Where to start... Simon Lyall wrote:
I fully acknowledge the huge contribution made by the Universities in getting the Internet started in New Zealand etc. However following the establishment of the commercial Internet providers from the mid 1990s (and most of those InternetNZ Fellows moving to the commercial sector) the Universities have had little real involvement in the New Zealand Internet for a good 10 years.
The New Zealand Internet doesn't start and stop with where you can buy your home dialup or broadband connection. For the most part Universities don't care about any of that. To expect universities to have had a significant involvement in making your Internet cheaper or faster is to miss where their potential lies. The Universities didn't build that first link to Hawaii so that hundreds of NZ'ers could all surf pr0n and play WOW at home. They did it because it was aligned to where their needs, research and strategic directions were. They didn't ask "How much money could this make" nor did they ask "How popular do you think this will be". In fact I can remember a certain network administrator actively discouraging more people from connecting to the Internet. The advances that academia provide are never as clear cut as 'cheaper/faster/more pr0n', they are almost always incremental improvements in lateral directions whose benefit is almost never realised until years later. For example. Here are some research areas from some of the NZ Universities. They are all current areas of research or published papers. See if you can spot how they have enhanced your Internet today or will in the future. Auckland - http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/publications/ "Method of introducing digital signature into software" "Experiences Generating Web-based User Interfaces for Diagramming Tools "Tamper-proofing watermarked computer programs" "Improving QoS for Peer-to-Peer Applications through Adaptation" "Three Integration Methods for a Component-based NetPay Vendor System" Waikato - http://wand.cs.waikato.ac.nz/projectDetail.php?id=1 "Topology Management in Rooftop Wireless Networks" "Quality of Service for Wireless Links" "Fx/NGI Network" "DAG Passive Measurement of Network links" Massey - http://www-ist.massey.ac.nz/Projects/projects.asp?ID=15 "Patterns for evaluation of multimedia systems on the web" "DIY Supercomputer: Infrastructure and Programming" "TDDP (Telephone directory download protocol)" "The $10 computer" http://www.massey.ac.nz/~odiegel/smarthouse/index.html VUW - http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/research/dsrg/ "Using Honeynets for Intrusion Protection Systems" "Resource management in wireless networks" "Simulation of Next Generation Networks" "Internet Background Radiation" "Secure Resource Auctions" "Next Generation Internet" "Dependability - distributed exception handling for webservices" Canterbury - http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/research/RG/i-net_security/papers.htm http://www.elec.canterbury.ac.nz/research/Networking/publications.shtml "A Taxonomy of Network and Computer Attacks Computers and Security" "An Analysis of the Tools used for the Generation and Prevention of Spam, Computers and Security" "Reactive Firewalls - A New Technique" "Real-time Carrier Network Traffic Measurement, Visualisation and Topology Modelling" "Improved Congestion Control with Hybrid RED" "FreezeTCP with Timestamps for Fast Packet Loss Recovery after Disconnections" Otago - http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/research/systems/projects.html "Power Conservation in Network Devices" "CLOSE - CLuster Operating System & Environment" "Embedded Systems - integration of GPS and inertia measurement to track moving objects like mountain bikes" These are just a few examples of the current areas of research that NZ Universities are working on. There is more than enough there for ANY Network admin at an ISP to find something that they can use to enhance the NZ Internet. Network providers in NZ seem only interested in how to make things faster and cheaper. You should all take a few things from that list and look how to make the Internet SMARTER!
Issues of Policy and Society have been taken over by InternetNZ [1] and the infrastructure has degraded to a point where a couple of years ago there was a speaker at NZNOG from Waikato University who was paying $2/Megabyte for traffic for his videoconferencing [2] work.
Issues of Policy and Society were never the domain of the Universities anyway.
Read Andy's post that I was following up to about how a push from VUW, Massey and Waikato got the others into building a National network and how perhaps "we need a similar event to give the REANNZ folk a kick up the backside!". He obviously feels something is lacking there.
Yes - The Universities have always been in a position where they were working on improving networking. The problem has been that the rest of the industry has spent far too long with it's head shoved up its pockets. Finally the Universities have had to go out and redesign what they need because shock horror, a $49 per month adsl connection doesn't suit them. If you're going to blame anyone for sitting on their hands for 10 years, blame the ISPs. At least the Universities have been doing something. The ISPs have just been doing the minimum to stop their customers from leaving while lining their pockets.
My argument is that the Internet was off the Universities' radar for 10 years and the fact that REANNZ is getting built now rather than 10 years ago indicates more a wish to fill the "Connected to high speed academic Network" tick box on the prospectus rather than any real interest.
Nope - not at all. Thats never been the case. Look at the ongoing work mentioned above. Waikato for example has just chosen to use the Internet in the US for it's AMP work in collaboration with NLANR. The Internet in NZ hasn't kept pace with where the Universities have been going. Don't blame them if the networks you've built are not state of the art.
Please note that I am not saying that plenty of research and work isn't done at Universities on things that are 5 or 15 years away. However I believe that NZ Universities have chosen to specialize in other areas (bio science mostly) and thus are punching below their weight in the Internet, IT and related fields. Which is a shame because before the mid-90s they *were* relatively advanced.
You only need to look at the previous list to see that they are still holding their own when it comes to Internet and IT. The truth of the matter is that they don't come and advertise it to your door with people in a blue van with names like Battle Monkey. If you'd bothered to look, like I just did, you'll see that they are doing plenty of research in fields that we could all benefit from.
[1] - Look at it this way, when the government talks about a change to social welfare spending you hear a string of academics providing opinion and background on it. How many have you heard talking about local loop unbundling and similar topics this year?
Thats the media. People understand what a change in social welfare spending means and therefore it makes a good news spot. The general public has no idea what LLU means so the media never bothered to ask for any academic opinion. I've asked around and there is plenty of academic opinion on this. Don't confuse the biased coverage by the media with a lack of expertise in a field. In short. If you are an ISP/NSP/ASP/etc and you didn't think that the universities were doing anything which you could benefit from, then think again. Have a look at the list I included. Go to the links what I pasted, and see if you can find something that you are interested in. Mail the author or department head and have a chat. For the most part these people are passionate about their work and more than happy to get involved and help you out. Universities have been active in the area for the last 10, 15 even 20 years, it's just that the majority of people have spent that time asking "How will it make my home Internet cheaper?". It hardly ever will If you want to start asking... "How will it make my home Internet BETTER?" Then the Universities have PLENTY of answers for you. Oh and Beer. I don't think anyone will argue that Universities have been studying Beer for the last 10 years, and therefore this post is on topic. =P Dean