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Electronic Society
Public Policy:
Control of the Internet
Computing Science, University of Aberdeen
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Overview
Public Policy
Brief history of Internet
Hardware, Software, Standards.
Domain names
Who should control the net/web?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_governance
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Public Policy
``Public policy as government action is generally the
principled guide to action taken by the administrative
or executive branches of the state with regard to a
class of issues in a manner consistent with law and
institutional customs’’ or
"courses of action, regulatory measures, laws, and
funding priorities concerning a given topic
promulgated by a governmental entity or its
representatives.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy
Whose interests does it serve?
Whose interests should it serve?
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Control of Internet
Internet/Web is very important to modern life.
Who controls it?
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Specifies protocols
Decides who can use/connect to it
Specifies what activities are lawful/unlawful
Gives out domain names
Taxes it
Etc.
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Internet Governance
Suggested definition by World Summit on the
Information Society (2005)
``Internet governance is the development and application by
Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their
respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decisionmaking procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution
and use of the Internet.’’
Ongoing interest at high-level, e.g., the Internet
Govenance Forum (IGF) sponsored by UN.
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What is it?
Global network of computers.
» The internetwork - a network of networks
Use shared protocols to communicate.
» Currently, TCP/IP, a.k.a. the Internet
Protocol Suite
Specific services sit on top of TCP/IP.
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Prehistory
Telecomms networks
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Transatlantic telephone cable 1859
Telephone, 1876
1909, Erlang invents Queuing Theory
1940-60’s control of mainframes via terminals
connected by wires.
1950’s and 60’s:
» US military people worry about robust comm’s
» Engineers and others dream of possibilities
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Prehistory
Packet Switching: 1960’s
» Transmission of data in packets of suitable, fixed size.
» Paul Baran: reliable communications across unreliable
network (robustness)
» Donald Davies (UK): efficient use of channels (channel
capacity)
» Leonard Kleinrock: queuing theory of packet switchng
» Optimizes latency: time for data to travel across network
» First computer network implementation 1968
» First ARPANET message sent October 1969.
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ARPANet
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Brief history: 1970s
ARPANet
» first long-distance network
» connected universities, military research labs.
» US military owned and controlled it.
Protocols and standards start to develop
» 1974-ish: Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn develop TCP/IP.
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1980s: Multiple networks
Many more networks appeared
» VNet: Internal IBM network
– University offshoot: Bitnet, earn
» JANet: UK universities
» UUNet: cheap “network” formed using
telephone dialup lines
» Etc
Mostly email, not real-time client-server
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1980s: Internet Emerges
Connected together all of these networks into
a global “Internet”
» Virtual network, which combined ARPANet, VNet,
JANet, etc
– ARPANet user could easily email JANet, etc
» Mostly based on protocols and conventions from
US military
» That is, everyone else changed to what the US
military was doing
» Everyone starts to use TCP/IP.
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF):
promotes standards
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Integration example:
email addresses
ARPANet: [email protected]
JANet: [email protected]
collinson@UUNET: network path, e.g.,
» fred.bloggs!aberdeen!dundee!edinburgh
» Send email first to Edinburgh, then to
Dundee, then to Aberdeen, then to
fred.bloggs
Everyone switched to ARPANet style
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1980s: control
Who controlled the Internet in 1980s?
No-one controlled net as a whole
» IBM controlled VNET
» UK govt controlled JANet
» UUNet nodes controlled themselves
People switched to ARPANet standards
because wanted to, their choice
ARPANet replaced by NSFNet
» Still US government.
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Late ‘80s, early ‘90s:
Integration
By about 1990 the integration efforts
succeed
» 1990s internet truly looks like an integrated
network to its users, not patchwork of
hundreds of separate networks.
» The High Performance Computing Act
(Gore Bill) 1991: develop US National
Information Infrastructure (Information
Superhighway) integration, fiber-optics,
Mosaic.
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1990s:ISPs
Internet Service Providers (ISP) formed.
» Access to internet possible without going
through university, research lab, military
etc.
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1990s: World Wide Web
WWW invented in early 1990s
» A network of hypertext documents accessed via
internet.
» Proposal written by Tim Berners-Lee of CERN in
1989.
» Developed by Berners-Lee and collaborators.
» Services start to become available in 1991.
» Web-browsers (http)
– WorldWideWeb (Nexus), ViolaWWW, Mosaic, 1993.
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1990s
World Wide Web Consortium, W3C,
(international) quickly established
(1994, Tim Berners-Lee at MIT)
Sets standards
– Technical: protocols, languages
– Internationalization: should be accessible to all
languages and cultures
Higher priority for standards because
Web invented in Europe, instead of US?
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1990s: Commerce
Banned from ARPANet, then NSFNet
» Some commercial ISPs and commerce on
other networks.
1992: US Congress passes Scientific
and Advanced Technology Act.
» Commerce then allowed.
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1990s: Growth with Commerce
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WIntHosts1981-July2011.jpg, Author: Ken Masters, Creative Commons License
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Commercial Importance
Largely because of Web, Internet
became of much greater commercial
interest
» Dot.com boom
» Domain names selling for $s
– $7.5M for business.com (more for porn.com)
» Beginnings of spam
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1990s: Who in control?
Most control still resided with individual
component networks.
International organisations increasingly
set standards.
» W3C, IETF, ICANN (later slide), ISO
» Lawyers increasingly involved
– Lawsuits on domain names; e.g.,
mcdonalds.com
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2000s: Internet essential
Many organizations rely on Internet
» Insist that people use it.
» E-gov’t, E-commerce, E-Science, etc.
» Supply chains rely on it.
» Banking, finance, payment systems.
Internet needs to work!
» Must be fast, reliable, trusted, etc.
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2000s: Attackers
Huge growth in spam email
» Dominates most inboxes
» Makes email less reliable/useful
– Anti-spam systems kill real emails
» Also phishing (con emails)
Huge growth in viruses
» Many computers taken over by attackers.
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2000s
Companies take security seriously
» 1990s: Microsoft treats computer security
as marketing tool, to encourage upgrades
– Questionnable whether it seriously tries to
make software more secure.
» 2000s: Microsoft takes security very
seriously.
» Relative obscurity of Mac OS protects it.
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Governance problems
Hard to stop bad guys when there is so
little control over the net.
» Change protocols – slow?
» Spamming illegal – no international control?
» Blacklist bad guys so can’t use – how?
Does global Internet community have a
duty to help poor countries?
» E.g., help pay for East Africa fibre.
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What is Internet/Web
Hardware: routers, fibre-optic links, …
Software: browsers, servers, …
Standards: HTTP, HTML, …
Domain names
People and organizations
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Hardware
Routers, fibre-optic links, etc still owned
by individual organizations, networks.
» Individuals: you own your wireless router
and (say) the network in your house.
» Organizations: Aberdeen Uni. owns
campus Ethernet wiring.
» ISP/telecom: BT owns copper wires from
your house, switches.
» Govt: JANet (and SuperJANet) owns link
between Aberdeen Uni. and Dundee Uni.
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Hardware
Very diverse ownership
Internet backbone: high-speed data routes has multiple owners
National infrastructure: LINX (more or less)
provides central hardware for UK
Almost no central hardware for Internet as a
whole
» root nameservers (resolve domain names into IP
adresses)
» Provided by LINX-like national sites
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LINX
London Internet Exchange
» http://www.linx.net/
» Cooperative of UK ISPs
Interconnect point for UK ISPs,
International connections
Support services: name/time server
» Service to Internet as a whole
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Control of Hardware
Who can plug hardware into Internet?
» Anyone who can convince an organization which
is currently on the net to link to you.
– Person/company: convince ISP to connect you.
– ISP: convince LINX to connect you.
» Of course governments can regulate what
happens in their countries.
– Recent proposal in UK to require explicit opt-in
by consumers for porn access.
» Enforcement?
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Hardware Anarchy
Surprising it works as well as it does.
» Tribute to tech-support personnel keeping
their bit of the Internet going.
» Even more so to inventors of packetswitching, and other robust protocols.
Lack of control helps criminals (e.g.
spammers)?
» Always find someone to connect them to
the net.
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Software Environment
We need software to use the Internet and web.
» Web browsers: Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox,
» Web server: Apache (C), Apache Tomcat (Java),
» Apache Software Foundation, open community
» Apache License, open source
» OS support in Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Linux,
Android, … .
Controlled by developers
» Commercial: IE, Outlook, Safari, Entourage, …
» Open-source: Unix, Tomcat, Firefox, … .
» Mac OS and iOS commercial, but based on Unix.
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Control via Software
Can a commercial vendor control the Internet
through its software?
» If everyone uses IE, Microsoft can “tweak” IE to
encourage people to use its products
» IE bundled with Windows OS.
– Antitrust case. United States vs. Microsoft (19982001ish). Settled with US DoJ.
» Recent change to IE. Default search engine.
Deliberately difficult to change.
» Deliberately degrade browsing on competitor
websites.
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Control via Software
Seems less of a problem now, because
of blossoming of open-source
» Apache, Tomcat, Firefox, Opera, etc.
Net software becoming more of a
shared resource, less of a commercial
product
» Much harder for one individual or
organization to control!
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Standards
Standards are essential to Internet
» Document formats: HTML, XML, PDF, GIF
» Protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, …
» Low-level: TCP/IP
» Other: Java, Unicode, …
Who controls these?
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Protocols
Protocols mostly controlled by
international standards organizations
W3C consortium (web)
» http://www.w3.org/
» Most web protocols (e.g., HTTP)
IETF (Internet)
» http://www.ietf.org/
» TCP/IP, other plumbing
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Document Formats
W3C controls many web ones
» HTML, XML, RDF, OWL, ….
Other standards bodies
» PDF (open, ISO committee, since 2008),
» JPEG (ISO committee, but patent situation
complicated)
» MPEG (ISO committee)
Some controlled commercially
» WMF graphics: Microsoft
No one controls
» GIF: Developed by Compuserve in 1980s, now in
public domain.
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Commercial Formats
Is it OK for Adobe to control PDF, which
is a de facto standard for the web?
» Enables Adobe to sell related software?
Adobe has now made PDF an ISO
standard
» As of 1 Jul 2008
Trend for most widely-used formats
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Java
Who controls Java programming language?
Oracle
» Bought SUN, the original developer
» Hold trademark
» Tried to control/restrict competitors
– Especially MS
– Sun vs. Microsoft
– MS created C# instead…
Now moving to open-source, standards.
Apple just announced ‘deprecation’ of Java.
» Have to download separately with OS X 10.7.
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Standards
1990s: there was a lot of concern about
commercial control of standards
» Java, PDF, GIF
Now trend is towards open standards
controlled by international bodies.
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Domain Names
Who controls internet names?
» Which company is business.com?
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers, ICANN, http://www.icann.org/
» Decides on top-level domain names, such as .com
» International body, not-for-profit, public-benefit,
self-appointed?
» IANA, part of ICANN
``The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is
responsible for the global coordination of the DNS Root, IP
addressing, and other Internet protocol resources’’
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Domain names
Verisign (company) controls .com
» Under contract from US government.
» Why should US govt control?
Nominet controls .uk
» Private not-for-profit company
Country domain names often controlled by
national telecomms
» http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/
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Domain names
Security problems
DNS Cache Poisoning: corrupt data fed into Domain
Name System – directs traffic to wrong address.
Border Gateway Protocol: handles core routing
decisions.
» Hijacking – corrupt routing tables of BGP: sends traffic to
wrong address.
Security extensions proposed.
DNS root name servers (logical clusters). Many in
the US. Until recently only 13. Now 200+.
» Have been under DDoS attack.
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Domain Name Control
Domain Name System (1983ish)
Historical artefact.
» E.g., US has top-level control because we
use ARPANet names
Under review?
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Who controls Internet?
Hardware: decentralized, anarchic
Software: increasingly open-source
Protocols: increasingly international
standards bodies
Domain names: mixture
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Who should control net?
No one (anarchy)?
» Governments control within their country?
» No one controls net as a whole?
Self-appointed committees (e.g., W3C)?
UN body?
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UN Internet Agency?
Should an international body be set up
to exercise global control over the
Internet?
» Control standards, domain names?
» Provide open-source software?
» Under UN control?
– 2005 working group, set up by sec.-gen. Annan
Good idea or bad idea?
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In the news …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2
012/oct/17/who-rules-internet
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