Hedge 202: Internet Governance with George Michaelson

10 November 2023

How is the Internet governed? Who sets the rules for the Internet, civil society, and government control? How much input should techies have, and how much should government control things? These are questions we don’t often ask, and yet are crucial to building and operating networks connected to the global Internet. George Michaelson joins Toms and Russ to talk about Internet governance—including contrary views of where things should be versus where they are.

On the ‘net: Two on AI

3 November 2023

I occasionally write over at Mind Matters on topics “other than technical.” Here are my two latest posts over there.

But what if you could steal something just as valuable as the contents of a lady’s handbag without anyone suspecting it and without impacting your user’s trust? What if you could take private information about millions of people, across the world, using that information to create what Shoshana Zuboff calls “behavioral surplus?” What if you could use that information to discover — and shape — people’s preferences without them even realizing it is happening? What if you could sell your user’s attention to the highest bidder?

While it seems evident that content created by a user prompt should not be copyrightable by the user, what about the designer and operator of the AI system? It might seem reasonable to infer the humans who create a system that, in turn, creates new “works” should be able to copyright those works.

On the ‘net: Model Based Thinking

3 November 2023

Running a little late on cross posting stuff from Packet Pushers … but I suppose better late than never. 🙂

Model-based thinking can help engineers understand protocols and networks at a fundamental level. My previous post on network models focused on the Four Things model, an alternative to the OSI model for understanding network transport. I’ll continue with the Four Things, this time with a focus on routing.

Hedge 201: Roundtable

2 November 2023

It’s time to gather round the hedge and discuss whatever Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ find interesting! In this episode we discuss business logic vulnerabilities, and how we often forget to think outside the box to understand the attack surfaces that matter. We also discuss upcoming network speed increases like Wi-Fi 7 and 800G Ethernet. Do we really need these speeds, or are we just getting caught up in a hype cycle?

Hedge 200: Automation with Ethan Banks

27 October 2023

We’ve been on a long streak of discussions about automation, why it works, why it isn’t working, and what the networking industry can do about it. For this episode, we’re joined by the indubitable Ethan Banks. f you don’t think there’s anything left to say, you’ve not yet listened to Ethan!

Hedge 199: Automation with Carl Buchmann

20 October 2023

Automation is a big topic–folks had a lot of feedback on our first couple of Hedge episodes on the topic. We return to automation in this episode of the Hedge with Carl Buchmann to discuss one effort at unifying automation with humble beginnings.

Hedge 198: Nephio with Wim Henderickx

13 October 2023

Automation is a bit of theme recently on the Hedge. In this episode we’re joined by Wim Henderickx to talk about the Linux Foundation Nephio project, which adapts Kubernetes management into a cloud native network management platform. This new take on managing networks is definitely discovering.

On the ‘net: Building Consensus in the IETF

7 October 2023

You cannot simply post a draft to the IETF repository and expect “someone, somewhere,” to take action. No one is going to read your draft. No one is going to send you comments. No one is going to call for your document to progress forward through the process.

On the ‘net: Mediocrates and LLMs

7 October 2023

Might I suggest a name for anyone building yet another Large Language Model (LLM)? Mediocrates would be a far more honest name than the ones big tech companies choose.

Hedge 197: Old Engineering Books (1)

5 October 2023

It’s time for the October Roundtable! This month Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ are reading quotes from an engineering book published in 1911 and reacting to them. How much has engineering changed? How much has engineering stayed the same? How well can advice from a hundred years ago apply to modern engineering problems and life? It turns out that, inspite of their faults, there is a lot of great wisdom in these old books.