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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

INET'98

Track 6 Network Technology and Engineering

Panel: Next Generation Internet

Building The Next Generation Internet

Future Networks

STAR TAP, International Exchange Point for High-Performance Applications - Paper 208

Thomas A. DEFANTI
University of Illinois at Chicago USA

Steven N. GOLDSTEIN
National Science Foundation USA

Bill ST. ARNAUD
CANARIE, Inc. Canada

Rick WILDER
Randolph C. NICKLAS
vBNS Engineering/MCI USA

Paul ZAWADA
National Center for Supercomputing Applications USA

Bruce DAVIE
Cisco Systems, Inc.  USA

Maxine D. BROWN
University of Illinois at Chicago USA

The US National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored Science, Technology, and Research Transit Access Point (STAR TAP) initiative provides an
international exchange point for high-performance networked applications. STAR TAP will be one of the exchange points for the Next-Generation Internet (NGI). Also, STAR TAP is housed in the same facility as one of the emerging Internet 2 gigapops. Unlike most other Internet exchange points (IXs), STAR TAP will have to cope with sorting of traffic to route acceptable use policy (AUP)-compliant flows to connecting high-performance networks, such as NSF's vBNS and CANARIE's CA*net II. The US Department of Energy's ESnet, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration's NREN, and Singapore's SINGAREN also connect to STAR TAP; Taiwan's TANet, the Asia-Pacific Advanced Network (APAN), and several other high-performance networks from Asia-Pacific, Europe, and perhaps Latin America will connect soon. This paper will discuss the policy implications of restricting traffic to institutions carrying out high-performance meritorious applications as opposed to general research and educational institutions. It will also discuss the technological approaches (e.g., Multi-Protocol Label Switching) being considered or tested for implementing the policies over a multinetwork switching and routing fabric.

A High-Performance Network Connection for Research and Education Between the vBNS and the Asia-Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) - Paper 112

Michael A. MCROBBIE
Karen H. ADAMS
Dennis B. GANNON
Donald F. MCMULLEN
Douglas D. PEARSON
R. Allen ROBEL
Steven S. WALLACE
James G. WILLIAMS
Indiana University USA

The development of high-speed research networking in the US, and the rise of the vBNS in particular, has been paralleled in Asia by the development of the APAN consortium and high-performance networks in the countries of APAN's constituent members. These rapid and recent developments on both sides of the Pacific have been driven by the emergence of high-speed networking as a central requirement for the support of basic science, engineering, and other disciplines. The growth of international scientific collaborations in, for example, astronomy, high energy physics, medicine, and computational science leads to a requirement for a global data communications infrastructure on par with what is available domestically.

This paper will describe the establishment of a high bandwidth international Internet connection from the vBNS to the Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN). Indiana University will develop a US-Asia Pacific network, TransPAC, through a joint effort with the APAN consortium, AT&T as the US domestic and international service provider, and Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co., Ltd. (KDD) of Japan and Korea Telecom (KT) of Korea as APAN's main network service providers. The TransPAC network will initially provide 35Mbps VBR-nrt ATM service from the vBNS connection at the STAR TAP switch in Chicago to the APAN eXchange point (XP) switch in Tokyo. This network will require support from the National Science Foundation's High Performance International Internet Services (HPIIS).

The paper will provide an overview of the research associated with constructing and characterizing the Layer 3 IP services that will be available end-to-end for HPIIS institutions. The paper will also discuss issues related to the dual nature of TransPAC as a production network for international scientific collaborations and an R&D testbed for new networking technologies, including multicast routing (for Mbone), IPv6, QoS using RSVP and other methods, video conferencing, shared virtual environments, and tele-immersion.

The use of global-scale networks in support of very widely distributed real-time, high-performance applications is a virtually unplowed field, one which will clearly become more important as the necessity of international cooperation in scientific research grows. The establishment of TransPAC is, therefore, expected to provide tremendous dividends in the development and refinement of communications equipment and protocols, and in the development of support software and systems for applications developers.

Deployment and Experiences of the WIDE 6bone - Paper 238

Kazuhiko YAMAMOTO
Nara Institute of Science and Technology Japan

Akira KATO
University of Tokyo Japan

Munechika SUMIKAWA
Hitachi, Ltd. Japan

Jun MURAI
Keio University  Japan

WIDE 6bone is one of the largest test-beds of IPv6, deployed and operated by WIDE Project. As an activity report on WIDE 6bone, this paper first describes its history and characteristic. Then experienced problems of IPv6, including source address selection, renumbering, and application dilemmas, are explained. Translators between IPv4 and IPv6 are also discussed for smooth migration.

Panel: Active Networks

Multicasting

Multicasting on British Telecom's Futures Testbed - Paper 267

Margarida CORREIA
Kevin SMITH
Chris GIBBINGS
Mark BARRETT
Uma KULKARNI
Abdulrahman ADDAS
BT Laboratories United Kingdom

In this paper, we describe recent experiments involving the delivery of IP multicast services on BT's "Futures Testbed" network. The Testbed is a broadband platform incorporating IP and ATM technology and supporting 700 users within BT's Research Department at Martlesham Heath. The Testbed also has broadband IP/SDH links off-site to London, Cambridge, Colchester, and Norwich, allowing a number of collaborative network and application experiments. This paper describes how multicast was implemented in our network and explains how important it is for the new type of multimedia applications that work on a one-to-many basis. There is also a description of multicast services being deployed in the Futures Testbed network, such as delivery of high-quality video and audio and multipoint conferencing. These services are being used for the live distribution, with interactive facilities, of conferences, meetings, and Business TV as well as collaborative work through the sharing of applications. A study of different mechanisms to maintain QoS for these services is presented. We have also tested the delivery of multimedia applications using different multicast mechanisms.

Pricing Multicast Communication: A Cost-based Approach - Paper 354

John Chung-I CHUANG
Marvin A. SIRBU
Carnegie Mellon University  USA

Multicast and unicast traffic share and compete for network resources. To facilitate efficient and equitable resource allocation between traffic types, this paper advocates a cost-based approach to multicast pricing. When prices are set to reflect actual network resource consumption, market distortion is minimized. Additionally, this paper calls for pricing multicast relative to the corresponding unicast service. This enables the end-user to correctly choose multicast over unicast only when it is indeed the cheaper (and more efficient) alternative.

Through the quantification of multicast link usage, this work demonstrates that the cost of a multicast tree varies at the 0.8 power of the multicast group size. This result is validated with both real and generated networks and is robust across topological styles and network sizes. Since multicast cost can be accurately predicted given the membership size, there is strong motivation to price multicast according to membership size. Furthermore, a price ceiling should be set to account for the effect of tree saturation. This two-part tariff structure is superior to either a purely membership-based or a flat-rate pricing scheme, since it reflects the actual tree cost at all group membership levels.

Explicit accounting of the control overhead allows a comparison of dense- and sparse-mode multicast within our cost framework. We find that sparse-mode multicast maintains the 0.8 power relationship between group size and cost, while dense-mode multicast is inefficient at extremely low membership levels. This suggests that when both multicast modes coexist to serve different markets, dense-mode multicast is a good candidate for flat-rate pricing and the mass-dissemination market, while sparse-mode multicast is a good candidate for pricing based on membership size and the teleconferencing market.

Scalability of Internet Multicast Protocols - Paper 271

Manolo SOLA
Masataka OHTA
Toshinori MAENO
Tokyo Institute of Technology  Japan

Current multicast proposals do not scale to provide multicast over the whole Internet. In this paper we propose a multicast protocol that scales well in this environment. This protocol is based on PIM-SM or CBT, and DNS. PIM and CBT are independent of unicast routing hierarchy, and DNS gives a scalable and hierarchical mechanism to find RPs or Cores with the recent extension of dynamic updating and tight security. We also propose a scalable method for multicast address allocation based on DNS.

Quality of Service

Quality of Service in the Internet: Fact, Fiction or Compromise? - Paper 003

Paul FERGUSON
Cisco Systems, Inc.  USA

Geoff HUSTON
Telstra Internet  Australia

The Internet has historically offered a single level of service, that of "best effort," where all data packets are treated with equity in the network. However, we are finding that the Internet itself does not offer a single level of service quality, and some areas of the network exhibit high levels of congestion and consequently poor quality, while other areas display consistent levels of high quality service. Customers are now voicing a requirement to define a consistent service quality they wish to be provided, and network service providers are seeking ways in which to implement such a requirement. This effort is happening within the umbrella called "Quality of Service" (QoS). Of course, this is now a phrase which has become overly used, often in vague, nondefinitive references. QoS discussions currently embrace abstract concepts, varying ideologies, and moreover, lack a unified definition of what QoS actually is and how it might be implemented. Subsequently, expectations regarding QoS have not been appropriately managed within the Internet community at large of how QoS technologies might be realistically deployed on a global scale. A more important question is whether ubiquitous end-to-end QoS is even realistic in the Internet, given the fact that the decentralized nature of the Internet does not lend itself to homogenous mechanisms to differentiate traffic. This paper examines the various methods of delivering QoS in the Internet, and attempts to provide an objective overview on whether QoS in the Internet is fact, fiction, or a matter of compromise.

QoS and Multiprotocol Label Switching Experiments for the Design of an ATM-based National Network  - Paper 155

Tiziana FERRARI
Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics and University of Bologna  Italy

Antonia GHISELLI
Cristina VISTOLI
Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics  Italy

During the last few years, evolution in networking technologies has been a continuous fast process driven by the development of new applications. Nevertheless, the fast increase in the number of users, the huge cost of high-speed links, and the growth of commercial networks are preventing the use of these advances in applications in a production environment. The traditional best-effort approach is not enough to guarantee acceptable performance and a fair sharing of resources; more complex services and efficient data forwarding are needed. ATM, RSVP, and MPLS, some of the approaches devised by the scientific community to address these requirements, are presented. Advantages, performance results, and use of these solutions are discussed and compared. The paper focuses on the design of a high-speed ATM-based national network and shows how ATM, MPLS, and RSVP can be used and integrated in the same infrastructure. ATM, deployed as high-speed technology for the backbone, can be integrated with MPLS to enhance data forwarding and achieve simplicity and scalability. On the other hand, RSVP can support per-flow quality of service to a limited set of users and/or applications when end-to-end-dedicated ATM connections cannot be provided.

Adaptive Loss Concealment for Internet Telephony Applications - Paper 321

Henning SANNECK
GMD Fokus  Germany

Today's Internet is increasingly used not only for e-mail, ftp and the World Wide Web, but for interactive audio and video services (MBone). However, the Internet as a datagram network offers only a "best effort" service, which can lead to excessive packet losses under congestion. Internet measurements have shown that the overall probability of loosing one packet is high, however drops significantly for the loss of several consecutive packets.

In this paper we consider this Internet loss characteristic and the property of long-term correlation within a speech signal together, to mitigate the impact of packet losses. This is accomplished by an adaptive choice of the packetization interval of the voice stream at the sender. When a packet is lost, the receiver can use adjacent signal segments to conceal the loss to the user, because a high similarity can be assumed due to the adaptive packetization at the sender. The subjective quality of the proposed scheme as well as its applicability within the current Internet environment (high loss rates, common audio tools, standard speech codes) are discussed.

Panel: Emerging IETF Technology

Measurement

Creating a Scalable Architecture for Internet Measurement  - Paper 375

Andrew ADAMS
Jamshid MAHDAVI
Matthew MATHIS <
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center  USA

Vern PAXSON
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory  USA

Historically, the Internet has been woefully undermeasured and underinstrumented. The problem is only getting worse with the network's ever-increasing size. In this paper we describe an architecture for facilitating a "measurement infrastructure" for the Internet, in which a collection of measurement "probes" cooperatively measures the properties of Internet paths and clouds by exchanging test traffic among themselves. The key emphasis of the architecture, which forms the underpinnings of the National Internet Measurement Infrastructure (NIMI) project, is on tackling problems related to scale. Consequently, the architecture emphasizes decentralized control of measurements; strong authentication and security; mechanisms for both that maintain tight administrative control over who can perform what measurements using which probes; delegation of some forms of measurement as a site's measurement policy permits; and simple configuration and maintenance of probes. While the architecture is general in the sense of not being tied to any particular measurement tools, it also currently supports "TReno", "poip," and "traceroute" measurements.

Non-Intrusive and Accurate Measurement of Unidirectional Delay and Delay Variation on the Internet - Paper 036

Ian D. GRAHAM
Stephen F. DONNELLY
Stele MARTIN
Jed MARTENS
John G. CLEARY
University of Waikato  New Zealand

This paper describes a novel and low-cost technique for accurately measuring delay, delay variation and packet loss on the inter-continental Internet. The technique enables us to measure delay between two Internet sites anywhere in the world, with an absolute accuracy of better than 10 microseconds. The system is being developed as part of a project to study patterns of Internet delay within New Zealand and around the Pacific Rim.

The Nature of the Beast: Recent Traffic Measurements from an Internet Backbone - Paper 473

K. CLAFFY
Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis  USA

Greg MILLER
Kevin THOMPSON
vBNS/MCI   USA

As described in last year's INET'97 paper, MCI has implemented a high-performance, low-cost monitoring system that can monitor Internet traffic (cell/packet headers) and perform analyses and has deployed them on OC-3 trunks within MCI's backbone and also within the NSF-sponsored vBNS (very High performance Backbone Service). This publicly-available tool facilitates measurement and analysis of high-speed OC-3, and now OC-12, trunks that carry hundreds of thousands of simultaneous flows. As a follow-up to last year's paper, we provide some new data analyses as well as comparisons with last year's data that may suggest trends in changing workload profiles. All the data in this paper is based on recent wide-area MCI Internet backbone traffic as recorded by the Coral monitors.

Securing the Internet

Securing Ordinary TCP Services Through Tunnels - Paper 312

Manfred BOGEN
Michael LENZ
Andreas REICHPIETSCH
Peter SIMONS
German National Research Center for Information Technology  Germany



Many popular protocols deployed in the Internet today were designed years before security, cryptographic authentication and data encryption were an issue. Examples for such protocols are POP, telnet, X11-remote-display, and FTP. These protocols are considered insecure nowadays, and if we were living in an ideal world, they would have been replaced by more sophisticated protocols completely.

In fact, though, Internet services based on these protocols are used more than ever before, because of the widespread availability of implementations for all platforms and operating systems. A large organization or company cannot afford to discontinue services like POP or FTP, because so many of their members or employees are using them.

The solution for this dilemma is to tunnel the insecure protocols through secure channels, which are protected by strong cryptography. Even though software for this purpose is widely available already, the Secure Shell (SSH) for example, experience has shown that the concept of tunneling is not easy to understand.

In this paper, the authors will explain the concept of tunneling TCP connections through secure channels in great detail. Furthermore we will provide several examples, how tunneling can be implemented transparently for the users of a system, explain the necessary changes in the configuration of the server- and the client-side of the service, and discuss the problems that arise when tunneling is used through a firewall.

During our work in the German National Research Center for Information Technology (GMD), we have also measured the performance penalty that arises from encrypting and possibly compressing frequently occurring TCP connections and will present the results here.

The paper has been written mostly for the administrators and users of Unix and Windows NT workstations, but only very few parts actually depend on the deployed operating systems. The underlying concepts of tunneling are valid for all kinds of operating systems and software implementations.

Study From Hybrid Implementation of SwIPe and IPsec -Paper 372

Masanori FUJIE
Jun-ichiro ITOH
Takashi TOCHIHARA
Hiroo SHIRASAKI
Kazumasa UTASHIRO
Internet Initiative Japan Inc.  Japan

IPsec is quickly becoming the standard protocol for secure communications over the Internet. Prior to the adoption of IPsec, the swIPe protocol had been widely used for IP-level security, but because of incompatibility between these two, there are now many problems that must be faced in migrating to the new protocol. This paper describes a method of hybrid implementation that can be used to achieve smooth transition from swIPe to IPsec without compromising secure connectivity between hosts.

A Novel Use of Distributed Directory Service - Paper 152

Bill MANNING
Information Sciences Institute  USA

The inability of the existing tools to provide a consistent view of the public Internet to its constituents is beginning to hamper its growth. Currently there is a disconnection between Internet address delegations to service providers and the announcement of address delegations by those service providers to each other. In conjunction with this disconnect is the centralized nature of these registries. In the increasingly distributed Internet, it is harder and harder to reach through the maze and access these services in real time.

We think it is desirable to have a migration strategy that will provide a "chain of custody" from delegation to announcement that can be authenticated and will allow local sites to collect and cache the data they need to maintain a "world view" that, while not authoritative, is generally consistent and useful.

To build the system, we used DNS security to provide the authentication and chain of custody components and then added RPSL/RIDE syntax statements to the DNS zones so that each site may build a local copy of a routing registry. Since each site has one or more delegations and maintains the zone data locally, they can ensure that the authoritative routing data is also kept and maintained locally.

We then describe how this system was implemented and tested in the 6bone with the 6bone participants and we look to ways in which this system might be deployed in the IPv4 world.

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Globalisation and Internet Governance

The "Governance" Debacle: How and Why the Idea of Internetworking is Being Buried by Politics

Rich Man, Poor Man: The Geo-Politics of Internet Policymaking

Internet Governance: Herding Cats and Sacred Cows

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Panel: The Internet and the Transformation of the Global Telecommunications Industry

GATS and the Internet: As a Service, a Technology, and a Means of Supply

The Internet and International Trade Policy - Paper 021

John du Pre GAUNTT
Public Network Europe  United Kingdom

The successful conclusion of the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks on basic telecommunications in February 1997 was presented as the template for liberalization of basic telecomms and information services on a global basis.

While not directly addressed in the February WTO Agreement, the Internet promises to radically shift certain assumptions underpinning future telecomms trade liberalization talks. More specifically, two areas of Internet functionality -- voice over the Internet and Internet broadcasting -- promise to force themselves to the top of the agenda of the next General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations, scheduled to commence in the year 2000.

Voice over the Internet was considered to be a value-added service (VAS) in the 1993 Uruguay Round and hence not subject to market restrictions associated with basic telecommunications. Yet, there continues to be a significant debate as to whether technical advances are evolving Internet voice into a viable substitute for basic telecomms. If a national regulator decides that IP voice services qualify as a substitute -- and are theoretically subject to access charges and universal service contributions -- such a decision will have to be made in light of already agreed-upon schedules included in the 1997 WTO Agreement.

However, far more contentious for international trade policy are Internet audio and video services. Depending upon how negotiators perceive Internet bit-streaming applications (i.e., is it a broadcast or is it a piece of audio or video data), there is the danger that WTO members could opt for Most Favored Nation (MFN) exemptions with regard to Internet broadcasting or attempt to create regional preferences. Aside from the technical difficulties of policing those types of restrictions, such exemptions or regional arrangements could weaken some of the more basic commitments for telecomms liberalization.

The problem at issue could be phrased as follows: at what point does Music Net become the same as Music Television from an international trade services viewpoint, and how should an Internet-based music channel (not to be confused with a radio station) that allows for audience interactivity be understood in the context of telecommunications?

The preceding suggests that there will be a point of crisis where trade negotiators must decide the context and nomenclature under which real-time packet-switched services -- broadcasting or not -- are to be treated under GATS.

The aim of this paper will be to delineate the basic trade issues and principles that distinguish negotiations that cover telecommunications and broadcasting; highlight how the Internet networking model impacts each; speculate on some of the likely concerns and negotiating positions of major Internet service exporting nations and their likely markets; and hopefully sketch a rough guide to the intellectual issues that must be addressed for a successful general services round in the year 2000.

Internet Profit and Loss Account  Networld Collision or Collusion? 

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The Regional Geography of Internet Deployment

R & E Networking in CEE: The Gateway to European and Trans-Atlantic Integration

Free Access to Regional Internets: Principle Economical and Technical Issues   - Paper 376

Marc LOBELLE
Université Catholique de Louvain Belgium

Xavier BOGAERT
Centre de Diffusion des Technologies de l'Information  Belgium

Paul DEFOURNY
Charline Productions S.A.  Belgium

Local information access is what most people mainly need. This holds for all communications media: the telephone system, in which long-distance calls are the minority; newspapers, which produce local editions, etc. When the market penetration of the Internet matches that of the traditional communications media, we can expect a large proportion of its use to be for local information access.

On the other hand, most of the cost of Internet access is currently international, particularly in Europe and in developing countries, where the Internet was originally, and still largely is, mainly an information import market. The structure of the operating cost of Internet service providers shows this domination of long-distance communications (access to [inter]continental backbones).

Internet access to local information is currently as expensive as Internet access to information across the world. The principle of Free Access Regional Internets (Farinets) is to allow free access to regional information, even without Internet subscription, and to charge the user only for access to long-distance information. A Farinet is part of the Internet. Information on the Farinet is accessible from anywhere on the Internet. Users connecting to the Farinet can get information from anywhere on the Internet, but they are not charged if they only navigate within the Farinet.

The paper will explain in more detail the rationale for Farinets. Then, their economic feasibility along with our evaluation of the conditions of their success will be presented. The following section is devoted to the technical solutions used to minimize regional operating costs and to discriminate between regional and global access for charging purposes. The paper will conclude with a presentation of the experience of one Farinet service provider in Belgium and a comparison of approaches.

Technological Change, Telecommunications Deregulation, Telecommunications Economics, and Internet Globalization - Paper 395

Jean-Pierre AUFFRET
American University  USA

Jeffrey H. MATSUURA
NetGlobe Transit, Inc.  USA

The economic models of both the Internet and international telecommunications have been simultaneously changing, resulting in telecommunications global financial inequities, which in turn have led to inconsistent telecommunications growth. The paper examines the global changes and relationships between the Internet and international telecommunications markets and then highlights and compares service-provider competitions and customer Internet adoption for Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, and Africa. These comparisons are overlaid with recent technological changes and regulatory changes to show how economics, regulation, and technology are driving disparate uses of the Internet, resulting in comparative advantages for some countries. Projections are made of future regulation and technological changes and how Internet globalization will progress under different scenarios. A proposal is then made for a true market-based model for the Internet and for international telecommunications that will provide the greatest opportunity for a thriving, global system serving both developed and developing countries.

The Role of Internet Services in Regionalization - Paper 235

David RYLANDER
Göteborg University  Sweden

This paper deals with the changing contact pattern in the Baltic Sea region and the role Internet services play in the context of regionalization and globalization, including interregional, cross-border cooperation and competition.

  In order to deal with a growing interregional competition, structural changes, and high levels of unemployment, a growing local and regional policy intervention in telecommunications is leading to an increasing number of telematics projects with the objective to serve as demonstrations of adopted network services. Investments in information and communication infrastructure are made, and adopted network services are being created as tools to deal with structural problems like deindustrialization and unemployment. The creation of city and regional networks, together with a wide range of network services, is one of the results of the trend toward more entrepreneurial appearances of urban-regional governance in order to boost the economy, develop social and community applications of ICT, and develop collaborative networks among cities based on ICT applications. The broadest possibilities are offered by network services carried by computer networks like the Internet, where full interactivity is combined with the full variety of scope of communication. This kind of communication can be realized in real time or with time delay as preferred, and the content can be multiformed in text, sound, and pictures. These are some of the reasons why WWW services on the Internet are growing in use and diffuse rapidly. ICT provides opportunities for mobilizing resources like education, skills, and organizational and institutional capacity. We have to consider the communication culture within a region to understand the impact of interactive means of communication with a cross-border feature like Internet services. In societies marked by equality, dialogue, and transparency, the telephone deployed faster than in societies where the regimes prefer to have a monologue with the people. The same pattern is valid for Internet services.

In order to analyze the regionalization processes and the role of Internet services in regional development, I will focus on two subregions located on the Baltic coast. One is Blekinge Län in the southeast of Sweden and the other is Gdansk Wojewodzkie located in the north of Poland. These two regions have been chosen because of the existence of enhanced interregional relationships and extensive regional development programs in which telematics projects play a significant role. Both regions are on the periphery of Europe. For these reasons they offer good opportunities to study the role of Internet services in regionalization.

The assumption I make is that the capacity and quality of the information and communication infrastructure, together with a growing use of network services, result in an increase in communication activity, and that the communication culture therefore is also deepening in areas where access to ICT only recently has been possible. Closely related to this is the process of innovation diffusion. Innovations diffuse with different speed in different regions because of regional features such as differences in political and economic systems, traditions, and economic strength.

The role of Internet services in regionalization and regional development is in the first place a question of a growing group of innovations and applications that can be part of the solution to regain competitiveness. Regional and local actors hope that innovations in the area of ICT will result in new products and services that can help boost the regional economy. To some extent, this is already the case in some places. But Internet services have also another distinguishing feature: as communication channels that help spread information about themselves and other innovations and thus support innovation processes as well as diffusion processes. This makes Internet services essential for a learning economy and a learning region.

In order to achieve the purpose and accomplish the study, an overview and analysis of the role of ICT in economic development and deepened democratization respectively are carried out. Concepts are analyzed and the differences in infrastructural development in eastern, southern, and western Europe are visualized. This gives support for the assumption that we can expect differences in diffusion of network services between the two subregions serving as case studies. The analysis describes which differences occur, why they occur, and how they came to be. Collection of data has been carried out through studies of literature, articles in newspapers and journals, research reports, public statistics, regional development programs, and information from relevant organizations on the WWW. In addition, interviews have been carried out within the framework of the ongoing research project, "The Role of Network Services in Regional Development"; a few of them are referred to in this paper. The interviewees are representatives of local and regional authorities, enterprises, telecom operators, and regional development agencies. A questionnaire with open questions is used, to allow the respondents to discuss various aspects of regional development and associated problems according to their specific situation. The interviews took about one hour each to complete. A comparative analysis is carried out and conclusions are drawn.

Internet Deployment Worldwide: The New Superhighway Follows The Old Wires, Rails, and Roads - Paper 213

Eric ARNUM
Telecommunications Reports International Inc.  USA

Sergio CONTI
European Commission Directorate General XIII Belgium

This paper details the extent to which some of the most popular inventions of the 19th and 20th centuries have been diffused into the economies and populations of 100 countries. It includes a statistical analysis of per capita diffusion rates for Internet hosts, Web pages, telephones, televisions, electrical production, and paved roads and railways, comparing the world's new superhighway with the old infrastructures it replaces and/or complements.

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The Internet and Global Socio-Economic Development

Holes in the Net: The Internet and International Stratification  - Paper 058

Eszter HARGITTAI
Princeton University USA

This paper explores how the unequal international spread of the Internet can perpetuate existing inequalities among the world's nations. World-systems theory is used -- supplemented by some considerations of cultural aspects -- to show how nations with high-development-level status have the highest level of network connectivity while nations with low development status have the lowest level of connectivity. The analysis uses Gramsci's ideas about hegemony to show how the disproportionately large representation of one culture can dominate network information to that one culture's advantage. Granovetter's theory concerning the strength of weak ties is discussed to explain how the differential spread of this new technological advancement can affect a country's development level through the unequal distribution of information. Data on the Internet's international spread is presented and analyzed to demonstrate the unequal spread of the network in favor of a few nations currently already in advantageous positions. This information is relevant to understanding which nations are benefiting most from the network and how they can increase their powers through it.

The Most Regulated Service in Developing Countries - Paper 405

Rosa M. DELGADO
Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautique  Switzerland

The Internet, a fast growing computer network, is enabling millions of people to improve their standard of living by becoming better informed to be able to participate in decision-making. The thirst of information in developing nations is pushing decision makers towards identifying key sources of critical data and supplying these data via the Internet.

The Internet is a key to competition, deregulation, economic growth, social change and high productivity. One of the conditions for telecommunications liberalization leading to fully competitive telecom markets is that market entry should be subject to as few barriers as possible. On the other hand, it is clear that some level of regulation is necessary to prevent power abuse by incumbents and to ensure the provision of a universal service.

However, the main barriers to the Internet's expansion in developing countries remain the lack of reliable telecommunications infrastructure, competitive regulatory policies, affordable communications, adequate equipment and awareness of potential benefits.

The Internet and Global Development - Paper 263

Michel ELIE
Observatoire des Usages d'Internet France

The first part of the paper shows how network statistics can be used in order to stress some possible factors of growth of the Internet throughout the world. It examines the evolution of the geographical repartition of the Internet during the last two years on the basis of Network Wizards host distribution statistics.

The relation between the global distribution of Internet servers per unit of population and the level of development of each country as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita or by the human development indicator (HDI) is shown, as well as the correlation between the level of development of countries, measured by the per capita GDP, and the number of Internet servers per inhabitant, which is somewhat similar to its correlation with the number of main telecommunications lines per capita put in evidence by the ITU in the classic Gipp curve.

The influence of other possible factors (such as the practice of English, type of government, insularity, and commercial dynamism) on the Internet situation in the different countries of the world is considered. In the future, the impact of the Internet on global development will also depend highly on the evolution of the Internet technology and of the services provided.

  In the second part, another viewpoint, from the outside, is proposed to better understand the Internet relationship with global development based on the observation and study of the uses and practices of the Internet.

This implies collecting typical Internet uses which might differ from place to place, depending on culture and economics.

In conclusion, a worldwide network of observatories of the uses and practices of the Internet is strongly needed. The network would establish a set of basic public Internet statistics, observe its uses and practices, detect emerging ones, and facilitate the dissemination of uses which are profitable to the social, economic, and cultural development of the people. In France the "Observatoire des Usages d'Internet" is being started with this purpose.

This effort should be part of an international effort for more equity in the availability of the Internet tool worldwide, for the benefit of all, in order to keep developed and developing countries in the same planetary village.

Explaining Variations in Internet Deployment Across Developing Countries

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Cultural Aspects of Internet Globalisation 

Cultural Recognition and the Internet - Paper 121

Erik Chia-Yi LEE
National Taiwan University Taiwan

Ever since the advent of Internet, the issue of cultural recognition is already part of the cultural struggle for visibility on the global network. When English is taken as the net Latin by many netizens and predominates most of net communications, it is also time for people who take the Internet seriously to reconsider the potential as well as the limitation it possesses in realizing the recognition of different cultures. This paper will thus focus on the possibility of implementing cultural recognition on and by the Internet.

On the theoretical plane, the issues addressed will include the meaning of recognition regarding identity, the symbiosis of the global and the local, as well as the Internet's contribution to cultural productions for recognition. It is the present writer's purpose to argue for the Internet's potential in empowering the previously silenced, or the so-called "marginal," cultures with certain accessibility and visibility. The "band-width" of the Internet, so to speak, has to be wide enough to form a global network and, at the same time, to embrace the local without necessarily or inevitably totaling the many into the (only) one. In this respect, the Internet by means of its technological apparatus may be able to realize, though quite basically, the cultural ideal of difference-in-identity.

On the empirical part, the paper will use Chinese literary productions on the Internet to exemplify the issues addressed theoretically. The example is significant because it can be taken as a discursive locus into which converge issues like the global-local confrontations, the cultural contrast between the West and the non-West, as well as the Internet's influence on the cultural productions embodied in a language other than English. And the present writer would like to argue in this part for a more active role for the Internet in helping the local to achieve preliminary cultural recognition.

By integrating the theoretical with the empirical, I hope, the paper could make sense of the Internet as much more than a mere technological advancement, but rather as a positive force for better cultural recognition. From the very beginning, the Internet was never reality only; it was also man's dream, a dream for a better (or different) life and culture in the future. And this paper is an effort only to start to reflect on how real this dream could be and how near this future may be.

Global Cyberculture Reconsidered

Collaborative Dance, Interactive Music, Folklore Preservation: High-bandwidth Cultural Applications with Global Implications

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Overcoming Language Barriers on the Global Internet

Using the Internet in Arabic: Problems and Solutions - Paper 190

Badr H. AL-BADR
King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology Saudi Arabia

This paper addresses the support required for Arabic on the Internet in the fields of content, transport, client processing, and server processing. The problems in each category are discussed and the solutions are surveyed, with the new Internet protocols that facilitate using Arabic on the Internet being taken into consideration.

One of the major problems that faces the use of Arabic is the plurality of character sets. Transporting Arabic text over the Internet is problematic because of its non-ASCII character sets. Major among the client-processing issues is display of Arabic text.

The display features of Arabic text set it apart from other languages in several ways. These features necessitate specialized text-display algorithms. One of the most important server-processing issues for Arabic text is the problem of search and indexing. These operations are more involved in Arabic than in many other languages.

Solutions have started to emerge with browsers and mail programs building on new Internet standards such as Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) and HTML 4.0. The trend towards Unicode also helps the exchange of Arabic on the Internet. The paper concentrates on the issues of character sets, bidirectional display, Arabic e-mail, Arabic Web browsing, and search and indexing of Arabic text on the Internet.

Web Internationalization and Java Keyboard Input Methods - Paper 200

LEONG Kok Yong
LIU Hai
Oliver P. WU
National University of Singapore Singapore

Internationalization (I18N) has gained much momentum in recent years. Even the latest HTML 4.0 public draft has taken great strides towards the internationalization of document, with the goal of making the Web truly "World Wide."

This paper starts by describing the various developments in HTML standards that have made the Web a more global definition. It then points out the fact that the correct display and rendering of multilingual text is only half the scenario for I18N. Users not only wish to view I18N HTML documents, but they also want to create them! Keeping this fact in consideration, the paper then goes on to explain why Java has not completely fulfilled its role as an I18N development platform, especially in the area of native keyboard input methods.

To meet this shortcoming, this paper explains how the development of a Java Input Method Engine (JIME) fills the gap. It continues with a description of the design issues and implementation of the framework -- an applet, a Netscape Composer plug-in, and a Unicode-based multilingual text editor. It ends with an account of the ongoing development of JIME.

In conclusion, it would be ideal if Java had included full native keyboard input methods support in the core APIs. An early preview of JDK 1.2 sees an input method being introduced but perhaps only the next iteration of Java releases may offer full input method support regardless of the locale of the host platform.

Information Highways and the Francophone World: Current Situation and Strategies for the Future - Paper 068

Jocelyn NADEAU
Cécile LOINTIER
René MORIN
Marc-André DESCÔTEAUX
Centre International pour le Développement de l'Inforoute en Français Canada

At the Sommet de la Francophonie held in Cotonou (Benin) in 1995, heads of state from countries using French as a common language made a commitment "to promote a Francophone presence in new information and communication technologies" (Cotonou Declaration).

Accordingly, the Agence de la Francophonie (ACCT) asked the Centre International pour le Développement de l'Inforoute en Français (CIDIF) to prepare a status report on the development and use of the information highway in la Francophonie.

This document describes the current situation and outlines several future possibilities with respect to the development of the information highway in la Francophonie.