[governance] U.S. Congress send letter on ICANN

[Yehuda Katz]

Great article Milton, good job.

Ref:
http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2008/5/11/3685901.html
--

And in support of the Subcommittee of the U.S. Congress on Telecommunications
and the Internet concerns and underlying reasonings thier of, I am posting a
referance to a few sublime DARPA communications programs:

DARPA chief outlines expansive array of future networking projects
03/14/2008
Art. Ref.:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/26035 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's incredible array of futuristic
research projects - everything from advanced network and communications
implementations to powerful laser and unmanned aircraft development as well as
developing techniques to help military personnel survive myriad dangerous
situations - was on display in a report delivered to the House Armed Services
Committee today by the agency's director, Tony Tether.

While Tether's testimony focused on the extremely broad areas of research and
development under DARPA's purview, what follows are some of the hottest
networking-related programs the agency is working on. Tether said DARPA has
many networking programs to help achieve its goal of linking tactical and
strategic users through networks that can automatically and autonomously form,
maintain, and protect themselves. 

DARPA is developing technologies for wireless tactical net-centric warfare that
will enable reliable, mobile, secure, self-forming, ad hoc networks among the
various echelons that make the most efficient use of available spectrum, he
stated. Among them: 

* To connect different tactical ground, airborne and satellite communications
terminals together, DARPA's Network Centric Radio System (NCRS) (formerly
Future Combat Systems-Communications) program developed a mobile, self-healing
ad hoc network gateway approach that provides total radio/network compatibility
on-the-move in any terrain - including the urban environment. NCRS has built
interoperability into the network, rather than having to build it into each
radio, so any radio can now be interoperable with any other. Today, using NCRS,
previously incompatible tactical radios - military legacy, coalition, and first
responder - can talk seamlessly among themselves and to more modern systems,
including both military and commercial satellite systems. 

* DARPA's neXt Generation (XG) Communications program has been developing
technology to make ten times more spectrum available by taking advantage of
spectrum that has been assigned but is not being used at a particular point in
time. XG technology senses the spectrum environment in real time and then, in
response, dynamically uses spectrum across frequency, space, and time -
searching and then using spectrum that is not busy at the moment. XG is
designed to resist jamming and not interfere with other users. XG was
demonstrated to the House Armed Services Committee on January 29. 

* Building on DARPA's XG and adaptive networking technologies, the Wireless
Network after Next (WNaN) program is developing technology and architecture to
enable an affordable and rapidly deployable communication system for the
tactical edge. The low-cost, highly-capable radio developed by WNaN will
provide the military with the capability to communicate with every Soldier and
every device at all operational levels. WNaN networking technology will exploit
high-volume, commercial components and manufacturing processes so that DoD can
affordably and continuously evolve the capability over time. DARPA is working
to put this affordable, tactical communications technology into the hands of
the warfighter as soon as possible. 

* Looking to bridge strategic and tactical networks with high-speed,
high-capacity communications network, the Department's strategic, high-speed
fiber optic network, called the Global Information Grid (GIG), utilizes an
integrated network whose data rate is hundreds to thousands of megabits per
second. To reach the theater's deployed elements, data on the GIG must be
converted into a wireless format for reliable transmission to the various
elements within the theater. 

* DARPA's Optical and Radio Frequency Combined Link Experiment (ORCLE) program
demonstrated a means for relaying GIG information to operational assets at the
edge - even if some high data-rate links are degraded by atmospheric or
physical obstructions - by teaming high-speed free-space optical communications
with high-reliability radio communications. Now, building on this DARPA is
planning to design, build, and demonstrate a prototype tactical network
connecting ground-based and airborne elements. The agency's goal is to create a
high data rate backbone network via several airborne assets that nominally fly
at 25,000 feet and are separated out to ranges of 200 kilometers, which
provides GIG services to ground elements up to 50 kilometers away from any one
node. 

* All-optical technology will be essential for ultra-fast strategic networks in
the future. A foundation for this will be integrating multiple functions onto a
single chip for all-optical routers with highly scalable capacity and
throughput. DARPA's Data in the Optical Domain-Network (DOD-N) program has
demonstrated a monolithically integrated, compact time buffer with waveguide
delays up to 100 nanoseconds. Temporarily storing high-speed data is a critical
power-consuming bottleneck for electronic routers, and this first demonstration
of an all-optical buffer is a significant step toward overcoming the storage
limitations for future data routers.

* For several years DARPA has been developing a miniature atomic clock -
measuring approximately one cubic centimeter - to supply the timing signal
should the GPS signal be lost. The Chip-Scale Atomic Clock will let a network
node, such as a Soldier using a Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System
(SINCGARS), maintain synchronous operation with the network for several days
after loss of the GPS signal. The CSAC microsystem derives its timing stability
by coupling a miniature laser, with associated electronic circuits, to an
atomic transition in a reference gas. Recently DARPA demonstrated an innovative
application of an alternative laser-atomic state interrogation scheme that
allows more than an order-of-magnitude increase in the system's stability. This
new scheme should enable an accuracy equivalent to the loss of less than a
tenth of a second error in timing over 100 years of operation. DARPA currently
has plans to insert a CSAC into a SINCGARS radio to demonstrate that it can
provide a time signal if GPS is not available, Tether said. 

* Computer worms that have never been seen before (zero-day worms) pose a
specific threat to military networks because they have been shown to exploit
thousands of computers using previously unknown network vulnerabilities in
seconds. The Dynamic Quarantine of Computer-Based Worm Attacks program has been
developing dynamic quarantine defenses for U.S. military networks against
large-scale malicious code attacks, such as computer-based worms, by creating
an integrated system that automatically detects and responds to worm-based
attacks against military networks, provides advanced warning to other DoD
enterprise networks, studies and determines the worm's propagation and
epidemiology, and immunizes the network automatically from these worms. The
final system will quickly quarantine zero-day worms to limit the number of
machines affected, as well as restore the infected machines to an
uncontaminated state in minutes, rather than hours and days, which is today's
state of the art. 

* The High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program is the Federal
Government's flagship program in supercomputing. HPCS is pursuing the research,
development and demonstration of economically viable, high productivity
supercomputing systems for national security and industrial users. Phase III of
the High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program, encompassing design,
development, and prototype demonstration, has been underway for a little more
than a year. The program will culminate in a prototype demonstration at the end
of 2010. 

* DARPA's "Slow Light" program is exploiting the quantum properties of
materials to control the speed of light and slow it to a tiny fraction of its
normal speed. Such tunable control will allow storing and processing of optical
information. This past year, the program demonstrated that slow light materials
can slow, stop, and store two-dimensional images. The ability to slow, store
and switch entire images before they are projected onto film or electronic
detectors could lead to intriguing methods of capturing images, and further
opens the door to novel approaches for ultrahigh- speed image processing. One
example of a material that exploits quantum effects is superconductors, which
conduct electricity with no energy loss due to electrical resistance.

* The Optical Lattice Emulator (OLE) program will construct a scaled artificial
material - an emulator - whose mathematical and physical behavior is governed
by the same underlying quantum mechanics as the superconductors of interest.
This emulator will use approximately 10 billion ultra-cold atoms held in a
lattice formed by laser beams. Controlling the states of the atoms in the
optical lattice will help DARPA understand properties directly related to the
desired behaviors of real materials. 

Tether said the need for DARPA's mission - to prevent the technological
surprise of the United States and create it for its adversaries by keeping our
military on the technological cutting edge - remains the agency's operating
principal.
---

-30-
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance