FIT 2017 Panel Discussion
Panel Slides
Many of the products offered by IT industries (e.g., Apple, Google, Facebook, Spotify, Huawei, etc) rely on services provided to them by the "Internet transport layer". However, many of the services offered by transport protocols cannot be easily realized because over the course of years, the transport layer itself has become ossified. Not much has changed since the Berkley sockets API was first designed.
Recent interest has appeared in finding solutions to enable transport evolution and researchers are starting to explore new approaches that can address the ossification problem. This work has motivated standardisation activities, such as the IETF Transport Services (TAPS) working group, which is starting to define new standards documents.
The session will start with a brief overview of the main challenges arising from the ossification problem, and what are the challenges facing Internet transports as user patterns and network technologies evolve. Are new approaches likely to be compatible and interoperable with each other as they are being deployed across the Internet and access links with widely varying characteristics? Are there transition paths that can lead to long-term evolution of Internet transports?
The panel comprises people with experience in standardisation, academia and industry:
Prof. Gorry Fairhurst (University of Aberdeen) (Panel Moderator)
Gorry Fairhurst will chair the session. He is a Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of Aberdeen. His current research include performance evaluation and protocol design, Internet transport architecture, rural broadband access and satellite networking. He has 20 years experience working as an Internet Engineer, and is committed to open Internet standards and chairs the IETF’s Transport and Services Working Group (TSVWG).
Assoc. Prof. Colin Perkins (University of Glasgow)
Colin Perkins is a senior lecturer (associate professor) at the University of Glasgow. His research interests are on Internet transport protocols, APIs, and performance, in particular adaptive transport for real-time and interactive multimedia applications. He’s long been involved in Internet standards, and is currently editor of the WebRTC media transport specification, and co-chair of the IETF’s real-time media congestion avoidance techniques working group.
Dr. Dirk Kutscher (Chief Technical Officer, Huawei)
Dirk Kutscher is Chief Technical Officer for Virtual Networking and IP at Huawei’s German Research Centre in Munich, after previously working as the Chief Researcher for Networking at NEC Laboratories Europe. His research includes Internet technologies, cloud computing, virtualisation, and networking and network architecture. Topics close to his heart include evolving the Internet, embracing computer science, data centricity, distributed computing, programmability and automation.