Posts of FISE Conversation

End-users and their data in the Future Internet

2013-08-21T09:12:47.341Z

The current case concerning Google's privacy policies(which is really about those sending eMail to Google users) reminds us all that data protection and privacy as a concern is not going to go away any time soon.

Attitudes and discomfort about personal data and its protection have been the subject of survey and study for some time, not least as part of the European Commission’s periodic pulse surveys, the Flash Eurobarometer studies. In 2008, summaries were provided for the current as well as previous years’ responses. Reflecting the period 1991 to 2008, with surveys in ‘91, ’96, 2003 and 2008, this is a time, of course, when the Western World moved through insecurities, the 09/11 attacks, and then the relative confidence and stability of the early noughties, and into the beginnings of the financial crisis of 2008. Although direct comparison with the 2011 survey is not straight forward, there are nevertheless some interesting developments and results.

Responses vary over the survey period depending on industry. During 1991 and 2008, confidence across Europe that personal data would be protected by medical services increased from 75% at the start of that period to some 84% by 2008. Yet by 2011, this had dipped to 78%. The same trend could be seen for confidence in the treatment of personal data by banks and financial institutions had risen from 49% to 64%, and then down to 62%; and by public authorities (tax, social services, local authorities etc) rising from 47% to 75% before slipping back to 70%. During the period up to 2008, two-thirds (66%) were unaware that sensitive data require stricter control; and by 2011, in response to the question

“Companies holding personal information about you may sometimes use it for a different purpose than the one it was collected for, without informing you (e.g. for direct marketing, targeted online advertising). How concerned are you about this use of your information?”

seven out of ten EU citizens describe themselves as “Concerned”.

As we move towards the realisation of the Future Internet, with access to all via any device from anywhere, and in light of the current Google case and against the background of European and member state legislation on data protection, we should ask how FI application and service developers as well as data subjects (“end users”) should handle personal data and what the implications might be for users.

User Involvement in Future Internet Projects Paper Published

2013-05-02T11:36:11.570Z

SESERV's paper "User Involvement in Future Internet Projects" has been recently published in The Future Internet Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 7858, 2013, pp 310-322.

Abstract

"To determine actual attitudes and practices of those in the Future Internet industry towards user involvement, delegates at the 2012 FIA participated in a focus group and a survey. Continuous user involvement is highly valued and expected to maximise the societal benefits of FI applications. However, just over half of the FI projects apply a user-centred approach, and a large number of survey respondents admitted to being not very knowledgeable about standard user-centred design tools or techniques."

Come and Share at FIA DUBLIN with EXPERIMEDIA and FI projects

2013-05-02T11:29:35.869Z

@ FUTURE INTERNET ASSEMBLY - Thurday 9th May 11h30

Following on from SESERV's work on user engagement we're please to announce an exciting FIA session on Scaling-up stakeholders’ engagement: ‘from the lab into the real world’

Many ‘Future Internet’ projects face the challenge of scaling-up the innovative internet services that they developed or experimented with in their projects. Such scaling-up requires large-scale adoption by stakeholders, especially by engaging (local) communities of users and engaging (local) businesses and entrepreneurs. In this workshop, we will address this challenge. We will share insights and practical experiences, regarding human-centred innovation and business modelling. As a participant, you will increase your understanding of possible approaches for successfully scaling-up innovative internet services: ‘from the lab into the real world’.

for more information about the workshop:
workshop title : Bringing users in
http://www.fi-dublin.eu/bringing-users-in/

about the organisator
EXPERIMEDIA http://www.experimedia.eu

1st international conference on Internet Science

2013-02-18T15:33:10.193Z

The “1st international conference on Internet Science”, will be organized from April 9 to 11, 2013 in Brussels, under the aegis of the European Commission, by the EINS FIRE project, the Network of Excellence in Internet Science (http://www.internet-science.eu).

Hosted by the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (http://www.kvab.be), the event will be a highly multidisciplinary conference fostering dialogue among scholars and practitioners belonging Computer Science, Sociology, Art, Mathematics, Physics, Complex systems analysis, Psychology, Economics, Law, Political Science, Epistemology and other relevant disciplines. It will also provide the EINS Network of Excellence with an opportunity to interact with external stakeholders, detail project objectives and methodological approach, and showcase its first results.

A Call for Papers has been launched, inviting papers shedding light on Internet Science from all involved disciplines and in particular papers crossing rigid disciplines boundaries, describing original research and innovative ideas (see http://internetscienceconference.eu for full details). A number of keynote and invited high-level speakers have been secured (http://internetscienceconference.eu/programme).

The conference is open to any organizations and individuals interested in the event topic. Pre-registration at http://internet-science.eventbrite.com is compulsory since registration may be closed prior to the event date due to room capacity constraints.

To contact the event organizers, please send an email to conference@internet-science.eu.

The Tussle Analysis Cookbook is now available!

2013-02-09T18:19:26.037Z

SESERV coordination project has defined a systematic approach for analyzing and assessing the importance of socio-economic tussles in the Internet. The main idea is to make sensible predictions about the behavior of major stakeholders in several scenarios, each scenario reflecting candidate implementations of the desired protocol function. We argue that selecting the features of a technology in a more holistic way, by taking into account all major socio-economic factors would lead to more attractive outcomes and increase the chances of that technology to be adopted in the long-term.

Having applied extensively the SESERV tussle analysis methodology into several projects during the previous 2 years, we have gained significant experience that we would like to share with the Future Internet Socio-Economics community. The Tussle Analysis cookbook, which can be found here, answers two important questions:

Why use Tussle Analysis in the first place?
How to perform the Tussle Analysis methodology when designing an Internet technology (such as a protocol, application, system)?

The answer to the first question describes the pros and cons of Tussle Analysis, for a wide set of Internet stakeholders.
SESERV believes that analyzing the anticipated tussles can help in better understanding major stakeholders' incentives. Furthermore, by following Clark's design principles, developers can tackle with conflicting incentives and increase their chances for building a long-term successful technology. However, it is true that taking into consideration the important socio-economic aspects of a technology can increase developers’ cost significantly. The main argument comes from Clark again; “fear and greed”. Developers compete with each other and thus will have the incentive to adopt tools and methodologies that make their technologies more attractive. In a similar line of thought, tussle analysis can be used as a strategic instrument for standardization bodies, research funding agencies and policy makers when selecting on which technologies to focus standardization efforts on, or to be funded (giving incentives to technology makers to deal with the most critical functions).

The second question explains the steps of the proposed methodology, providing methods and tools suitable for each step as well as taxonomies that can act as a starting point. Furthermore, the methodology is applied to a case study from a FP7 European research project, called ULOOP.

A Few Days Left to Propose Sessions for FIA Dublin 8-10 May 2013

2013-01-17T09:27:36.083Z

The next FIA will take place in Dublin, Ireland, on 8-10 May 2013. The FIA Steering Committee launches an open call for the 12 FIA working sessions. The deadline for submission of working session proposals is 20^th January 2013. Please follow the instructionsor go directly to the https://osqa.eurescom.eu site, which has been made available to mediate the collection of working session proposals. More information concerning the overall conference is being published at the dedicated pages for FIA Dublin.

SESERV Assessed Successful by European Commission

2012-12-03T10:36:00.204Z

After two years of effectively fertilizing the communication between specialists from diverse disciplines, that share an interest in the Future Internet, the SESERV project has been credited for this valuable contribution in that it was assessed as successful by the European Commission during its final project review. Although this officially ends the working period of SESERV, the insights into the socio-economics of the Future Internet and the stimulation and thereby densification of highly interdisciplinary liaisons throughout the Future Internet community, motivate project partners to partially continue their efforts. You are very welcome to become part of this post project community work.

Using Focus Groups and Tussle Analysis Methodology for Understanding Socio-Economic Aspects of the Future Internet

2012-11-14T09:05:44.383Z

This whitepaper summarises the general approach as adopted by WP2 and WP3 in organising andanalysing focus group discussions on a range of socio-economic topics. Specific conclusions from the various groups are reported in individual, targeted documents (D2.2 and D3.2). Furthermore, the SESERV framework (called Tussle Analysis) is described and demonstrated, which helps technology developers and policy makers to understand the complex interplay of technology and economics in the Internet.

The rationale behind running focus groups as opposed to any other method arose from the observation at the SESERV Oxford workshop that there was an urgent need to adopt a multi-disciplinary approach to discussion. Focus groups are specifically geared towards an examination of how ideas and concepts develop in a given context. A focus group approach was an ideal method to encourage such cross-disciplinary discussion.

As described in the preceding sections, the focus group methodology found in the literature was reviewed and either applied directly to the SESERV focus groups, or modified in some small detail as outlined to suit the topics and group composition available to SESERV. WP2, focusing on economic issues, adopted a structured approach, seeding discussion on the basis of a Challenge 1 project presentation to describe one possible solution to the specific issues under debate. WP3 by contrast used a less formal approach, using the occasional question to spark off discussion. In both cases, conversations were lively and generated a significant set of concepts and ideas which would be worthwhile pursuing and which are developed in the corresponding deliverables in the respective work packages.

The Tussle Analysis framework is composed of a methodology for evaluating Internet technologies (called “tussle analysis”) and a set of taxonomies. The latter include:

a) An extensive taxonomy of Internet functionalities, which covers both aspects of how services are being hosted (cloud-related functionalities) and their actual delivery (network-related functionalities).

b) A generic classification of Internet stakeholder into seven high-level stakeholder roles, where each one is further decomposed into more detailed instances.

This methodology encourages and guides technology developers in identifying the stakeholders of the technologies under development/investigation, their interests and assessing whether these would be met with a particular implementation of each such technology. The idea is that designing a technology in a more holistic way, by taking into account the interests of major stakeholders early in the process, would lead to more sustainable socio-economic outcomes and increase the chances of that technology being adopted in the long-term. The outcomes of all bilateral discussions, wider focus groups and meetings resulted in a set of 6 economic SESERV recommendations to research projects, providers and policy makers for successfully redesigning and configuring Future Internet technologies. These are:

1. Technology makers should understand major stakeholders' interests.

2. Technology makers should be neutral.

3. Technology makers should explore consequences and dependencies on complementary technologies.

4. Technology makers and Providers should align conflicting interests through incentive mechanisms.

5. Technology makers should increase transparency.

6. Policy makers should encourage knowledge exchange and joint commitments.

The project also had a set of 22 social SESERV recommendations, detailed above, which fall into six broad categories:

1. Research Project Design / Project Development

2. Users/Participants Experiences and Perspectives

3. Internet Data

4. Regulation and Public Policy

5. Transparency and Trust

6. Citizenship, Awareness, and Education

Look Who's Talking!

2012-11-07T15:20:17.233Z

One effective way of bringing stakeholders together was using a focus group methodology. As an approach, it has been used many times, especially in the social sciences, to explore ideas and their formation about topics ranging from proposed new brands (marketing) to personal and sexual health (in nursing and paramedical social care). As adopted by SESERV during the second year of the project to explore both economic issues around network services and resource provision as well as more generic societal and socio-economic concerns like user-centricity and the need to involve all stakeholders, the methodology as described in the literature suggested we needed to think carefully about the following issues:

* the adaptability of the method (flexibility): could it be used for our purposes?
* venue: where should we host the groups?
* participants: who could we get to take part?
* dominant voice: would anyone try to take over and control the discussion?
* thematic focus/seeding: would it help to set the scene?
* recruitment: how would we get participants?

This post briefly summarises the way we implemented focus groups; all issues and considerations are discussed in detail in [D1.5]. Topic selection was reported in elsewhere. Our experience can be summarised as follows:

Flexibility the overall methodology lends itself well to adaptation. It is based on a guided discussion amongst a number of participants with more or less control exerted by any facilitator. The WP2 (economic) focus groups involved more explicit stakeholder role-assignment and thematic seeding than those (societally focused) in WP3.
Venue we took advantage of other related events, organised by SESERV, the FIA or other external bodies. This provided access to potential participants who were by definition interested; and to a setting familiar to them (being part of the umbrella event).
Participation as above, exploiting a related event meant that participants would more likely be knowledgeable and motivated in the area. After all, they had chosen to attend the umbrella event.
Dominant voice this is a recognised issue in focus groups or indeed any group discussions. The facilitators in the SESERV focus groups were asked to look out for this, and take whatever action may be necessary to manage the problem. It turned out that this was not so much of an issue: perhaps because all participants were equally motivated and knowledgeable, as well as knowing each other in many cases professionally.
Thematic seeding/focusing again, delegates at the umbrella events would be expected to be knowledgeable and experienced in the areas under discussion. In each case, there was a formal (WP2 introduced sessions with a technical project presentation) and informal (WP3) scene-setting to help bound the discussion.
Recruitment within the constraints of other project and professional commitments, the channel for recruitment was obvious in connection with the umbrella event. A balance did need to be struck though: sometimes delegates were leaving straight after an event and could not spare the time; at other times, other ad hoc project meetings might interfere. WP2 did make an attempt to mitigate these factors to some degree by assigning stakeholder roles that the participants would recognise if not typically represent.

The overall experience with the methodology was very positive and allowed us to explore the issues highlighted in the first year, especially at Oxford, and move forward to make the recommendations we have in the various deliverables [D2.2, D3.2]. By way of conclusion, SESERV was flexible in its approach to focus group methodology: we were dealing with motivated participants who had significant experience and interest in what we were discussing, but who were time- and resource-constrained; we chose to exploit associated events organised by FIA and the like, as well as the second workshop we organised, since this meant participants would be on site and more likely to attend. Nonetheless, recruitment proved the main challenge. Ultimately, this led to a one shot approach: whereas focus groups are often repeated with the same or different participants, reconvening with the same participants was avoided for pragmatic reasons.

The focus groups turned out to be very successful though in moving the FISE Conversation forward.

FLAMINGO - EU NoE on "Management of the Future Internet"

2012-11-05T15:13:43.796Z

The new NoE FLAMINGO started on Nov 1, 2012 and integrates the research of leading European research groups in the area of network and service management, including their economic, legal, and regulatory aspects, to strengthen the European and worldwide research in this area and to bridge the gap between scientific research and industrial application.

To achieve these goals FLAMINGO performs a broad range of activities, such as the development of open source software, the establishment of joint labs, the exchange of researchers as well as jointly supervised Ph.D. students, the development of educational and training material, and the interaction with academia and industry to organize events and to contribute to (IETF, IRTF, and ITU-T) standardization.

UZH will be a NoE partner and leader of WP7 on "Economic, Legal, and Regulative Constraints", thus, in a great position to leverage SESERV results and outcomes in those domains.

A taxonomy for Future Internet stakeholders

2012-10-19T07:56:27.937Z

Stakeholders are entities supervising or making decisions that affect how the Internet ecosystem operates and evolves. A usual phenomenon is that the same entity plays multiple roles, for example ISPs (Internet Service Providers) offer connectivity services but at the same time can provide entertainment content services. In the first SESERV report on the Future Internet economic challenges, an initial taxonomy of Internet stakeholder roles has been formed, by studying a number of research projects and identifying missing roles from previous attempts.

In our interactions with the FISE community and Challenge 1 research projects, we had the opportunity to present this taxonomy, encourage them to identify roles that may have been excluded from their analysis and provide us feedback on the taxonomy itself. This feedback resulted in a revision of the taxonomy, as shown in the next figure. More details can be found in the Final Report on Economic Future Internet Coordination Activities.

Connectivity Providers refer to the entities responsible for the delivery of traffic from its source to the ultimate destination. This traffic may involve Users consuming services in order to meet their business and personal needs or Information Providers that offer service applications to address other, non-networking needs. Both Connectivity and Information providers may depend on Infrastructure Providers for leasing the necessary components (computational, network and storage resources). Content Owners produce content items such as movies. Technology Makers make available Internet protocols, software and hardware that seeds new needs and services. Last but not least, Policy Makers supervise the operation of the Internet and intervene when necessary.

A Taxonomy for Future Internet Functionalities (covering both cloud and network)

2012-10-18T14:00:44.912Z

SESERV has developed and applied a methodology, called tussle analysis, for analysing and assessing the importance of socio-economic challenged in the Internet and their consequences for the success and adoption of technologies. The first step of the proposed methodology involves the identification of the functionality under investigation.

Applying the tussle analysis methodology to an initial set of EC-funded research projects brought up the need to make those 'functionalities' more concrete. The suggested plan was to use an extensive taxonomy of Internet functionalities, which covers both aspects of how services are being hosted (cloud-related functionalities) and their actual delivery (network-related functionalities).

Not trying to reinvent the wheel, we adopted the network functionalities taxonomy as described in [1]. The reason for selecting this partcular taxonomy is that each functionality was found to be well separated from other complementary ones. While each of these functionalities can be decomposed further into sub-functionalities, they can be also seen as components for composing more complex network services. More specifically:

The Transmission functionality was suggested to include sending, receiving, forwarding, routing, switching, storing, and processing of data packets or, in general, PDUs (Protocol Data Units).
The Traffic control functionality includes flow and congestion control (for tuning the transmission rate parameters), as well as, error control for dealing with lost and out-of-order PDUs.
The QoS (Quality of Service) functionality would cover queuing algorithms, admission control techniques and mechanisms for managing QoS-aware paths (e.g., advertisement of infrastructure availability and current workload, setup of Diff-Serv classes, etc.).
The Mobility functionality would include protocols for handover and location management.
The Security functionality would cover protocols for authentication, authorization, accounting, monitoring, encryption, redundancy, data integrity, and key distribution.
The Naming/Addressing functionality would include naming schemes and name resolution techniques.

Unfortunately, we didn't find a suitable taxonomy for cloud functionalities; thus we proposed a new one. More specifically:

Virtualization, which includes image creation, image deactivation, image portability (to different machines), etc.
Execution, which includes low-level tasks such as Task scheduling (at the CPU level), Task execution (at the CPU level), memory allocation and similar aspects related to Operating Systems.
QoS, which includes advertisement of site availability, site selection, machine selection, machine reservations, admission control (for performance reasons), cost allocation, etc.
Security that includes monitoring, accounting, SLA management, admission control (for security reasons), etc.

It is important to note that each functionality should achieve its initial target, instead of other purposes that were found later (spillover). For example, techniques for DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) should not be part of the QoS functionality, but MPLS signaling for setup of QoS-aware paths perfectly fit into that functionality.

[1]. N. Thi-Mai-Trang, “On The Way To a Theory for Network Architectures”, World Computer Congress, Network of the Future Conference, Brisbane, Australia, September, 2010

Report of the QoS-aware Future Internet focus group @ FIA Aalborg

2012-10-15T10:26:26.697Z

This report summarizes the discussions that took place in Aalborg, during the SESERV focus group on the impact of premium interconnection services to the gaming industry.

Similarly to the third focus group during the Athens workshop, the purpose was to invite Future Internet stakeholders to discuss about frameworks that enrich the current best-effort Internet by allowing ISPs to collaborate during service management and establish QoS-aware network services. In particular, participants were asked to express their views on socio-economic challenges that would appear, if a particular technology proposed by the ETICS research project was candidate for adoption. The ultimate purpose is to understand major stakeholders' interests that should be taken into account by members of the ETICS project at the design phase, so that tussles can be played-out "successfully" at run-time.

The following themes (text in bold) have been recognized. Special attention has been given in understanding the incentives of the stakeholders and providing a sketch of the tussles’ evolution (text in italics).

‘Small’ Content Owners: Keep Internet a neutral playing field, no QoS is necessary!

QoS discrimination in the Internet would harm low-budget content owners and especially those from small countries, who can’t compete those coming from large homogenous markets, like the US, even if the product quality were superior. Allowing dominant [US] players get differentiated services is a very dangerous approach for the future of the European gaming industry.

Maybe this concern would disappear if users, only, could ask and pay for premium network services. But, most users don’t care about the technical details of the service; they are interested in getting good experience. So, they probably are not going to pay separately for accessing a gaming server and having premium connectivity.

Maybe, this problem could be solved if gaming providers were transferring payments to facilitators.

Connectivity Providers: Net neutrality laws could result in multiple Internets

Treating packets differently is not allowed in countries, such as Holland, where a net neutrality law is in place.

The only way for an ISP to offer guaranteed QoS is to build a dedicated network for premium services. Then the most important question is whether there is enough demand to justify the necessary investments and operational costs.

Probably, in case of multiple Internets, regulators would have to ensure that Best-Effort infrastructures are upgraded, as well.

Technology Makers: New technologies will keep emerging even if ISPs offer guaranteed QoS

Researchers and technology makers try to develop technologies for pursuing their own objectives.

The dominant factor for gamer experience is latency and, since the means to measure it already exist, new techniques can emerge that will users get a satisfactory QoE without paying for premium services.

Relying on overlay applications and information service providers to solve a networking problem, the lack of QoS, can be inefficient and less effective because one provider’s actions can be cancelled out by actions of another provider.

Probably, cross-layer mechanisms that allow ISPs and ASPs to cooperatively influence some aspects of the network aspects can provide a more stable solution.

1st SESERV Workshop (Jun-11): Videos, presentations and reports

2011-09-06T13:33:51.564Z

The SESERV consortium organised a scientific workshop during June 2011 'The Future Internet: The Social Nature of Technical Choices' at the University of Oxford, UK. Here you will find different pages with useful resources collected during the workshop.

To download the report of the breakout session, click the image above in the section of your interest.

The workshop aimed to bridge the gap between those who study and those who build the Internet by supporting discussion and debate within the multidisciplinary community of researchers and professionals working on various aspects of the Future Internet. The main objective of the workshop was to explore and discuss with a community of experts the socio-economic aspects that affect the Future Internet, and conversely the way that the Future Internet will affect society, government, and business.

The participants of the event were researchers (such as social scientists and economists), IT practitioners, policy experts and other stakeholders who discussed how the latest technology developments are encountering socio-economic realities.

Presentation webcasts

1 .Keynote: The Future Internet: The Social Nature of Technical Choices: (William Dutton)
2. The Future Internet: Pushing the Technology Boundaries: SAIL (Luis Correia)
3 . The Future Internet: Pushing the Technology Boundaries: N4C (Elwyn Davies)
4 . The Future Internet: Pushing the Technology Boundaries: PERSIST/SOCIETIES (Kevin Doolin)
5 . The Future Internet: Pushing the Technology Boundaries: Fi3P (Jonathan Cave)
6 . The Future Internet: Pushing the Technology Boundaries: FAME (J Martin Serrano)
7. Keynote: The Future Internet (Nicole Dewandre)
8 .The Future Internet: Debate: Will the Design of the Future Internet be Driven by Technology or Societal Concerns?

Six breakout sessions facilitated by experts were organized during the workshop. Each session discussed similar themes but through different topics. If you want to browse the cross-thematic themes discussed during the workshop, please browse the following topics.

1.1. Call for increased transparency (data use and systems).
1.2. Call for more user-centricity and control.
1.3. Continuing need for further multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral bridging.
1.4. Striking balances between outer-poles in debates and design.
1.5. Facilitating further digital literacy development.
1.6. Addressing lack of common vocabularies and definitions.
1.7. Need for clarifying digital rights (including digital choice).
1.8. Inviting global regulatory frameworks.

Download the 'Cross-thematic trends of breakout sessions' [pdf].

Cross-thematic themes

1.1 Call for increased transparency (data use and systems)
Security	• To reduce security risks through increased trans-parency: requires that cloud service providers publish statistics e.g. on monthly attacks. Transparency metrics are needed for users to determine 'trustworthiness' of providers.
Privacy	• Increased access to transparent data on who has access to e.g. online social network information can help users shape their behaviour. • Transparency is often not desirable in context of privacy questions. When propagating data, it might for example be better if peer-to-peer or information-centric networks are unaware of what information is transferred.
Identity	• Systems should afford users increased trans-parency by offering advan-ced information filtering options.
Internet of Things	• End-users should be clearly informed by providers about advantages and disadvantages of given Internet of Things technologies.
Online communities	• Transparent filtering options for users should be implemented for ease of self-management of interwoven and synchronised online networks. • Transparent filtering option will assist users in managing smaller communities that align with cognitive limits of social ties (c.f. Dunbar's number).
Cloud Computing	• Cloud providers have access to meta-data of uses (locations, activities, content, interactions). How his data is used and stored could be disclosed better.

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1.2 Call for more user-centricity and control
Security	• Users have little scope for assessing and analysing security risks related to domesticated ICT uses.
Privacy	• Privacy principles are persuasive and propagate through the environment, influencing people's behaviour. More user-centric, and user-influenced approaches are needed. • User self-organisation and structure are important elements of social networks that must be acknowledged in design. Privacy-concerns argue against increased user-influence: by constraining user innovation, lock-in can be achieved, which increases privacy.
Identity	• Users need better tools to help them manage/control how identities are shared and stored
Internet of Things	• Users should be able to opt out of Internet of Things services. • Different levels of 'sign-off' options should be available. • User-centricity can be achieved if users are invited to have a role in design development.
Online communities	• Currently providers dictate terms of use; users lack influence and control. • Creative uses by users should be feed into ongoing system/ application development.
Cloud Computing	• Users should be able to control where their data is stored.

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1.3 Continuing need for further multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral bridging
Security	• Need for facilitating dialogue between technical and legal analysts to develop a better understanding of risks, and to assess new/future risks.
Privacy	• Important to acknowledge different commu-nities' expertise. • Counter-movements such as Mydex, diaspora, Internet of Subjects, should be seen as important sources of information. • A gulf exists between practitioners and IT supply (e.g. practice driven innovation vs. principle approach.
Identity	• Need for multi-disciplinary research on identity that can be translated into the design of socio-technical systems.
Internet of Things	• Privacy research and IoT engineering are disconnected. Actors of the two domains should be brought together in the early stages of design phases. • Policy makers should set up frameworks bridging the gap between IoT users and designers.
Online communities	• Examine frequency of multi-disciplinary conference, and possibly fund larger numbers of multi-disciplinary resarch centres.
Cloud Computing	• Important to avoid silozation of cloud computing development and research. • Initiating frameworks for knowledge-exchange between users, developers, regulators and researchers can help avoid silozation. • ISP and cloud providers should develop stronger relationships. Revenues might be shared.

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1.4 Striking balances between outer-poles in debates and design
Security	Not discussed during the session
Privacy	• eHealth privacy practices and discussions (e.g. patient records) could benefit from seeking a middle solution that allow proportionate access, rather than relying on either lassez-faire approaches or access over-formalisation (extreme regulation).
Identity	• Important to allow for understandings and discussions of identity that acknowledge it as existing on a continuum ranging from stable to dynamic.
Internet of Things	• Privacy concerns must be balanced with affordances of Internet of Things technologies. • There is a danger of moral panic in discussions on Internet of Things. • Ethical considerations should stand central to discussions on Internet of Things potentials.
Online communities	• There is a need to balance bottom-up and bottom-down technology development. New forms of communities or structures might emerge to drive design and development.
Cloud Computing	Not discussed during the session.

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1.5 Facilitating further digital literacy development
Security	• Learning best practice and offering guidelines could help users assess and evaluate security and risk management related to their domestic ICT usage.
Privacy	Not discussed during the session
Identity	• Better digital literacy skills could equip users with more sophisticated tools for managing and understand-ing identity in online and hybrid contexts. • There is a need to raise awareness of issues related to identity-management.
Internet of Things	• Privacy concerns must be balanced with affordances of Internet of Things technologies. • There is a danger of moral panic in discussions on Internet of Things. • Ethical considerations should stand central to discussions on Internet of Things potentials.
Online communities	• Providing further digital literacy education can help solve problems related to privacy concerns and management.
Cloud Computing	Not discussed during the session.

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1.6 Addressing lack of common vocabularies and definitions
Security	Not discussed during the session
Privacy	Not discussed during the session
Identity	• Confusion about definitions. In the context of digital spheres, questions of identity is closely related to questions of privacy, data and rights. • In broader societal contexts, identity is considered stable.
Internet of Things	• Current definitions are too academic with too little focus on design and application. • There is a need to develop vocabularies enabling discussions on multi-device Internet of Things interaction.
Online communities	• Indirectly addressed: need for vocabulary to address issues relating to health of networks/ communities (e.g. development, growth, maintenance).
Cloud Computing	• Current definitions are diverging: some refer exclusively to infrastructure, while others include social uses. • It is suggested that Cloud Computing is understood in the context of providing a service on top of which users can create customized solutions.

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1.7 Need for clarifying digital rights (including digital choice)
Security	Not discussed during the session
Privacy	• Need for clarifying the right to full anonymity (e.g. in eHealth), while allowing for identifiers that can help identify emerging health issues.
Identity	Not discussed during the session
Internet of Things	• It is vital to provide offline access to IoT services to ensure that people are not penalized because of digital choices.
Online communities	• There is a need to address to which extend the right to have content/information permanently deleted should form part of a set of digital rights (what e.g. about crimes against humanity?). • Personal preferences should be not be compromised when providers change their terms of use.
Cloud Computing	Not discussed during the session.

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1.8 Inviting global regulatory frameworks
Security	• Need for streamlining legal frameworks across countries, or some providers might not offer their service there. In Italy, for instance, YouTube- Google are enforced by law to take liability for their users. Providers who are not using measures that match local legislation might be discouraged. • Need for determining approach to regulatory frame-works for distribution of security responsibilities for e.g. cloud computing services: market-driven, self-regulating, or regulated?
Privacy	Not discussed during the session
Identity	Not discussed during the session
Internet of Things	Not discussed during the session
Online communities	• Need for consistent regulatory framework which guarantees anonymity (condition-ally / dependent on domain, e.g. politically sensitive topics). • Personal preferences should be not be compromised when providers change their terms of use.
Cloud Computing	• There is a need for international cooperation and consistency in laws across jurisdictions (e.g. data breach and notification). • It is important to ensure bottom-up feedback from users in this process

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Last update 15.08.11 20:00hrs

Digital Economy Catapult

2012-09-14T15:44:21.496Z

SESERV partners at Oxford are also involved in new efforts to develop a ‘Digital Economy Catapult’. The following report:

“summarizes discussion at a seminar, entitled ‘The Converged World of the Internet in a Connected Digital Economy: A Workshop to Focus Collaboration Across Business, Industry and Academia’. The workshop was designed to explore strategies for building the collaboration essential to support a Connected Digital Economy Catapult (CDEC), an initiative of the UK’s Technology Strategy Board (TSB). The organizers saw the success of the proposed catapult to depend in part on business, industry, and university centers of excellence defining a clear conception of the converged world of the Internet, and related media, information and communication technologies, particularly with how it connects with the creative sectors of the digital economy. A key impetus of this workshop was the need to join thinking across different sectors of business, industry and academia.

Participants shared a sense of the potential synergies linked to the convergence of the Internet and related media with the creative industries. Existing initiatives that could complement this effort included the evolving set of technology and innovation centers and programs and special interest groups organized by the TSB that are designed to promote the economic development of the UK, such as a special interest group on ‘Internet of Things’. Integrating these various initiatives was seen as another challenge for the proposed catapult. Another challenge is to keep a focus in this development stage of strategic partnerships on the range of complementary platforms and capacities that will be required for the Catapult to reach its full potential. This workshop was organized and hosted by the University of Oxford as one of a set of workshops in an ESRC Research Seminar Series on ‘Digital Policy: Connectivity, Creativity and Rights’ (RES-451-26-0849).”

(Quoted from the abstract of:

"William H. Dutton, Marc J. Ventresca, Caroline Bucklow, Eddie Townsend, Nick Wainwright: Catapulting Britain into a Connected Digital Economy: Issues of the Scale and Scope of a New Centre. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2096819, June 30, 2012."

Keynote Announcement: Andrea Glorioso (European Commission)

2012-05-31T15:35:24.766Z

Andrea Glorioso, Policy Officer at the European Commission will open the SESERV-organized workshop Socio-economic Certainties and Change for the Future Internet with his keynote talk:

The EU is creating new initiatives to ensure human rights and fundamental freedoms are respected both online and off-line. EC policy officer Andrea Glorioso presents the "No Disconnect Strategy", and how technologies of the Future Internet can be unexpected enablers of major societal movements.

The workshop will take place in Brussels on June 20, 2012, right before the Digital Agenda Assembly. Participation is open and free-of-charge. Take the opportunity and register on-line.

SESERV Workshop: Socio-economic Certainties and Change for the Future Internet

2012-06-19T13:31:32.878Z

Workshop Summary and Outlook

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Speakers and Talks

Workshop Introduction

Brian Pickering (SESERV),

Alessandro Bogliolo (ULOOP)

Andrea Glorioso

Policy Officer, European Commission

Bio

Andrea Glorioso works as a policy officer in the European Commission, Directorate-General for Information Society and Media (as of 1 July 2012: Directorate-General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology). His main area of work concerns the global governance of the Internet, Internet policies and regulation and human rights/fundamental freedoms on the Internet. Mr Glorioso holds a MA in Political Science/Sociology, a PGD in ICT law and a LLM in Intellectual Property Law.

The EU is creating new initiatives to ensure human rights and fundamental freedoms are respected both online and off-line. EC policy officer Andrea Glorioso presented the "No Disconnect Strategy", and how technologies of the Future Internet can be unexpected enablers of major societal movements.

Stephen Minton

Vice President for the IDC Worldwide IT Markets, IDC

Bio

Stephen Minton is a Vice President and analyst at IDC covering global ICT markets. He manages IDC’s industry-standard Worldwide Black Book research, which tracks ICT spending in 54 countries. In this role, he co-ordinates IDC’s global IT spending research and analysis, helping IT organisations around the world with their planning, resource allocation and competitive analysis initiatives. Additionally, he is responsible for the IDC Information Society Index, which benchmarks countries according to IT and Internet socio-economic impact and penetration. More info via IDC.

IDC looks at the growing market segments of the Future Internet, and how the social and economic context of its “Information Society Index” applies to its industry stakeholders. The analysis and forecast set a context for much of the discussion throughout the day.

Sara de Freitas

Director of Research, Serious Games Institute

Bio

Sara is Director of Research and Professor of Virtual Environments at Coventry University with responsibility for applied research, teaching and learning and business development. Sara was responsible for setting up the Serious Games Institute, a hybrid model of research, business and study, the first institute of its kind. The institute is now part of a successful multi-million pound turnover SGI Group including a spin out company Serious Games International with a purely commercial brief, the SGI Research Division and the SGI Business Projects group. In addition, the Institute offers education and training, with a newly established Masters Programme and Doctoral School. The SGI brings together industrial partners and academic experts from across four faculties: arts and design, health and life science, business and the environment and computing and engineering. Sara leads a cross-university applied research group of 50 academics and is a member of the Coventry University Research Committee. More info via the Serious Games Institute.

Gaming and entertainment industries have been a strong element of computing and Internet technologies, almost from the very start. As technology has advanced, games have found application not just as entertainment but also as a means of learning, decision making, problem solving and innovation. The UK’s Serious Games Institute discussed the socio-economic themes in this context.

Falk von Bornstaedt

Deutsche Telekom

Bio

Dr. F. von BORNSTAEDT holds diplomas in economics from the universities of Bonn and Paris, with a Ph.D. in economics from Cologne university. Following his studies, he was appointed project leader at the German National Research Center in Computer Science. He joined the Deutsche Telekom Group in 1991. He is currently Vice President, Product Management IP/Data, in the international carriers’ division, International Carrier Sales & Solutions (ICSS). Having joined ICSS in 2001, Falk is now responsible for IP/ Data product management and the IP peering team. Prior to joining ICSS, Falk held various positions within the Deutsche Telekom Group, including responsibility for the Multimedia Division where he was responsible for the international IP product portfolio from 1996. This involved setting up the Global Intranet and IP MPLS VPN product lines. He also initiated the GRX project, an extranet for mobile operators. Before this, Falk was Assistant to the CEO of Deutsche Telekom for international affairs and worked in the controlling unit at Deutsche Telekom headquarters.

Deutsche Telekom presented new business models that derive from the changing societal and economic drivers of ISPs, network and content providers of the Future Internet.

Aleksandra Kuczerawy

Legal Researcher, KU Leuven

Bio

Aleksandra is a legal researcher in the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Law and ICT (ICRI) at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. She joined ICRI in November 2007. She was a part of the study team conducting the independent study on indicators for media pluralism in the European member states, commissioned by the European Commission (DG INFSO). She also conducted research in the area of Spatial Data Infrustructures (SDI) while working on access and licensing protocols in the eContentplus OneGeology Europe project. Currently she conducts research in the field of privacy and identity management in new technologies. She works on the European Project PrimeLife (Privacy and Identity Management in Europe for Life). Lately she has expanded her research field to legal aspects of User Generated Content (UGC) in the European Project SocIoS (Exploiting Social Networks for Building the Future Internet of Services) where she is working on privacy aspects as well as liability of Internet Intermediaries. Moreover, Aleksandra is an assistent editor of the International Ecyclopeadia of Law (IEL) - Cyber Law. More info via KU Leuven.

Data protection and the legal frameworks to support it are an urgent concern of the Future Internet’s user base. Legal expert Aleksandra Kuczerawy told us the critical areas to look out for, and how to prepare for the legal advances now developing.

Alan Hartman

Senior Researcher, IBM

Bio

Alan Hartman is currently a senior researcher at the IBM Israel Haifa Research Laboratory in the department of Privacy and Security. His work is focused on long term privacy preservation in the context of the ENSURE project. After a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Waterloo in Canada, Alan joined the IBM Haifa Research Lab in 1983. Since then, his research has focused on storage technologies, mathematical optimization, hardware and software verification, model based software, systems, and services engineering, and privacy. He spent 2.5 years at the IBM India research lab in Bangalore serving as the Services Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME) focal point for the IBM India Research Laboratory. He has also held positions at the IBM Israel Laboratory as the manager of the algorithms and optimization team, and the model-driven engineering technologies group. He has held visiting positions in the Mathematics Department at the University of Toronto and at Telstra Research Labs. He has also coordinated and managed several European Commission research projects (AGEDIS, MODELWARE, MODELPLEX, COCKPIT). Alan has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Newcastle in Australia, an M.Sc. in mathematics from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and a B.Sc. in mathematics from Monash University in Australia. He has published over 60 research papers and holds several patents.

Trust and Security are ongoing struggles in all facets of the Future Internet. Alan Hartman of IBM Research presents the research issues central to the study of the measurement and management of trust in a business context.

Javier Salcedo

Product Director, Arsys

Bio

Javier has a Telecommunications Engineering degree in the Saragosse University. He started working for Accenture in 2004, participating in a worldwide process standardization project for BT Global Services. He joined Arsys in 2006 and has taken different roles in the IT Service Management, Dedicated and Managed Hosting and Presales areas. He’s currently Product Director taking responsibility over the overall portfolio, including cloud computing services, managed hosting and web hosting.

Cloud computing’s strong entrance into the infrastructure market has seen success. As customers are introduced to an expanding choice in offerings and opportunities, naturally the expectations to meet higher requirements and needs have arrived. Arsys, a Cloud hosting leader, showed us how Cloud offerings are rising to the socio-economic challenges.

Vesa Terävä

Regulatory Coordination & Users Unit, European Commission DG CNEC

Bio

Terävä joined the European Commission and DG Information Society and Media in 2002. Mr Terävä is currently Head of Unit B2 "Regulatory Coordination & Users Unit" in DG Communication Networks, Content and Technology. From 2003 until May 2009 Mr Terävä worked at Unit B5 "Procedures related to national regulatory measures" dealing with the electronic communications consultation procedures provided in EU telecoms rules. He was appointed as "Head of Sector" of the Unit in 2006 and "Deputy Head of Unit" in 2008. Prior to joining the Commission he worked at the Permanent Representation of Finland to the EU and at the Ministry of Transport and Communications in Finland.

Introducing an added layer to the upcoming workshop roundtable, Vesa Terävä reflected on network neutrality, what factors to keep into account, and Europe’s analysis and policy towards the hot topic.

International Conference for eDemocracy and Open Government

2012-07-09T09:56:12.485Z

At the recent International Conference for eDemocracy and Open Government held in Krems, Austria on May 3-4, 2012, SESERV researcher Ralph Schroeder from the University of Oxford delivered a keynote talk. The talk was on “The Internet, Science, and Transformations of Knowledge”.

Abstract: In recent years, there has been a proliferation of research projects and programmes under the labels of e-Science, e-Humanities, cyberinfrastructures, and e-Infrastructures. The broader term ‘e-Research’ encompasses all of these, and can be defined in shorthand form as: distributed and collaborative digital tools and data for online knowledge production. Even beyond these labels and this definition, there have been other large-scale and widespread efforts to digitize scholarly materials and use shared digital resources in research. e-Research has transformed knowledge, and the aim of this talk will be to analyze the emergence and consequences of e-Research and related changes - for scholarship, and for how we understand the world around us.

Workshop: Socio-economic Certainties and Change for the Future Internet

2012-03-23T12:22:05.663Z

Visit our workshop site to see all post-event material!

Summary of the Future Internet Assembly Aalborg

2012-06-04T15:23:59.211Z

The Future Internet Assembly (FIA) in Aalborg, Denmark saw a healthy number of events and sessions with a strong socio-economic impact. FIA Aalborg, hence, was a highly interesting event for the FISE working group and the SESERV coordination action:

SESERV has co-organized two FIA sessions, namely the Open Platforms for Innovation as well as the Novel Networking and Relationship with Applications sessions.
As the FIA was themed Smart Cities and Internet of Things, most sessions were deeply engaging into the socio-economics of the Future Internet. One notable example out of many is the session Games, Networks, and Clouds: What are the Requirements?
The paper submissions out of SESERV for the new edition of the Future Internet book were very successful – including two best paper awards won!
Finally, The Horizon 2020 plans include besides innovation major "societal challenges" as one major field, which may see various fields of applications. ICT will be considered part of the "excellent science" field.

Open Platforms for Innovation

The session on "Open Platforms for Innovation" was organized by Didier Bourse, ALBLF, and addressed amongst other aspects the comparison of the EU approaches FIRE/FI-PPP with the US approaches GENI/IGNITE. In overall conclusions, while the technology and service distinction seems to be drawn at the same lines in the two locations, the operation, funding, and future looks different. While the US favors clearly universities to do the research, the EU sees a more industry-driven being more favorable.

Please have a look at the session report for full details and results obtained.

Novel Networking and Relationship with Applications

Application/network interconnection is motivated by the observation that network information flows are about to become as important as data information flows. From a business point of view, application/network interconnection based on innovative network designs is expected to result in a win-win situation for all stakeholders. Universal media access with sufficient Quality of Experience (QoE) is expected to be a key incentive in this direction.

Application/Network Interconnection will require a re-consideration of the traditional layered concept as network information flows may become as important as data information flows.
Making applications network-aware through exposure of monitoring information is an efficient and realistic way to optimize their transport over heterogeneous network environments.
From a business point of view, application/network interconnection should (and has selectively been shown already to) result in win-win situations through market equilibria.
Telcos seem reluctant to adopt a bottom-up, application-centric network design for community networks as telcos typically embrace a top-down, general-purpose network design.
Universal Media Access with sufficient Quality-of-Experience (QoE) could be the key incentive for deploying network-assisted service delivery mechanisms

Please have a look at the session report for full details and results obtained.

Games, Networks, and Clouds: What are the Requirements?

The session on "Games, Networks, and Clouds: What are the Requirements?" was organized by Malte Behrmann, EGDF and addressed the gaming requirements in general (mobile and wire-line) in the context of clouds and content-centric networks/content distribution networks. While the requirements seemed to be converging under technical views (low latency is the key), the demands from telcos, users, and game developers driven by business perspectives show a much larger diversity.

SESERV-driven Papers in the 2012 Future Internet Book

SESERV has received two out of three best paper awards for the FIA book contributions at the Aalborg FIA on May 11, 2012 on work on societal aspects (WP2) and economics (WP3), which outlines a major impact and excellence of work SESERV has pursued.

Outcome of the SESERV workshop on the interplay of economics and technology

2012-02-14T11:55:14.876Z

The main goals of the Future Internet SESERV workshop were to present and investigate economic issues related to the adoption and usage of Future Internet technologies, the targeted formation of breakout working sessions to discuss and elaborate the potential advantages and drawbacks of following the "tussle-awareness" paradigm, and to comprehensively debate topics such as "one Internet vs. multiple internets", the role of regulators, the role of economics, etc.

Focus Group Results

Below, you can find a summary of the 3 focus groups. For more information on a particular focus group discussion, please visit the related page:

B. Briscoe: The “byte” is not the right charging metric – A flow should be charged on its contribution to congestion

The first keynote was given by Bob Briscoe and addressed the suffering of Internet technologies from “Market Failures”. He proposed a new metric to measure a user’s contribution to congestion, as, according to him, the total number of bytes sent by her is not representative for this purpose. He suggested weighing bytes by congestion level (which implies the marking of packets) in order to measure the congestion caused by a user.

F. von Bornstaedt: “Sending Party Network Pays” is the only way to do E2E QoS - increases accountability and trust among providers – no problem with net neutrality

Falk von Bornstaedt gave the second keynote, which was about the evolution of business models in the Internet. Supported by illustrative examples he argued that over provisioning in the Internet just as in public roads might not always solve the problem. He also drew the attention to a fundamental operator problem that is constituted by users doubling their bandwidth demand every two years, but who are not willing to pay more. To address this issue, he proposed a traffic-financing model where receivers of traffic pay.

A. Cooper: Competition among ISPs in the UK does not regulate the market: almost all ISPs employ traffic discrimination, so no consumer choice

In the framework of the third keynote, Alissa Cooper addressed the question to which extent network operators should be free to manage certain Internet applications differently from others and if operators are prevented from immoderate traffic shaping by competition. She argued that traffic management strategies can be influenced by market structure, but competition does not necessarily safeguard discriminatory traffic management. Also, she stressed that designers of future traffic management technologies should recognize primacy of incentive structures, which they want to deploy.

Tussle Analysis Sessions

After the keynotes Costas Courcoubetis and Costas Kalogiros introduced the tussle analysis methodology that is being developed by SESERV. Important concepts, such as stakeholders, tussles and spillover were explained and afterwards drawn to concrete examples (including misuse of the DNS and TCP protocol). Three parallel focus groups on understanding and dealing with tussles that may arise due to the introduction of new Internet technologies were to follow. These focus groups included presentations of representatives of different FP7 projects just as stakeholder role-plays among participants to comprehensively identify tussles that the respective projects may have to face.

R.Mason: Net neutrality should be evaluated – more analysis based on models and less ideology is needed

Robin Mason introduced two-sided markets to present a new approach to model and investigate network neutrality issues, in the last keynote. He presented and evaluated the proposed model with respect to efficiency as well as welfare and concluded, although applicable, the model needs to see further improvements due to left-out assumptions.

The role of economics in the evolution of the Internet

Next, a discussion panel on the role of economics to the Internet evolution offered interesting insights as well as thought-provoking impulses. A problem identified was that even if all raw data necessary to answer socio-economic questions regarding the Future Internet, could be collected in todays Internet, the problem would arise to extract the respective information from it, and, even if this would be possible, the interpretation of this information would constitute a conceptual problem. Further the panel addressed the interesting question, wether traffic should be charged on its purpose/application, i.e., should it be acceptable to charge differently for the same amount if traffic if it transports for example video streaming data or VoIP data.

The Workshop was closed by the rich feedback to the break-out sessions, especially valuable to the projects that presented during the sessions. Main problems identified included (i) incentive mechanisms for users to actively contribute to a networks value, (ii) operators loosing control of their networks as a trade-off for user satisfaction, (iii) decreasing revenues for interconnection providers if content centric networks are deployed, and (iv) the lack of SLA monitoring tools that allow users to ensure that the service they pay for is actually provided.

The workshop has produced valuable input for SESERV as well as for its participants. Many socio-economic issues regarding the Future Internet were identified or seen from a different angle, due to the viable discussions of experts from different domains all sharing an interest in the Future Internet. In particular, representatives of several FP7 projects told SESERV, that they received thought-provoking impulses with respect to socio-economic interests that need to be considered when further developing their technology.

Future Internet Assembly 2012: From Promises to Reality - SESERV's successful submissions

2012-05-15T12:04:30.998Z

SESERV has received two out of three best paper awards for the FIA book contributions at the Aalborg FIA on May 11, 2012, which outlines a major impact and excellence of work SESERV has pursued. The first of these papers, entitled "Cross-Disciplinary Lessons for the Future Internet", was presented at the FIA's closing plenary meeting by Anne-Marie Oostveen. The paper addresses societal aspects (WP2) and is also available in an extended version. The second paper awarded addresses economics (WP3) and is entitled "Design Principles for the Future Internet Architecture". Furthermore, the paper "A Tussle Analysis for Information-Centric Networking Architectures", which was also submitted by SESERV, appears as a FIA book chapter, as well.

User-centricity - express yourself!

2012-05-11T07:23:24.956Z

The SESERV project has designed a short questionnaire to determine the attitudes and practices of those working in the Future Internet industry towards user-centricity. The link to the online questionnaire is http://tinyurl.com/fiasurvey. Alternatively, please use the QR code shown in this post to access the questionnaire. We appreciate your opinion!

QoS-aware Future Internet focus group @ FIA Aalborg

2012-05-02T09:11:31.037Z

SESERV coordination project organizes a focus group discussion on QoS-aware Internet services. Following the FIA Session "Games, Networks and Clouds: What are the requirements?", the case study of the discussion will be the impact of premium interconnection services on the gaming industry.

Purpose of the session

The purpose is to invite Future Internet stakeholders to discuss about frameworks that enrich the current best-effort Internet by allowing ISPs to collaborate during service management and establish QoS-aware network services. In particular, participants will express their views on socio-economic challenges that would appear, if the technology proposed by the ETICS research project was candidate for adoption. The ultimate purpose is to understand major stakeholders' interests that should be taken into account by members of the ETICS project at the design phase, so that tussles can be played-out "successfully" at run-time.

Logistics

The discussion will take place on Friday 11th of May just after the 3.4 session, and should last 1 hour, approximately.
It will be collocated with the FIA week in Aalborg (Aalborg Congress & Culture Center). Regarding the exact timing, there are 2 options:
1) 11:00 - 12:00 (local time)
2) 12:00 - 13:00 (local time)

Target audience

We plan for a small group of about 5-7 participants that covers all major Future Internet stakeholder roles (ISPs, Service Providers, Infrastructure Providers, Users, Policy makers, Content owners and Technology makers).

How to Participate

There are a couple of places still left!
Please e-mail Costas Kalogiros (ckalog::AT::aueb::DOT::gr) to express your interest in participating in this focus group.

The Future of Apps and Web

2012-03-28T10:17:59.095Z

A new report from the Pew Internet Project presents the results of a survey of over a thousand Internet experts on the topic of whether the proliferation of apps threaten the web over the next ten years.

From the report:

"The Pew Internet Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center invited experts and Internet stakeholders to predict where things might be by the end of the decade. They were asked to take sides in the apps vs. Web debate by choosing among alternative visions of where things will stand in 2020. A number of survey participants who are most attuned to the nuances of this particular issue responded that the outcome will be a mix; they said apps and the Web are converging in the cloud. Some argued that the language framing the question did not frame the issue well. While most people agreed with the statement that the Web will generally be stronger than ever by 2020, many who chose that view noted that it is more their hope than their firm prediction. Some 35% disagreed that the Web would be in better shape, and a number of survey participants said the outcome will be a combination of both scenarios."

The full report is available at http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Future-of-Apps-and-Web.aspx.

Additional material from the study is also available:
Overview of eight specialised reports

Credited responses to the survey

Anonymous responses to the survey

13th GENI Engineering Conference

2012-03-23T08:04:19.949Z

SESERV member Didier Bourse attended the 13th GENI Engineering Conference (GEC13) at the University of California, Los Angeles. He successfully initiated a skillful exchange of ideas with respect to the Future Internet with US experts, in particular addressing EC and US activities. Additionally, he was able to present SESERV's work in a poster / demo session to a large number of people and draw interest to multiple European projects (SESERV, UniverSelf, ETICS). By distributing flyers to meeting participants, he ensured an enduring impression and eased the establishment of contact with those projects.

Didier Bourse attended to the 13th GENI Engineering Conference in the context of SESERV's coordination work looking at how Future Internet experimentation platforms in Europe and the USA compare with each other. Readers interested in that matter are recommended to attend this session organized by SESERV at the Future Internet Assembly in Aalborg.