[LINK] Google's plan for world domination [Was: Google Inc's 'first?' hardware - google phone]

[Roger Clarke]

At 13:51 +1000 28/9/08, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
>I'll toss up another thought while on the subject. The last thing we
>should do is encourage people to think that the heavily mediated,
>gated-community of mobile networks is a genuine Internet connection,
>because it's not.

Preamble

I used to argue that the coincidence of the interests of Microsoft 
and the US Government represented a serious threat to 'the Internet 
as we knew it'.  I'm delighted to say that threat didn't turn real.

I argued later that the Chinese demands for built-in censorship 
capabilities in backbone routers, plus the volume of the market 
generated by that country's growth, would warp the design of the 
backbone routers distributed throughout the rest of the world and 
become a serious threat to 'the Internet as we know it'.

I suspect the jury's still out on this, and only the designers deep 
in the bowels of Cisco know the answer.  (History has seen many 
examples of employed engineers being cajoled into designing for evil; 
so I fear this threat is very much alive).

Main Point

I've been teaching a Masters seminar in 'Internet and Web 
Infrastructure' for years.   Last year, I was concerned that I might 
need to research mid-layer mobile phone industry protocols, so that I 
could adapt the seminar to reflect emergent infrastructure.

I reasoned that, as wireless bandwidth increased and 3G finally 
became more than just salesman-speak, mobile phone companies would do 
their own thing and build layers of protocols over their raw 
transmission medium.  Further, I reasoned that much of the new 
designs would be proprietary, but that there would be at least *some* 
standardisation arrangements.

I checked with Keith Ross in NY, who I met during the Kazaa case, and 
who writes one of the better text-books on the Internet protocol 
stack.

The relevant part of his reply was "As a total end-to-end solution, 
I'd say there are some relatively small things going on in the world 
of ad hoc networks. But most wireless applications will take 
advantage of the Internet infrastructure - and the servers that 
attach to it - for the foreseeable future".

So his take is that TCP/IP and associated protocols at the mid-levels 
will remain in place.  And (probably with less confidence) so will 
HTTP and similar at upper levels.  And of course they will need to be 
progressively upgraded.  (Hence, among other things, the great IPv6 v 
IPv4 debate).

But the mobile phone industry is big, powerful and used to doing 
things its own way.  So there's a big risk that it will gradually 
impose its mores on the Internet industry, and come to outweigh the 
IETF push in a way that the ITU could never achieve.  If so, then 
proprietary approaches will creep down the stack, threatening 'the 
Internet as we know it'.

I'd *love* to be shown that the two RCs are Cassandra / Jeremiah / 
too cynical by half.


-- 
Roger Clarke                  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/

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Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW