Fresh thinking
An interview with Dr Eduard Grasa, i2CAT Recursive InterNet Architecture (RINA) is a “return to fundamentals” redesign of data networking. (For an introduction, see my 2013 article “TCP/IP vs RINA”.) I interviewed Eduard Grasa of Fundacio i2CAT, a research centre in Barcelona. Eduard is a member of the European network research community who is actively leading cutting-edge research.
As I type these words, I am perched on one of the benches in the main thoroughfare of the cavernous venue hosting Mobile World Congress (MWC). Above me is a video screen warning me of the perils of the infamous local pickpockets, so I know I’m definitely in Barcelona!
My article on the misguided belief in a “Moore’s Law” for networks has been republished in The Mobile Century magazine, distributed by the Global Telecom Women’s Network.
Imagine a book on astronomy that didn’t mention planets, stars, galaxies, black holes, light or gravity. You’d find it a bit of an oddity, no? Well, that’s the situation we have in broadband policy: a body of literature that has collectively disconnected from the underlying physical reality.
Most of the articles I write are about general communications industry issues. For a change, I have put together a short description of the services that my company and my colleagues at Predictable Network Solutions Ltd (PNSol) jointly offer.
In the not too distant future, intelligent machines may join us in all of our voice conversations. The early steps towards re-imaging the phone call include technologies like call recording and speech recognition. The idea of hypervoice captures the maturing of this trend of computer-enriched voice communications.
A hot topic in telecoms at the moment is ‘software-defined networking’ (SDN). This term covers a range of technologies that put networks under the control of centralised management software. But what if SDN misses the point of why broadband networks exist in the first place?
For late May, the weather is unusually dull and overcast. But then again the year 2016 has been a dark one. You run your fingers back and forth over the grain of the hardwood boardroom table. A few tiny drops of your own sweat glisten in the grooves, reflecting back the fierce fluorescent lighting. The […]
“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein The words we use to describe telecoms networks often contain hidden metaphors and meanings that lead us into wrong thinking. Here are three examples.
Over the last few years I have come to appreciate how broadband networks are not widely understood, despite their ubiquity and importance. In particular, the relationship between a network’s basic operation and the resulting user experience is commonly misrepresented.
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