Internet evolution and misleading networking myths

Andrew Odlyzko, University of Minnesota

The evolution of the Internet will depend heavily on the interaction between what users want and what technology can deliver. Unfortunately the networking community continues to be guided by a collection of misleading dogmas that impede proper direction of research, development, and deployment. The roles of voice communication, of content, and of streaming real-time transmission versus file transfers are widely misunderstood, which leads to plans that are likely to be seriously flawed.

Speaker Biography

Andrew Odlyzko is a Professor in the School of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota. He is engaged in a variety of projects, from mathematics to security and Internet traffic monitoring. His main task currently is to write a book that compares the Internet bubble to the British Railway Mania of the 1840s, and explores the implications for future of technology diffusion. Between 2001 and 2008, he also was at various times the founding director of the interdisciplinary Digital Technology Center, Interim Director of the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, Assistant Vice President for Research, and held an ADC Professorship, all at the University of Minnesota. Before moving to Minneapolis in 2001, he devoted 26 years to research and research management at Bell Telephone Laboratories, AT&T Bell Labs, and AT&T Labs, as that organization evolved and changed its name. He has written over 150 technical papers in computational complexity, cryptography, number theory, combinatorics, coding theory, analysis, probability theory, and related fields, and has three patents. He has an honorary doctorate from Univ. Marne la Vallee and serves on editorial boards of over 20 technical journals, as well as on several advisory and supervisory bodies.