Deep Plum Research

Author: dpreed

  • Does the Internet need “governance”?

    It’s remarkable to me that there are now two powerful agencies fighting to “govern” the Internet – the ITU and the FCC. On any given day, it’s hard to tell whether they are on the same side or different sides. The ITU process apparently began in earnest with the World Summit for the Information Society…

  • The (word) Internet is dead. Long live Fiber!

    To me, this NYT article suggests that Susan Crawford “doesn’t get it” about the Internet, in a an amazingly extreme way (an “epic fail”). She focuses on a specific hardware technology (fiber), when in fact the whole point of the Internet was to focus on interoperability among ALL transport technologies and all end-to-end communications. She…

  • What The Internet Is, and Should Continue To Be

    Occasionally, people ask my perspective on the Internet, since I often object to confusing it with things like the telephone or Cable TV. Recently I composed a response that captures my perspective, as one of the participants in its genesis, and as an advocate for sustaining its fundamental initial design principles. I hope these words…

  • Regarding OAM based multiplexing of radio and light

    Bob Frankston suggested I post some of my recent remarks and references to Orbital Angular Momentum and its potential value in increasing the capacity of “spectrum” (the word I think misleads everyone, but that’s a subject I’ve talked about a lot). So I did put up a brief page here, with some references also. I…

  • What we “know” that t’aint so…. and insist on teaching to kids!

    What do we teach when we teach science in school? And really, why do we teach science that way? I’ve personally never been quite sure whether I’m more of a scientist, engineer, or mathematician. The public lumps these all together for some reason, perhaps because they all appear to deal with concepts that are expressed…

  • A response to Barbara van Schewick: code needs (only a little) help from the law

    Barbara van Schewick posted a really thoughtful analysis about how about application-specific vs. application-agnostic discrimination directly affects innovation, and looks at an actual example of a Silicon Valley startup. I think her points are right on, and I strongly support the rationale for resisting “application-specific” discrimination. In fact, Barbara’s point is the key to the…

  • Broadband vs. Open Internet, Open Internet scores a point

    FCC Chair Genachowski released a statement today to announce that he will put forward a proposal to his fellow commissioners “Preserving a Free and Open Internet”, and it has already been reported on the NYTimes online. It is possible to read Genachowski’s statement very, very carefully, and see a distinction between Internet and Broadband that…

  • A statement from various advocates for an Open Internet – why I signed on

    Today a relatively large and diverse group of advocates for the Open Internet filed a statement with the FCC under their notice of proposed rulemaking entitled Further Inquiry into Two Under-developed Issues in the Open Internet Proceeding. Here’s why I signed on early to support this statement, and why I hope you will support it,…

  • Lost posts, alas

    Due to a complex double failure, old posts were lost about 9 months ago, and while I’ve reconstructed a couple from network caches, I’ve given up on efforts to reconstruct old blog entries from remnants. However, I will be posting new material, largely focused on ideas I’m exploring outside of “work” (I’m now at SAP),…

  • What matters is not who

    One of my grad students (whom I won’t embarrass here) just introduced me to a new UROP student as a fount of Internet know-how by saying that I “invented UDP”.   This just seemed odd to me.  Perhaps because our culture is so oddly focused on “who” and ignoring the more important “what”.   People Magazine is…