IEEE Internet Policy Newsletter - November 2017

Why the Future: Internet Use, Users, Service and Terms

By Susan Hyon Parker
IEEE Internet Initiative – Ethics & Policy

There has been much knowledge discourse circulated regarding service expansion in private and public sectors regarding the use of technological services and the internet communities that implore its use and users. These discussions have been ideally focused on service and terms and how this will or will not author meeting the needs of global access and adoption as advancements in our society move forward within the digital ecosystem of innovation and productivity. How will these technological changes be embraced? Previously, we initiated discourse expansion of the digital ecosystem for plausible preparatory work and research to be conducted to explore this knowledge and apply new thought processes to meet demands for services and provide opportunities for the unconnected and unbanked. (Hyon Parker, 2016)

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Protecting Internet Traffic — Challenges and Issues

By Nagender Aneja, Ali Kashif Bashir, and Mohamad Iskandar Petra
Universiti Brunei Darussalam, University of the Faroe Islands, and Universiti Brunei Darussalam

Our devices regularly connect multiple networks to provide a variety of services. However, this ubiquitous connectivity raises significant concerns since the networks that devices use to communicate are not always under user control, and it may lead to security vulnerability. Internet traffic engineering evolved to deal with challenges and issues in the protection of internet traffic. The challenges in measurement, characterization, modeling of internet traffic and application of security algorithms for protection of the internet traffic are major concerns of researchers. The most important function of the internet is routing traffic from source node to destination node, therefore, protecting, controlling, and optimizing the routing function is crucial for the internet. While protecting the internet traffic includes guarding against unauthorized access, it also includes protecting against the issues like congestion that can lower the performance of critical applications. 

Network congestion and cyberattacks are the two most significant challenges for traffic in network based protocols.

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The Challenge of Net Neutrality Policies for 5G Networks

By Zoraida Frias and Jorge Pérez Martínez
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Although 5G is still at an embryonic state, the next generation mobile network has already been envisaged to provide what some authors have called a “fiber-like” experience for mobile users. In this regard, 5G will predictably provide ultrafast broadband as an evolution of 4G services, along with integrating low-latency and ultra-reliable capabilities that will enable a wide range of new—but so far unknown—services. Unlike previous network generations, which were designed as general-purpose connectivity platforms with limited differentiation capabilities across use cases, 5G aims at creating an ecosystem able to meet technical needs from the so-called “vertical industries,” such as healthcare, energy, or automotive.

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Integrating Internet of Things and Blockchain: Use Cases

By Javaid Iqbal Zahid, Fatima Hussain and Alexander Ferworn
Department of Computer Science, Ryerson University, Canada

Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an interconnected network of smart devices capable of exchanging information while changing their state dynamically and adaptively. IoT capabilities are considered as “game changing” when combined with the concepts of big data analytics and cloud computing. 

IoT has brought a new technological revolution across the globe. IoT networks are distributed by nature. This reality has brought in large scale security threats. IoT devices exchange and process massive amounts of data and are exposed to a variety of cyberattacks. Traditional centralized security models have limited utility for IoT applications due to their limitations. Therefore, lightweight, scalable, and distributed security measures are required.