Back to NET Neutrality

      In the last months the Net Neutrality debate came up again.  The decision taken by some Telecom companies to disable the use of Skype iPhone application over their 3G networks revived the discussion.
Net Neutrality assures that the flow of information trough the communication networks is neither blocked nor degraded by communications operators. Net neutrality has guaranteed the freedom of connection with none limit of access to applications and services. Net Neutrality was one of fundamental principles of WWW. 
       However the rising of Internet access has faced communication operators with the necessity of increasing network capacity by investing on bandwidth. But network operators investments are not likely compensated by the application and service providers that are the parts benefited by the increased revenues got from the launching of new applications and services. Therefore, communication operators intend to create conditions limiting access by discriminating, filtering or prioritizing information passing through their networks. 
      Recently, the European community has discussed a set of directives regulating electronic communication networks. They are known as the “Telecom Package” and contain some directives that may compromise the Net Neutrality principle. Telecom package has been in discussion in European Parliament and much mobilization has been done around of subject aiming to protect the Net Neutrality principle. In USA, the FCC - Federal Communications Commission chair has also harmed the debate proposing include 2 new principles to the Internet principles guidelines of agency. There, Carriers are only permitted to block access to illegal services and sites. Internet providers and wireless carriers have strongly resisted net neutrality believing they have the right to control traffic on networks they own.
       Net Neutrality debate will attract attention for the next few months yet. Certainly an Internet without traffic limitations is what we users would like to have. That would assure its widespread adoption and equal conditions to access information, applications and services so facilitating the competition. An open Internet does still provide the freedom of expression and communication. But carrier’s argument is valid as well. They own the communication infrastructure and should be allowed to create any kind of control in order to implement different business scenario.
       I do believe that the solution to that dispute firstly should assure that the access for application and services not be restrict.  But it should also allow communication providers apply different quality of services models preserving their competitiveness.

Political Issues in an IETF upcoming Meeting

Recently an interesting discussion has come up through an IETF mailing list.  IETF has been to make   a decision on a potential upcoming meeting in China. That would be the first IETF meeting in that country.  However Chinese government has imposed a rule on all conferences held since 2008 regarding political speech: it is required that one not criticize the government, that people who attend conferences in China  not engage in political speech during their tour by the country.  If any speech shows any disrespect to China government, Chinese culture or violates any laws, the hosting Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.  The question put for IETF members was: could these restrictions prevent the IETF from conducting its business?
The argument toward realizes the meeting in China is that political issues are not commonly and historically explored during the IETF meetings.  Thus it would be expected there should not be any problem realizing the meeting.  Additionally has been pointed that other organizations and businesses have realized meetings in China all the time and there is no evidence of government interference and shutdowns.
Differently from that is what seems to be the concern of other part of IETF community.  Your position is based in highly ideological principles of IETF.  Your argument is that IETF takes care of net neutrality, crypto, IPR, telecom, and the Chinese government speech restrictions might restrict the scope of IETF discussion because it runs into privacy and human rights issues. Additionally they report that the IETF is still a community of thousands of engineers facing a broad technology and market space and fundamentally lead by individual voice (not necessary expressing company objectives). That does mean that similar experience of got in other meetings in China (3GPP, etc ) can´t be considered.
Well the fact is that the ideological/political debate is really relevant. Information technology acquired essential role in the development strategies of many countries. They are aware that to become powerful developed countries their insertion in the IT domain will be fundamental.  SDOs ( standard developement organisations  ) have looked to expand their frontiers towards development world as well. That strategy could ensure a more democratic and neutral debate assuring that world-class standards be strong and widely recognized.  But beyond of different technology stage of developed and developing world, it is still necessary pay attention to the cultural and political divergences between both.  Likely, these will be the issues that the old world will face in its movement to expand its initiatives into the developing nations.  China is just an example.

View about an IETF Meeting

Last December I joined to other guys for attending IETF 70 in Vancouver.

That was the first time I participated on an IETF meeting. It was part of a program of ISOC for assisting guys in developing countries join to  Internet development groups. The ISOC initiative is very nice because it covers travel costs that otherwise that could be a big issue for not developed countries where the currency is very weak. Well I would like share some brief impressions about IETF meeting.

IETF 70 received guys from over 40 countries, from different internet/communication companies. The WG sessions ran during the whole week and were opened for all who are interested in them. They are quite focused and cover opened issues existent in the WGs. The local atmosphere is very pleasant. One of most interesting things is the method that is used for achieving consensus during the sessions, that is based in a "uhm.." murmured by the participants who agree with a determined question addressed by area directors. But IETF working groups lack some greater cooperation among them in order to reuse techniques/solutions among them improving group  performance.

Well, a interesting question is how could we  increase the presence of local (brazilian ) folks in the IETF meetings. That is not a trivial question. At first, private and public local companies are not used for supporting standards development. The company research teams are just “standard users” not “standard developers”. For example, multinational organizations located here likely lead standard development initiatives in their foreigner offices. Of course, there could have some exceptions. Second, despite the academia hold the most of Internet development research here they have a little presence in IETF; I suppose in part because academia concern is about publishing researching papers and, contrast, IETF is more focused in applied research.

In summary, attending IETF meeting was quite disappointing as exciting as well. Disappointing in the sense that it confirmed how far Brazil internet research community is from internet development excellence. Exciting because it reinforced the felling about how much challenging and fascinating is work in computer science field.

What is the future of computer science

There is a lot of discussion running concerning the low number of new students enrolled in computer science courses. That has been considered a critical issue in US; in Brazil it has not  attracted a big attention yet. Related concern is about the low number of women in the field, that in my opinion has ever been small. But it is interesting note that 2006 Turing award winner was a woman, Frances Allen. She believes that computer science curriculum is antiquated and she supports smart  views about the subject . But there are still controversial arguments in this matter. Some people argue that, in order to attract more students, the programs are not rigorous anymore and the quality of cs course is declining .
Well, I agree that it may not be too entusiastic attending a graduate course in CS. Many CS teachers think that is enough give hard home work to produce skilled graduates. But you may be a smart software engineer even that you have not spent your weekends developing C/C++ programs. There is a misunderstanding about how do motivate a CS student. As a CS student you must know why a grade is relevant, how it is related to the real-world problems and what are the current research/open issues. Additionaly the curriculum must allow more flexible choices . Encorage the pratice is fundamental. A real computer office might be simulated in the class and student should enjoy the different roles - DBA, analyst, programmer, tester - using real class problems.
About the decrease of women in CS field is nice to see some incentives given to them to attendee conferences and seminars. However I believe that we will advance only if the CS curriculum is changed. Women enjoy communication, project management and requirements engineering for example. Thus this stuff must be done so relevant as programming is in CS course, otherwise women will continue prefering other science fields. Computer Science needs to take care of communication and social interaction in order to succeed!!