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. --

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." (author's abstract)"Das im Herbst 1998 abgeschlossene Forschungsprojekt 'Interaktionsraum Internet' hat sich mit den konstitutiven Merkmalen der Netzkultur und Netzwerkorganisation beschäftigt. Im Vordergrund des Interesses stand das dynamische Zusammenspiel technischer und gesellschaftlicher Konventionen in der Organisation wie auch im Wandel des Netzes. Die ethnographisch angeleitete Binnenperspektive auf das Internet konzentrierte sich auf drei ausgewählte Bereiche, um Prozesse der Institutionenbildung und die Formen ihrer Transformation zu studieren: die hegemoniale Betriebstechnik der Netzknoten (UNIX), die grundlegende Übertragungstechnik im Netz (das Internet Protokoll IP) und einen populären Kommunikationsdienst (Usenet). Der Schlußbericht des Projekts enthält die Ergebnisse der drei Untersuchungsstränge. Gezeigt wird anhand der Entwicklung in den drei Feldern, daß sich der Wandel des Netzes weder beliebig noch anarchisch vollzieht. Das dezentral organisierte Internet beruht vielmehr auf technisch wie organisatorisch verteilten Formen der Koordination, in denen individuelle Handlungspräferenzen kollektiv definitionsmächtig werden." (Autorenreferat

AS Domain Tunnelling for User-Selectable Loose Source Routing

The use of the Internet as a ubiquitous means of e-commerce, social interaction and entertainment is well established. However, despite service diversity, all traffic is treated the same. Although this clearly “works” and is considered “fair” in terms of net neutrality, there are times when it would be particularly beneficial, if the end-user could have some control over the path his or her traffic takes, either avoiding geographic regions or exploiting lower latency options, should they exist. In this research work, we propose to design and evaluate a scheme that allows end-users to selectively exploit a sequence of tunnels along a path from the source to a chosen destination. The availability of such tunnels is advertised centrally through a broker, with the cooperation of the Autonomous System (AS) domains, allowing end-users to use them if so desired. The closest analogy this scheme is that of a driver choosing to use one or more toll roads along a route to avoid potential congestion or less desirable geographic locations. It thus takes the form of a type of loose source routing. Furthermore, the approach avoids the need for inter-operator cooperation, although such cooperation provides a means of extending tunnels across AS peers. In particular, we aim to ascertain the benefit in terms of delay and reliability for a given degree of tunnel presence within a portion of the Internet. The expectation is that a relatively small number of tunnels may be sufficient to provide worthwhile improvements in performance, at least for some users. Based on this premise, we first design and implement a simulation tool that uses Dijkstra’s Algorithm to calculate the least cost path(s) for differing percentages of randomly placed intra- AS tunnels. We consider end-to-end delay as the cost metric associated with each route and a number of experiments have been performed to confirm the improvement in delays using the tunnels. We then consider the inclusion of a small financial cost that the user would be expected to pay in order to use selected tunnels. Details of the payment mechanism is outside the scope of this thesis, however, the financial burden is taken into account when choosing a route. There is thus a trade-off between delay reduction and a financial penalty. First we explore a heuristic approach using a Genetic Algorithm (GA) we create whereby these conflicting goals are combined into a weighted fitness score associated with the alternative routes, allow a near-optimal compromise to be found, based on the weighting. The downside of this approach is that there is typically a single solution for a given selected weighting. It may be that the user wishes to see the spectrum of alternatives and decide a suitable “sweet spot” based on their current preferences. As such, we then design, implement and evaluate an end-user path selection tool using Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA). Unlike the GA, this approach presents a set of optimal solutions for different compromises between the performance objectives, which form a Pareto front. This scheme currently takes into account cost and delay but provides an extensible mechanism for other fitness factors to be considered

Media Infrastructures and the Politics of Digital Time

Digital media everyday inscribe new patterns of time, promising instant communication, synchronous collaboration, intricate time management, and profound new advantages in speed. The essays in this volume reconsider these outward interfaces of convenience by calling attention to their supporting infrastructures, the networks of digital time that exert pressures of conformity and standardization on the temporalities of lived experience and have important ramifications for social relations, stratifications of power, practices of cooperation, and ways of life. Interdisciplinary in method and international in scope, the volume draws together insights from media and communication studies, cultural studies, and science and technology studies while staging an important encounter between two distinct approaches to the temporal patterning of media infrastructures, a North American strain emphasizing the social and cultural experiences of lived time and a European tradition, prominent especially in Germany, focusing on technological time and time-critical processes