Future Internet Architecture

The workshop covers a report from a study done over the last several months that looked at the technological innovations that the Internet may experience over the next decade in an attempt to understand some of the possible policy issues that would emerge. The workshop will start by exploring the links between technology and policy. The basic proposition to be explored in this part of the session is that technology and governance policy are inexorably linked.

The workshop will take the view that the Internet is a not just a collection of machines, interfaces and protocols but rather a complex system governed by a set of principles. The workshop will then look at a set of principles distinguishing between technical principles and policy principles. The technical principles will include those that have guided the engineering process of the Internet for the past 50 years. The policy principles will focus mostly on those that are being proposed in the current drive to control the Internet.

Finally, the workshop will review some of the architectural and technological changes that may cause policy considerations over the next decade including some of the well known innovations such as Cloud Computing, the Internet of things and Social Media. It will also look at some less well known possibilities such as Information Centric Networking, Alternate Roots and Circumvention technologies.

Possible Research Direction

We have identified a number of research directions on this topic. Here are the top 5:

• Develop a practical and theoretical framework for understanding and using the inherent and inextricable interrelationship of technology and social policy! » read more

• Create a metric for describing the spread and effect of various policy principles! » read more

• Define the normative and descriptive conditions of a multi-stakeholder environment where the role of governments does not include the responsibly for making decisions! » read more

• The Internet, its technologies and policies, as an emergent developing entity that is subject to natural laws of ontogeny and evolution! » read more

• Longitudinal study following major research trends over a long period to understand not only technologies affects on the policy, but policy's affect on the research. Several possible subjects for longitudinal study include the Internet of things, and Information Centric Networking! » read more

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Attachment

Research Paper