Video, Cloud, Internet Mobility, Service Mash-ups, User Generated Content, Quantum , DNA, and Ambient computing add a bit of cybersecurity, and the list goes on!We will definitely have a lot to look for as we turn to 2009!I just read the December, 2008, IEEE Spectrum publication, an article entitled,”A Fairer, Faster Internet” by Bob Briscoe, Chief Researcher at BT’s Networks Research Centre also leads BT’s Future Communications Architecture programme, with expertise in engineering, economic and social control of computing networks.The paper articulates a flaw in the TCP protocol that in essence determines how individuals share the Internet’s capacity. Real time content flow and peer-to-peer file sharing over the Internet highlights the interest in this topic of congestion management and fairness. As the author points out,”On the Internet, what matters isn’t how many gigabytes you download but how many you download when everyone else is trying to do the same.” Briscoe terms this behavior as one’s”congestion volume measured in bytes.” I particularly liked the comparison of congestion volume to”carbon footprint” for the Internet. Briscoe and his colleagues examine the protocol itself , revealing congestion in such a way, that limits can be enforced. Briscoe and his colleagues term this function as”refeedback.” “Refeedback” is founded on the Explicit Congestion Notification packet marking technique. The computers at the edge of the network detect and manage the congestion, an essential Internet principle.So what is the desired result? To quote Briscoe, “œ The chosen mechanism may be refeedback, but I won’t be miffed if something better emerges, so long as it makes the Internet as simple and as fast.”Read more at: http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/bbriscoe/projects/refb/And oh by the way: Happy New Year 2009!