Telecommunications Conference took place August 10-11, 2010 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston. A webcast is available of audio of the Fiber Infra Panel (free login required).
The panel included Hunter Newby of Allied Fiber and an extended slideset of his recent ISOC-NY presentation is provided as an adjunct to the audio. Other panelists are Dan Caruso of Zayo, Bill LaPerch of Abovenet,
NiQ Lay of HKBN and Frank Mambuca of US Metrotel.
In her new book Internet Architecture and Innovation, Barbara van Schewick explores the economic consequences of Internet architecture, offering a detailed analysis of how it affects the economic environment for innovation.
Van Schewick describes the design principles on which the Internet’s original architecture was based—modularity, layering, and the end-to-end arguments—and shows how they shaped the original architecture. She analyzes in detail how the original architecture affected innovation—in particular, the development of new applications—and how changing the architecture would affect this kind of innovation.
Van Schewick concludes that the original architecture of the Internet fostered application innovation. Current changes that deviate from the Internet’s original design principles reduce the amount and quality of application innovation, limit users’ ability to use the Internet as they see fit, and threaten the Internet’s ability to realize its economic, social, cultural, and political potential. If left to themselves, network providers will continue to change the internal structure of the Internet in ways that are good for them but not necessarily for the rest of us. Government intervention may be needed to save the social benefits associated with the Internet’s original design principles.
April 8, 2010: In the second event of the Annenberg “Art of the Long View” series, communication professor Jonathan Taplin discusses the future of communication with Verizon CEO and chairman of the board Ivan Seidenberg.