Connecting the Future logo

line Home | Program | Speakers | Talks | Contact us line

  Abstracts

Designing the Future - Tony Hill

ISOC-AU demonstrated the potential for new Internet technologies in its joint Connecting the Future forum with AC3 in May 2002 when new advanced networks in Australia were showcased. Those networks are based on advanced Internet technologies, network architectures and protocols. More detailed understanding of these new technologies and their interaction with user needs will help to ensure a better environment for innovation, regulation and competition, to maximise benefit for Australia.

The Internet Standards Process - David Arnold

The Internet standards process is an ongoing exercise of consensus-based decision making by the information technology community. Participation is voluntary and individual, and results are evaluated on the basis of "rough consensus and running code".

This talk examines the evolution of the process, the formal structures behind it, the roles played by various bodies (organisational and corporeal!) and reflects on the impact of the process on the character of the Internet itself.

ENUM - Convergence at layers 8 and 9 - Graeme Allen

This session will cover the background to ENUM, examine how ENUM works in practice, the regulatory considerations, and the current status of ENUM in the IETF.

Where is IPv6 Going? - John Barlow

Think of rolling out IPv4 to the whole of China ... IPv6 exists primarily to expand the pool of available IP address space, to make such tasks realistic. Think of your home air-conditioning unit being on the Internet, so you can remotely change the home environment - can you currently give it an IPv4 address? Would you trust IPv4 communication for this?

Imagine the increase in network usage if every home user could serve information using a routable IP address. Home based web servers, IP telephony, video conferencing, peer-to-peer applications, network games - all free from the impact of NAT. What happens when wearable computers appear, and the consumer wants the functionality of go-anywhere network connectivity to themselves ?

In the process of designing an updated IP protocol with more address space, opportunity was taken to add some new functionality and remove old cruft. This impacts our current security models - an IPv6 device authenticates itself at the IP layer, and can encrypt IP traffic. IPv6 offers some interesting options, and we will cover some of these options and some of the goals of an IPv6 Internet.

Alphabet soup - 802.11 style - Dr Andrew Myles

Wireless networking based on 802.11 technology (often called "Wi-Fi") has recently hit the "radar screen" for many businesses, and even the "man in the street". However, there is a danger the current momentum of the wireless market could be derailed by the confusing "alphabet" of modifications to the base 802.11 standard. This presentation attempts to reduce at least some of the confusion by answering the question, "What is 802.11 in all its variants, including 802.11 a, b, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k?". The presentation will also highlight some of the more contentious issues currently being considered in the IEEE 802.11 working group and discuss some likely future directions for 802.11 standardisation.

Really Designing for Users! - Gunela Astbrink

Information and communication technologies need to be designed so that the end-user can gain maximum benefit. Focussing on the rich diversity of the user throughout the design and implementation cycle helps to achieve this goal. Two ways of achieving this is through user-centred design and implementation of Universal Design or "Design for All" principles. Both these approaches will be analysed with practical examples given for each approach.

The Smart Internet Technology Cooperative Research Centre has a User-Centred Design project which interacts with the technology programs dealing with natural adaptive user interfaces, smart personal assistants, intelligent environments and smart networks. The three main user areas are people with disabilities, young people and SMEs. The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are well-known in ensuring that people with disabilities can access web sites equitably. While they were written to meet the requirements of people with disabilities, the Government Online Strategy states that many of the specific parts of the guidelines will benefit rural people and others who have slow Internet connections. This is the philosophy of Design for All principles - design so that more people can use products and services.

The Australian Communications Authority is currently developing recommendations for the development of a new Disability Standard for equipment such as fixed, cordless and mobile phones and payphones which are used with the standard telephone service. This could include IP-based phones. The Standard is likely to incorporate Design for All principles so that features on equipment meet the needs of people with disabilities as well as a broader range of the population.

ENUM - a Case Study in Social Irresponsibility - Dr Roger Clarke

ENUM is meant to provide mapping between IP-addresses and telephone-numbers: "today, many addresses; with ENUM, only one", as its proponents say it.

Any such capability would be extremely dangerous, providing governments, corporations, and even individuals, with the ability to locate and to track other people, both in network space, and in physical space. The beneficiaries would be the powerful who seek to manipulate the behaviour of others. It would do immense social, sociological and democratic harm.

The astounding thing is that engineers are still adopting the naive position that the impact and implications are someone else's problem. With converged computing-and-communications technologies becoming ever more powerful and ever more pervasive, engineers have to be shaken out of their cosy cocoon, and forced to confront the implications, along with technology and its applications.

Setting the Scene for e-learning Futures - Jon Mason

E-learning is at the beginning of a new growth phase stimulated by a marketplace facilitated by a worldwide commitment to the evolution of a supporting infrastructure based upon interoperability standards. This presentation will provide a big picture view on e-learning specifications development and its relationship to standardisation processes and application in Australia. Work within the IMS Global Learning Consortium will be profiled: from metadata schema and content packaging to digital repositories interoperability and learning design. An overview of how IMS works with other related organisations will also be described.

Converging Telco and Internet Standards - Peter Darling

At the moment, there are different requirements for standards for the public Internet and telecommunications networks, but they are converging rapidly. The presentation will draw on the work the communications industry is doing in the Australian Communications Industry Forum (ACIF) Next Generation Network Project which Peter Darling managing on behalf of ACIF, and on international work in the IETF, the ITU and other bodies such as ETSI.

Interoperability Specifications for Australian and New Zealand Education - Dr Nigel Ward

The Le@rning Federation is an initiative of State and Federal governments of Australia and New Zealand. Over the period 2001-2006, the Initiative aims to develop online interactive curriculum content specifically for Australian and New Zealand schools. This presentation will provide an overview of the Initiative's interoperability specifications. Interoperability specifications are critical to making sure the new online content meets the real needs teachers and learners and will also help ensure a place for locally developed materials in international markets.

Beauty and the Beast? - Distributed Data and Centralised Metadata - Leni Mayo

Meta-data is the information glue that links distributed data into coherent, high-value frameworks. This talk introduces metadata on the web, highlights W3C standards activity in the area, spotlights examples of meta-data in present-day commerce and explores a vision of the semantic web of tomorrow.

Broadband: Why don't we get it? - Brad Wynter

The growing uptake of broadband Internet and other services is dependent on the ability of carriers to provide broadband infrastructure to the home capable of delivering those broadband services. From a study tour of the U.S. in October 2002 it is apparent that different approaches are being taken to deliver broadband services to the home.

This presentation will explore the different national approaches and their underlying business models. A likely scenario will be outlined of what will happen in Australia if we continue along our current path. A series of paradigm shifts will be examined to stimulate thinking about how we might develop a healthy sustainable industry. The Melbourne Growth Council consortium WIRED Development project will be outlined to provide an example of how a new infrastructure model could work practically.

Lighting the Fire: a Community Catalyst - Peter Ziebell

The internet is increasingly becoming an integral part of living in country regions. Those living and working in rural and remote regions are becoming dependent on it to engage in eCommerce and to re-engage in democracy. Any consideration of design elements requires consideration of the skills and abilities of potential users. Additionally those responsible for setting standards must ensure that any model can deliver effectively. To do otherwise disenfranchises a considerable portion of our population. The Regional Connectivity Project acts as a catalyst for use and skills development in rural Victoria. i The experiences of the RCP will be outlined in relation to internet usage and abilities.

Any-to-any Connectivity for Everyone? - Len Bytheway

Communications engineers have always known that a successful and cost effective network requires "any-to-any" connectivity. This can only be achieved through agreed standards and interworking agreements. Unfortunately this has not been applied to communications technologies used by some people with disabilities.

Across the world multiple and incompatible "solutions" for text telephony have resulted in communications islands. People who rely on text or video to communicate have been ignored, resulting in comunication holes, a lack of standards and economies of scale too small to bring innovative products to market.

As we look to the future anticipating next generations networks merging with conventional telephony with IP based services, it is critical that the needs of people with disabilities are considered and incorporated into network design. We are poised at a crossroad, we must choose to resolve the legacy of incompatibility, grasping this as an opportunity to create "any-to-any connectivity, for everyone". The alternative is to further isolate people with disabilities.

Brief Reprise: Is Social Irresponsibility Alive and Well? - Dr Roger Clarke

An assessment of the extent to which users' needs and policy issues were addressed by the Forum speakers.

line Home | Program | Speakers | Talks | Contact us line