The Internet society and its struggle for recognition and influence

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Reflections on security options for the real-time transport protocol framework

The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) supports a range of video conferencing, telephony, and streaming video ap- plications, but offers few native security features. We discuss the problem of securing RTP, considering the range of applications. We outline why this makes RTP a difficult protocol to secure, and describe the approach we have recently proposed in the IETF to provide security for RTP applications. This approach treats RTP as a framework with a set of extensible security building blocks, and prescribes mandatory-to-implement security at the level of different application classes, rather than at the level of the media transport protocol

Temporal Network Analysis of Email Communication Patterns in a Long Standing Hierarchy

An important concept in organisational behaviour is how hierarchy affects the voice of individuals, whereby members of a given organisation exhibit differing power relations based on their hierarchical position. Although there have been prior studies of the relationship between hierarchy and voice, they tend to focus on more qualitative small-scale methods and do not account for structural aspects of the organisation. This paper develops large-scale computational techniques utilising temporal network analysis to measure the effect that organisational hierarchy has on communication patterns within an organisation, focusing on the structure of pairwise interactions between individuals. We focus on one major organisation as a case study - the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) - a major technical standards development organisation for the Internet. A particularly useful feature of the IETF is a transparent hierarchy, where participants take on explicit roles (e.g. Area Directors, Working Group Chairs). Its processes are also open, so we have visibility into the communication of people at different hierarchy levels over a long time period. We utilise a temporal network dataset of 989,911 email interactions among 23,741 participants to study how hierarchy impacts communication patterns. We show that the middle levels of the IETF are growing in terms of their dominance in communications. Higher levels consistently experience a higher proportion of incoming communication than lower levels, with higher levels initiating more communications too. We find that communication tends to flow "up" the hierarchy more than "down". Finally, we find that communication with higher-levels is associated with future communication more than for lower-levels, which we interpret as "facilitation". We conclude by discussing the implications this has on patterns within the wider IETF and for other organisations

Internet... the final frontier: an ethnographic account: exploring the cultural space of the Net from the inside

The research project The Internet as a space for interaction, which completed its mission in Autumn 1998, studied the constitutive features of network culture and network organisation. Special emphasis was given to the dynamic interplay of technical and social conventions regarding both the Net’s organisation as well as its change. The ethnographic perspective chosen studied the Internet from the inside. Research concentrated upon three fields of study: the hegemonial operating technology of net nodes (UNIX) the network’s basic transmission technology (the Internet Protocol IP) and a popular communication service (Usenet). The project’s final report includes the results of the three branches explored. Drawing upon the development in the three fields it is shown that changes that come about on the Net are neither anarchic nor arbitrary. Instead, the decentrally organised Internet is based upon technically and organisationally distributed forms of coordination within which individual preferences collectively attain the power of developing into definitive standards. --

A Model of Forum Shopping, with Special Reference to Standard Setting Organizations

Owners of intellectual property or mere sponsors of an idea (e.g., authors, security issuers, sponsors of standards) often need to persuade potential buyers or adopters of the worth of their property or idea. To this purpose, they often resort to more or less independent certifiers. This paper analyzes the strategic choice of certifiers in rival and non-rival situations in a three-stage game. First, the owner/sponsor selects among potential certifiers. Certifiers differ in their degree of sympathy towards the owner/sponsor's interests relative to their concern for quality delivered to the users. Second, the certifier studies the offering and renders an opinion. The opinion consists of an endorsement (or lack thereof) and, possibly, some further demands for changes involving prices or offering characteristics. Third, the final users adopt or buy as a function of their perceived utility. In this context, the choice of certifier involves a basic trade-off: trying a tougher certifier reduces the probability of a positive opinion, but makes the users more likely to adopt the offering or willing to pay more for it in case of a positive opinion by the certifier. The paper first analyzes the sponsor's choices of certifier and design, as well as social preferences regarding these choices. More attractive standards lead to more friendly certification and fewer concessions to users. Regulation cannot improve on private choices in case of mildly attractive standards, and partial regulation reduces social welfare in case of attractive standards. Furthermore, the sponsor can costlessly delegate the design choice to the certifier when she can have her preferred choice of certifier, but must make more concessions to users than she would want to if the spectrum of certifiers is limited. The paper then extends the basic model to multiple categories of users, to the downstream presence of the sponsor, and to within-user-group network externalities. Finally, it studies strategic forum shopping by sponsors of competing standards.