Elijah, As I get deeper into this problem, I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that the data I am after could only be generated at a great expense. Primetrica comes the closest, but as I say, their datasets don't provide all data points necessary for network analysis i.e. square-matrix of the form ABCD A -yyy B y-yy C yy-y D yyy- where y is a measure of data flow from city in row i to city in column j. Too bad, because data like this could really open up some interesting problems. Thanks for your observations, Justin Message: 15 Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 10:29:28 -0500 (CDT) From: elijah wright <elw@stderr.org> To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Data Reply-To: air-l@aoir.org
I am interested in hearing any thoughts you have on a data problem that I have, that I am sure many of you have approached, and which is, of course, a result of the structure of the Internet itself. In my ideal world, I would be able to build a relational database of data traffic between the largest cities worldwide.
Social problem the first - the information you'd most like to have is closely guarded by the involved companies. They keep it secret so that other companies can't deduce all of their peering agreements and thereby figure out how best to 'take advantage' of network position for profit. This is a pretty common problem for a decentralized network, in my experience.
The data I have found shows gross data traffic between nodes, which includes traffic originated in third-party cities and destined for fourth-party cities, for example, and which does not provide an estimate of the traffic originated in 3 and destined for 4. This means that the data doesn't relate every node in the city system to every other in terms of network traffic inbound and outbound.
right - the nodes which are most easily measured/evaluated (the network hubs) don't actually act as termination points for a whole lot of traffic. they're just points in the system as a whole, with peers that serve endpoints but are not backbone nodes themselves.
Have you approached this problem? Do you have any thoughts on how currently available data can be patched for network analysis, or how such a relational database could be built in the future?
a graph-like structure is good for this, IMHO. something like this: sourcenode destnode measurement eval.date sourcenode destnode measurement eval.date sourcenode destnode measurement eval.date ad nauseum. you may need some more values, depending on what it is that you're wanting to do. but that general form (spreadsheet-like) is one of the simpler structures to store in a database, and reformatting those tables into something that tools like UCINet or Pajek can display is not such a terrible task. elijah _____________________________________ Justin Rosenthal MA Candidate - Social Science University of Chicago jrr@uchicago.edu
Ok, not to jump in with an irrelevant conversation, but when I talked to a former CIO of a big university, he pointed out that the strength of internet-2 was in peering, that the biggest uni's who join the I2 network will be factoring in a peering factor when their universities are charged for internet access. So hypothetical only, charges would disappear and couldn't be tracked, although traffic would of course not disappear (isn't that the truth). Denise ===== Denise N. Rall, PhD student, Env. Science & Mgmt, Southern Cross Uni, Marker for Protected Area Management, BIO00244 Lismore, NSW, 2480 Australia Phone +61-2-6624-8627 Fax +61-2-6624-8637 Office (Tuesdays) (02) 6620 3577 Mob 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/index.html __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/
Ok, not to jump in with an irrelevant conversation, but when I talked to a former CIO of a big university, he pointed out that the strength of internet-2 was in peering, that the biggest uni's who join the I2 network will be factoring in a peering factor when their universities are charged for internet access.
regular old ISPs do exactly the same thing - to some extent, the university is just another ISP which can peer with whatever will lower its total costs for bandwidth and data line leases. elijah
So hypothetical only, charges would disappear and couldn't be tracked, although traffic would of course not disappear (isn't that the truth).
Denise
The Observatory for the CiberSociety calls for participation in the SECOND ONLINE CONGRESS. From an open and committed multidisciplinary perspective the Congress will focus on the concept of CiberSociety as its object of study. The Congress invites participants to reflect on the following question: Towards what knowledge society? The Congress will take place in cyberspace on November 2-14, 2004. You can get al the information from the web: http://www.cibersociedad.net/congres2004 Observatory for the CiberSociety: www.cibersociedad.net Contact: <mailto:congres@cibersociedad.net>congres@cibersociedad.net Date: 2-14/XI/2004 Place: ONLINE Call for groups: 11.06.2004: Deadline for the candidate's proposal acceptance of work groups. Call for papers: Start at 21.06.2004 --------------------------- EDITORIAL LINE ---------------------------- Towards what knowledge society? content areas One of the consequences the popularisation of information and communication technologies brought with it is the creation, during the last decade, of many neologisms and new expressions, which penetrated the language of academia, politics and society. The often announced new social reality has come to, in many different ways, refer to itself, multiplying the sensation of change possibly even beyond change as such. Probably one of the most ambitious and utopian notions, which we have come across in recent years, is the concept of Knowledge Society. The discourse behind this concept, more wish-full thinking than analytical or real, presupposes that the new (?) highly technified society will result in a new way of production and evolved social life. In accordance with that type of discourse, once we left behind the industrial society with the smoky factories and the post-industrial society of consume and mass media, we will dawn into a new era based on the synergetic exchange of knowledge. Leaving behind the more or less utopian proposition of that idea, it is true that we are dealing with an open concept, which can be discussed and changed on which we want to base our central and transversal debate of this congress. The Congress's first objective is to question and analyse under critical perspectives that discourse. Discover its genesis, its development and implications for the different spheres of our social reality, that is, in politics, in economics and in our society. ¿Does the notion of Knowledge Society respond to an analysis of our social reality, is it a political tool or just another empty concept in the hands of the establishment? The implications for the political sphere start, in the first place, with the public policies to be developed amongst which we have to highlight the application and introduction of TIC in Education or in the Public Administration, regulation of the new socio-technical space, the fight against the digital divide or the promotion of new productive activities based on this sector, amongst many others. A new space for political participation is opened up with the introduction of new technologies in this sphere with concepts like digital or electronic democracy. Nevertheless, considerations about a citizen's more active and participatory role have to be contrasted with the more and more efficient social control mechanisms and threats to our intimacy, which, maybe lead us towards a digital panopticum. Local, regional, state and international institutions are called not only to act in these areas, but also to think about their discourses and policies. We hope that this forum makes it happen. The appearance of a new paradigm- or the breaking up of the old one- is determining today's economy. The economic globalisation processes and internationalisation of finances, the industrial outsourcing, new productive methods or new organisational business models, as well as the appearance of new tools for knowledge management are just a few of the characteristics of this new so-called knowledge economy. However, is there really anything substantially new in these tendencies? Up to what point is it little more than a restrengthening of the old capitalism, brought now to a macro-corporation, planetary scale and (finally) freed of any state and union control mechanism under which they evolved? Is it possible or desirable to regain that control? But how? What role would in these processes the technologies of information and communication play? There is a need and urgency to analyse exhaustively what there is behind these innovations, concepts and ideas. Thirdly, the social aspect of recent events, for example, phenomena of spontaneous/instantaneous organisation of the so called civilians in the context of 11-S or of 11-M make it an up-to-date topic of social apportion of the new technologies. Situations like these serve as examples for all those that hope/d and predict/ed that we are/were not facing a mere (other) technological revolution but facing a revolution of the social technologies. The spectacularity and notoriousness of these social manifestations only confirm and spell out what was the footprint of the social sciences in the nineties, when new processes of social framing, creation and negotiation of individual and collective identities, establishing new processes and parameters in our social relations mediated by digital technologies, etc. And even in spite of these new notoriousness, the debate is kept open about up to what point are these social dynamics new or not, if they were or not more or less latent in our own society in which we live, whether there are or not enough symptoms to diagnose that we are at the dawn, not only of an economic production mode or a new model of dealing with politics/administration, but also facing a new social model. The so-called (new) knowledge society, is it really a new society? Maybe a new ideology? Or just a new catchword? This chain of questions should be the leitmotif of this II Online Congress of the Observatory for the CiberSociety. A succession of open questions and of uncertain answers, which the more we ask them and looked at from a critical constructive and independent few point less will they fall victim under the inertia. The debate about the Knowledge Society is the excuse and the axis from where to start (or come back to) to think and discuss about the model of our society Technified, digitalized, globalised and more unequal than ever The blurred question mark with which we identify this call wants to become a provocation to reflection. The CiberSociety Observatory thus invites you to debate this topic from a perspective which is multidisciplinary, critical and open, specialised or horizontal, in a format which proofed its fertility at the first edition of the congress towards the end of summer 2002. In this occasion our objective is to promote reflections by all social sectors, about the issue of towards what model of technological society do we want, or are we or do we want to advance. Document prepared by the Scientific Committee of the 2nd Online Congress of the Observatory for the CyberSociety, April of 2004 Fernando Garrido Coordinador Ejecutivo II Congreso Online del Observatorio para la CiberSociedad www.cibersociedad.net/congreso2004
participants (4)
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Denise N. Rall -
elijah wright -
Fernando Garrido - Observatorio de la Cibersociedad -
Justin Rosenthal