Colloquia at City University Hong Kong, November 16, 2009
The Internet has grown from a medium for researching networking protocols, through an academic publication network, to an ecommerce platform, to becoming today’s key medium for people to communicate. As the uses of the Internet have evolved, the requirements for availability have dramatically changed. At the same time, one of the hallmarks of the Internet is its ability to be a basis for applications not ever envisioned by the network engineers who developed the Internet technology.
There are many technical and governance issues facing the Internet of today. How we address these issues will have significant impact on how the Internet grows in the future. This talk will describe the evolution of the Internet from a research network to critical infrastructure. Then the talk will cover some results of the Internet Society’s Internet Futures Scenarios research. The largest part of the talk will be devoted to discussing open research topics and promising lines of inquiry.