LCN 2005

Keynote Presentations



Wednesday, 16 November 2005

Computer Networking for an Embedded Systems World

David Skellern

CEO
National ICT Australia

We may not know exactly what the future will look like but there is little doubt that information and communications technology will be increasingly embedded in devices and environments of all kinds. We see this trend all around us already, in entertainment systems, cameras, phones, games, audio devices, office equipment, homes and cars.

Increasingly we find that devices use wireless network interfaces that increase their convenience and functionality. Indeed it can be anticipated that users will expect to have wireless connectivity in all portable devices and to derive progressively more utility from them as a result of distributed interaction. User preferences will more strongly drive the systems of tomorrow than they do today.

We continue to be able to build increasingly more processing power and analog functionality with mainstream Silicon CMOS. Complete 802.11 a,b &g WLAN networking interfaces, including full PHY and MAC layers and more, can be integrated on a single chip. Even millimetrewave CMOS technolgies have left the research labs and found theirn way into commercial efforts to build 60GHz CMOS RF chips, opening the way for much higher speed links.

What does all this mean for computer networking? Certainly it means that there is still much opportunity in the area of wireless networking! It seems obvious that every personal connection to a network will be wireless one day. But there is a wider issue relating to the architecture of the embedded systems we build today, which are essentially computer-oriented architectures. We are already seeing new architectures emerge in wireless sensor networks. Will tomorrow's systems need a more communications oriented architecture? What will that look like?

About the Speaker: Dr David Skellern is one of Australia’s most successful ICT entrepreneurs, with a strong background in research, education and industry. In 1997 he co-founded the Radiata group of companies in Australia and the USA, established to commercialise the results of the WLAN research project that he led at Macquarie University, in collaboration with CSIRO. Radiata demonstrated the world’s first chip-set implementation of the 54 Mbit/s IEEE 802.11a High-Speed WLAN standard. Radiata was acquired by Cisco Systems, Inc. in 2001 and Dr Skellern subsequently moved to the United States as Technology Director of Cisco’s Wireless Networking Business Unit. He joined NICTA in 2005.


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Thursday, 17 November 2005

The Evolution of Internet Architecture

Geoff Huston

Senior Internet Researcher
Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC)
Australia

Any technology that enjoys widespread deployment also encounters significant pressure to change and evolve. This is particularly the case in the Internet where the base architecture is sufficiently generic to be able to accommodate a very broad diversity of layered edge-to-edge services. How have we reacted to these pressures for evolution in the Internet architecture? What aspects of the architecture is enduring and what is subject to further evolution?

About the Speaker: GEOFF HUSTON holds a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. from the Australian National University. He has been closely involved with the development of the Internet for many years, particularly within Australia, where he was responsible for the initial build of the Internet within the Australian academic and research sector. He is author of a number of Internet books on QoS, the ISP industry and Service Performance, and is currently the Senior Internet Researcher at APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry serving the Asia Pacific region. He has served as executive Director of the Internet Architecture Board and as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society.


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