book – ISOC LIVE NOTICEBOARD

1:36 am on May 1, 2013 · book (4), brian carpenter (1), internet history (22), Vint Cerf (106)

NEW BOOK: Network Geeks: How They Built the Internet – Brian E. Carpenter #internethistory

May 1, 2013 by isoc-ny

New Zealander Brian E. Carpenter is a former Chair of the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees (2000-2002). He led the networking group at CERN during the period that Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web. He is a leading figure in the history and work of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). In other words he’s one of those many fathers of the Internet, one who has worked diligently over the years to make it what is today. He has now authored a book describing that process – Network Geeks – How They Built the Internet (Springer, 2013).

From the blurb:

Part history, part memoir and part cultural study, Network Geeks charts the creation of the Internet and the establishment of the Internet Engineering Task Force, from the viewpoint of a self-proclaimed geek who witnessed these developments first-hand. With boundless enthusiasm and abundant humour, Brian Carpenter leads the reader on a journey from post-war Britain to post-millennium New Zealand, describing how the Internet grew into today’s ubiquitous, global network, including the genesis of the World-Wide Web in the hotbeds of a particle collider at CERN. Illuminating the science and technology behind the apparent “magic trick” of the Internet, Network Geeks opens a window into the initially bewildering world of the Internet engineering geek. After reading this book, you may wish to join this world yourself

And Vint Cerf himself says:

This is a geek page-turner! I learned much about the European side of the Internet’s history that I did not know in detail and a lot about Brian himself, too. I don’t know how he remembered so much in detail!

The book is available in paperback or kindle editions from AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/Network-Geeks-They-Built-Internet/dp/1447150244/

8:59 pm on July 23, 2010 · book (4), MIT (2), networks (8), policy (40), Van Schewick (1)

New book: Internet Architecture and Innovation – says network management threatens economy / society

July 23, 2010 by isoc-ny

In her new book Internet Architecture and Innovation, Barbara van Schewick explores the economic consequences of Internet architecture, offering a detailed analysis of how it affects the economic environment for innovation.

Van Schewick describes the design principles on which the Internet’s original architecture was based—modularity, layering, and the end-to-end arguments—and shows how they shaped the original architecture. She analyzes in detail how the original architecture affected innovation—in particular, the development of new applications—and how changing the architecture would affect this kind of innovation.

Van Schewick concludes that the original architecture of the Internet fostered application innovation. Current changes that deviate from the Internet’s original design principles reduce the amount and quality of application innovation, limit users’ ability to use the Internet as they see fit, and threaten the Internet’s ability to realize its economic, social, cultural, and political potential. If left to themselves, network providers will continue to change the internal structure of the Internet in ways that are good for them but not necessarily for the rest of us. Government intervention may be needed to save the social benefits associated with the Internet’s original design principles.

* Table of Contents
* Sample chapter
* Google preview