Session Date/Time: 06 Nov 2024 09:30

gaia

Summary

The GAIA session at IETF 121 featured three presentations focusing on internet access, history, and resilience, especially in underserved regions. Jim Cowie discussed the Internet History Initiative, aiming to preserve internet development data. Mesh++ presented their mesh networking solution for connecting areas with limited infrastructure. Theo summarized observations of cable cuts in Africa and their impact on service availability and internet performance.

Key Discussion Points

Internet History Initiative (Jim Cowie):
- Preserving data and history of internet development is crucial for future innovation.
- Importance of collecting diverse data sets including routing tables, performance measurements, oral histories and datatracker information.
- Challenges of geographic bias in measurement data and the need for better representation of the Global South.
- The historical context of decisions like the choice of TCP/IP over OSI's CLNP and its long-term consequences.
Mesh++ (Tamara Hamden & Danny):
- Mesh networking solutions for providing internet access in areas with limited traditional infrastructure.
- The S6 product: solar-powered, Wi-Fi 6 device designed for easy deployment and scalability in community networks.
- Applications of Mesh++ in disaster response, education, and community connectivity across various regions.
- Automated management system to simplify network operation for non-technical users.
Severing Cables (Theo):
- Impact of submarine and terrestrial cable cuts on internet service availability, especially in Africa.
- Cable cuts lead to a wider impact on essential services and cause major disruptions in the daily lives of local residents.
- The importance of capacity planning, infrastructure improvements, and capacity planning to reduce the time for service restoration.
- The role of DNS resolution, cloud DNS resolvers, and content localization in overall internet performance and resilience.
- Analysis of outages: Government ordered shutdowns vs cable cuts.

Decisions and Action Items

Action Item: Theo to engage with Emil at Ripe for partnership and probes.
Action Item: Share info with Theo about terrestrial fiber.
Action Item: Participants encouraged to provide information on endangered data sets to Jim Cowie.
Decision: Encourage use of the GAIA mailing list for call for info and data.

Next Steps

Continue data collection efforts regarding cable cuts and their impact on internet performance.
Explore opportunities for deploying probes in underserved regions to improve measurement data.
Further research on the role of DNS and content localization in internet resilience.
Continue collecting history carefully and then passing it off to professionals who do history so that they can come to multiple conclusions about what this all meant.