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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 411
Netizens-Digest Thursday, January 2 2003 Volume 01 : Number 411
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
Re: [netz] The UN Security Council's vote for war and the netizen desire for peace
[netz] end of the beginning
Re: [netz] end of the beginning
[netz] The 20th anniversary of the Internet
[netz] Foreign Affairs on ICANN and the upcoming new year
[netz] Happy Birthday, Dear Internet
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 09:39:56 -0500 (EST)
From: lindeman@bard.edu
Subject: Re: [netz] The UN Security Council's vote for war and the netizen desire for peace
R, v Head wrote:
> As I recall, Inspectors were withdrawn by the US and Britain preparatory
> to bombing, which was done for the ostensible purpose of punishing Iraq
> for its recalcitrance with the inspection regime.
>
> It is false to say that Iraq expelled the inspectors, though of course it
> could be argued that, had they been 100% cooperative, the bombing would
> not have been necessary.
Yes. (For the record, unlike the Bush administration, I was careful not to say
that Iraq expelled the inspectors!)
Many war critics have portrayed Iraqi noncooperation as a pretext, more than a
rationale, for US and British actions. Many of the same war critics have cited
Scott Ritter's recent statements that Iraq doesn't have weapons of mass
destruction. So it's worth remembering that in 1998, Scott Ritter was
criticizing the Clinton administration for not taking a _harder_ line on
inspections.
While it's debatable how this issue relates to the mission of the Netizens
list, as long as we are discussing it, we should make every effort to see the
whole issue, not just debating points on one side or another. My comments are
intended in that spirit -- to round out the story, not to impose one version of
it.
Mark
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 15:30:50 +0100
From: John Horvath <h8801joh@helka.iif.hu>
Subject: [netz] end of the beginning
Hi everybody,
The list has been a little quiet lately so I thought the following
article might be of interest to some.
John
- ----------------------------------------
End of the Beginning
by John Horvath
As 3G continues to be hit by a series of financial and technical
setbacks, it has now become obvious to many that the next wave in the
digital revolution is indeed over, this before it even had a chance to
begin
Next generation mobile telephony, also known as 3G technology or by its
acronym UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), was hyped
during the dying days of dot-com mania as the "the next wave" in the
so-called digital revolution. Such was the belief that 3G would further
carry the digital revolution to dizzying new heights that major telecom
operators bet their future on its success. Likewise, the European
Commission (EC) took a special interest in facilitating the development
of UMTS within the European Union (EU). Because of the relative success
of the GSM standard for mobile telephony, Eurocrats were convinced that
UMTS would give Europe a distinct advantage over the US in the global
economy.
As events would subsequently prove, this was all a classic example of
counting chickens before they're hatched: over 120 billion euros have
been invested by European companies in 3G technology, and several
European telecom operators landed themselves in huge debt when they
bought expensive third generation mobile licences. Amid concerns these
companies and telecom operators would never realise the planned returns
from their expenditures, investors pulled back from investing in
telecoms, sending share prices plummeting. Burdened by debt and an angry
mob of shareholders, telecom operators have since become more concerned
with their day-to-day survival than with the development of 3G.
In conjunction with this, problems from a lack of handsets to technical
delays have further beleaguered the development of 3G technology. For
the EC, all this has meant a severe blow to their vision of an
"information society". Third generation mobile communications technology
was seen as one of the elements needed for creating an information
society, providing fast web and e-mail applications on a roaming basis.
Now that in many parts of the EU a full 3G mobile telecommunications
network won't be up and running as planned means one of the key elements
of the information society roll out in the EU has been delayed.
Sweden highlights the problems that exist, as it has recently been
announced that a full 3G network won't be available in the Scandinavian
country for at least another four years. Sweden was expected to be one
of the first European countries to make 3G services available throughout
the country, and had opted to pursue a plan that suited the country best
rather than auction licences to the highest bidder. However, one of the
four license holders in the country, Orange, has asked for a three year
delay in the original schedule that would have seen more than 99 per
cent of the population covered by the end of 2003. The new date by which
Sweden should have the proposed 3G coverage is the end of 2006.
There has also been a request from Orange to reduce the level of
coverage from 8.86 million people in Sweden to 8.3 million. The move is
attributed to the economic difficulties that have been experienced by
telecom operators across Europe, all of whom are now looking to reduce
spending in the 3G area. As well as the request made to the Swedish
telecoms authority for postponement, Orange has also announced that it
will cut back spending at its German venture, Mobilcom. Spanish
telecommunications company Telefonica has also said that it is pulling
out of spending any money on non-Spanish 3G developments.
While Orange is only one of the four license holders in Sweden, its move
could affect the others, as the plans for establishing the 3G
infrastructure in rural areas in the country is a collaborative effort
between all four license holders.
News of such setbacks for 3G roll out is common throughout Europe. The
Italian operator Omnitel, which is owned by Vodafone, has cited a lack
of handsets as one of the main reasons why it has stalled the roll out
of commercial 3G services in Italy until May 2003. And in Ireland, where
only three companies applied for the 3G licences on offer, operator O2
has confirmed that it wants to share the cost of constructing a 3G
network. The costs of establishing the network would mean that the
company would seek an alliance, possibly with Vodafone.
A similar arrangement to share 3G infrastructure costs in Germany has
already been approved by the EC between O2's parent company mmO2 and
T-mobile. The two European mobile phone operators are expected to save
around 5.13 billion euro in building third generation infrastructures by
pooling resources, in particular by combining base stations and
antennae. The two companies also plan to get regulatory approval from
the EC for an alliance in the UK as well.
While some suggest that given present circumstances cooperation is now
key for 3G companies, others see the whole process as nothing more than
corporate welfare. Furthermore, a European Commission spokesperson
admitted there have been fears that the cooperation agreements would be
anti-competitive, but stressed that these agreements have been drafted
in a way that addresses these concerns.
Although the EC has been lenient in allowing telecom operators to pool
their resources so as to somehow keep the hopes of 3G technology alive,
it's nevertheless apparent that the Commission realises which way the
wind is blowing. Indeed, many within the Commission believe that
Europe's 3G operators will not break even until 2014. Much of this
skepticism comes from a recent report by Forrester Research, which
forecasted that only 10 per cent of European mobile users will be using
UMTS (universal mobile telecommunications system) by 2007, which will
mean a delay in payback until 2014 at the earliest. [1]
Furthermore, according to the report Finland, France, Italy and
Switzerland will hit break even first, sometime between 2010 and 2012.
In France and Italy this is because of the relatively few 3G competitors
and the large market size, meaning the cost-potential revenue ratio.
Finland will benefit from zero-cost 3G licences and the prohibition of
handset subsidies, while Switzerland has the highest average revenue per
user rate in Europe.
The UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal, meanwhile, are not expected to
break even until 2014. In Germany and the UK, this is due to high
licence fees, but all four are experiencing a growth in the number of
competing operators, requiring higher spending to acquire and retain
customers and greater handset subsidies.
Even more depressing is the outlook by the Finnish research institute
VTT, which has predicted that 3G mobile phones will be rendered obsolete
by a fifth-generation (5G) of mobile technology. [2] According to VTT
researchers, 5G offerings, based on high-frequency mobile extensions of
today's fixed-line broadband Internet networks, could begin to supersede
the third-generation networks as early as 2010.
VTT also envisage the emergence of a fourth generation of mobile
services that will allow users to connect to different networks
depending on their location. For example, a handset could connect to a
wireless local area network (WLAN) when inside a building, switch to a
3G mast when outside, and connect to a standard network in areas with no
3G coverage.
Pertti Raatikainen, a research professor at VTT, is quoted as saying
that "over the next five to ten years GPRS [general packet radio
service], 3G and WLAN will all be accessible via multi-network terminals
and this type of roaming between networks will be called '4G'. But
beyond 2010 a new network labelled 5G will start to render 3G obsolete."
VTT's vision of 5G technologies has a basis in the work of the European
Commission's Samba project, funded under the ACTS (advanced
communications technologies and services) section of the Fourth
Framework Programme. [3] The Samba project created a trial environment
for the use of broadband services by mobile users. The results gave
researchers a valuable insight into the technology challenges, and have
helped in the drive towards a fourth and fifth generation of mobile
platforms.
As a result of the pessimistic outlook for 3G technology, the EC has
already been looking beyond UMTS as a means for furthering its
information society agenda. To this extent, the it has been putting
pressure on five Member States that are holding up the introduction of a
new wireless technology that can already rival third generation mobile
phones.
The technology, known as Wi-Fi or wireless fidelity, allows laptop users
to access the Internet via wireless connections at much greater speeds
than 3G. Wi-Fi has already a foothold in the US. The goal in Europe is
to create Internet access in "hotspots" such as train stations, airports
and hotels.
However, France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Luxembourg have been delaying
the full implementation of regulations that cover the public use of
Wi-Fi. The EC, meanwhile, has been pushing the countries to allow the
technology. Indubitably, push may come to shove when in July 2003 the EC
will gain new powers to overrule national telecoms regulators. It has
already warned that any unfair restriction on the use of Wi-Fi
technology would be a breach of EU law.
As conflict between the old and the new emerge (or more precisely, the
uninitiated versus the unimplemented), the future of Europe's digital
landscape looks as uncertain now as ever before. Whereas during the
heyday of the tech boom all were in agreement on in which direction the
"revolution" should go, now there is no such vision. On one side, there
is the EC and some hi-tech companies who believe that new technology,
such as Wi-Fi, can be complementary to 3G and further their agenda for
technological development; on the other are companies and large telecom
operators who have invested most of their future in the success of 3G,
and are intent on at least recuperating their costs. For the end user,
however, it will all end up being the same old story: more hype and less
substance, with neither side offering anything really different.
Notes and References
- --------------------
1.
<http://www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/Summary/0,1338,15658,00.html>
2. <http://www.vtt.fi/>
3. <http://www.cordis.lu/infowin/acts/>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 15:43:39 -0500 (EST)
From: jrh@ais.org (Jay Hauben)
Subject: Re: [netz] end of the beginning
From: Alexandru Petrescu<petrescu@crm.mot.com>
Date: 11 Dec 2002 17:35:47 +0100
John Horvath <h8801joh@helka.iif.hu> quotes John Horvath:
> VTT, which has predicted that 3G mobile phones will be rendered obsolete
> by a fifth-generation (5G)
Wow this is new. I've heard previously about 3G, Beyond 3G and 4G;
but 5G is new. Let's see whether people can pronounce sixth g:
s-i-x-t-h gee.
Anybody remembers the project of the 5th Computer Generation?
Alex
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 16:18:13 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] The 20th anniversary of the Internet
Sorry for not posting for a while, but I was at a conference in
Berlin and am still feeling affected by the jet lag from the trip
back.
I thought that people on the Netizens list would find this email from
some other mailing lists of interest.
Actually, the early development of tcp/ip began in 1973. So
the coming new year is the 30th anniversary of both the cutover
to tcp/ip from ncp on the arpanet and the split between arpanet
and milnet in 1983 and the early beginning of tcp/ip in 1973
Ronda
- ---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 14:02:54 -0500
From: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
To: ip <ip@v2.listbox.com>
Subject: [IP] The 20th anniversary of the Internet
I still have the button and still have the memories of tht week djf
- ------ Forwarded Message
From: Bob Braden <braden@ISI.EDU>
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 10:08:38 -0800 (PST)
To: ietf@ietf.org
Cc: internet-history@postel.org
Subject: The 20th anniversary of the Internet
We ought not to let pass unnoticed the impending 20th anniversary of
the Internet. The most logical date of origin of the Internet is
January 1, 1983, when the ARPANET officially switched from the NCP
protocol to TCP/IP. Six months later, the ARPANET was split into the
two subnets ARPANET and MILNET, which were connected by Internet
gateways* (routers).
The planning for the January 1983 switchover was fully documented in
Jon Postel in RFC 801. The week-by-week progress of the transition was
reported in a series of 15 RFCs, in the range RFC 842 - RFC 876, by
UCLA student David Smallberg.
There may still be a few remaining T shirts that read, "I Survived the
TCP/IP Transition". People sometimes question that any geeks would
have been in machine rooms on January 1. Believe it!! Some geeks got
very little sleep for a few days (and that was before the work "geek"
was invented, I believe.)
So, on New Year's Eve, hoist one for the 20th anniversary of the
Internet.
Bob Braden
____________________________________________________
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 12:24:00 -0500 (EST)
From: <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Foreign Affairs on ICANN and the upcoming new year
Surprisingly there is an article about ICANN in the November/December 2002
issue of Foreign Affairs. The article "Governing the Internet"(pgs 15-20)
by Zoe Baird admits the failure of ICANN.
She writes: "The rapid growth of the Internet has led to a worldwide
crisis of governance."
However, the author seems to know nothing about the development of the
Internet or does she seem to care about its development.
She writes: "In the early years of Internet development, the prevailing
view was that government should stay out of Internet governance; market
forces and self-regulation would suffice to create order and enforce
standards of behavior."
This makes one wonder what she considers as the early years of Internet
development.
This coming new year (2003) is the 30th anniversary of the birth of
TCP/IP and the 20th anniversary of the cuttover from the protocol NCP
on the ARPANET to TCP/IP, a protocol which made it possible to have
an Internet.
The early development of the Internet was done under government. The
form of government, however, was a good form, (unlike much we see
since). This form of government was an office within the US Dept of Defense
under the leadership of computer scientists.
If Zoe Baird were interested in understanding what is wrong with ICANN,
it would be appropriate to learn this history and understand the lessons
from it with regard to the future development of the Internet.
Instead, she has a new proposal to replace ICANN. She is currently President
of an NGO, the Markle Foundation. Not surprisingly, she is proposing
that the new ICANN be designed to include NGO's and Government and Industry.
This is as contrary to the Internet's origins as is ICANN.
Thus she acknowledges a serious problem. But her treatment of this problem
shows disdain for the Internet and its origins.
Yet it is significant that the problem ICANN represents should be
included in an issue of a journal like Foreign Affairs. This demonstrates
that the Internet is under the foreign policy purvue of the US government
and they are planning new means of trying to forge that policy ignoring
the nature and needs of the Internet and its users.
This is an important challenge for the new year for netizens.
May we find ways to collaborate to take on challenges like this in 2004.
with best wishes
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
P.S. I have recently heard from someone I know that there is an effort
of people to propose legislation that would be helpful toward various
forms of media in the U.S. In this context he asked what kind of legislation
would people propose regarding the Internet and its development. This is
a topic that would take serious discussion and consideration. So hopefully
there will be a way to have such discussion in the new year.
Following are some of the more recent research and writing I have done to
try to understand the nature of the government institution that
made it possible to create the Internet, and the nature of the
international collaboration that was so crucial to the development
of the international computer communications metasystem that we
call the Internet.
part 0 http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/lick101.doc
part I http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/arpa_ipto.txt
part II http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/basicresearch.txt
part III http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/centers-excellence.txt
part IV http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/computer-communications.txt
part V http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/birth_internet.txt
part VI http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/misc/paper1031.txt
Also it is interesting that one of the laws passed by Congress previously
regarding the Internet had Netizens in its title.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 00:28:52 -0500 (EST)
From: jrh@ais.org (Jay Hauben)
Subject: [netz] Happy Birthday, Dear Internet
Hi,
2003 is the 30th anniversary of the first drafts of the paper "A Protocol
for Packet Network Intercommunication" by Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn. Jan 1
2003 is also the 20th anniversay of the target date (Jan 1 1983) for the
cutover from the ARPANET protocol NCP to the Internet protocol suite
TCP/IP. There should be celebration of these significant events in the
development of the Internet.
The following article appears in the current online Wired News. It is good
to see there is some effort to acknowledge these important historic
events. It was not that the cut over was seen as something that needed to
be jammed down anyones throughts. There were problems having adequate
implementations for all operating systems used on the ARPANET in time for
the cutover. If interested in more details you can see:
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/tcpdigest_paper.txt
Take care.
Jay
Wired: 02:00 AM Dec. 31, 2002 PT
Happy Birthday, Dear Internet
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57013,00.html
By Justin Jaffe
>From its early days as a pet project in the Department of Defense to its
infamous time nestled under Al Gore's wing, the history of the Internet is
littered with dozens of so-called birthdays.
But, as Gore can surely attest, not everyone agrees when they are.
Wednesday is one of those days.
Some historians claim the Internet was born in 1961, when Dr. Leonard
Kleinrock first published a paper on packet-switching technology at MIT.
Others cite 1969, when the Department of Defense commissioned the Advanced
Research Projects Agency Network, known as ARPANET, to research a
communication and command network that could withstand a nuclear attack.
The 1970s boast a slew of what could be pegged essential Internet
milestones, including the advent of e-mail and the splintering off of
ARPANET from military experiment to public resource.
But perhaps the most famous of the lot is the acclaimed Jan. 1, 1983,
switch from Network Control Protocol to Transmission Control Protocol and
Internet Protocol.
The transition from NCP to TCP/IP may not have been the sexiest moment in
Internet history, but it was a key transition that paved the way for
today's Internet.
Call it one small switch for man, but one giant switch for mankind.com.
Protocols are communication standards that allow computers to speak to one
another over a network. Just as English speakers of different dialects and
accents can often understand one another, protocols provide a lingua
franca for all the different kinds of computers that hook into the
Internet.
Until that fateful moment 20 years ago, the fewer than 1,000 computers
that connected to ARPANET used the primitive Network Control Protocol,
which was useful for the small community despite some limitations.
"NCP was sufficient to allow some Internetting to take place," said
Kleinrock, now a computer science professor at UCLA. "It was not an
elegant solution, but it was a sufficient solution.
"They saw a more general approach was needed."
Indeed, as ARPANET continued its exponential growth into the 1980s, the
project's administrators realized they would need a new protocol to
accommodate the much larger and more complicated network they foresaw as
the Internet's future.
Vint Cerf, who is credited with co-designing the TCP/IP protocol with
Robert Kahn, said, "It was designed to be future-proof and to run on any
communication system."
The switch was "tremendously important," according to Rhonda Hauben,
co-author of Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the
Internet.
"It was critical because there was an understanding that the Internet
would be made up of lots of different networks," Hauben said. "Somehow the
Internet infrastructure had to be managed in a way to accommodate a
variety of entities."
But despite the need to take ARPANET to the next level, the decision to
switch to TCP/IP was controversial.
Like the current Windows versus Linux debate, there were factions of the
community that wanted to adopt different standards, most notably the Open
Systems Interconnection protocol.
"A lot of people in the community -- even though we had given them six
months' to a year's notice -- they didn't really take it seriously," Kahn
said.
"We had to jam it down their throats," Cerf said.
It was worth the jamming, Hauben said.
"They had the vision," she said. "They understood that this was going to
be something substantial, and that's what they provided for in a very
special way."
© Copyright 2002, Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
- -----------------------------------------------------
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End of Netizens-Digest V1 #411
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