Jari Arkko

Designing a new generation mobile system is a very complicated engineering task involving thousands of researchers and developers. Their creativity comes up with novel concepts and they work on designing, testing, agreeing upon and building a truly best-in-class end-to-end cellular system. There really is nothing like it. Today, although we’re at the beginning of this journey with 6G, the volume and breadth of research activity has already been substantial.

Co-authored by Jari Arkko, Alissa Cooper, Tommy Pauly, and Colin Perkins As we approach four months since the WHO declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic, and with lockdowns and other restrictions continuing in much of the world, it is worth reflecting on how the Internet has coped with the changes in its use, and on what lessons we can learn from these for the future of the network. The people and companies that build and operate the Internet are always planning for more growth in Internet traffic.

Many of us have held a vision of the Internet as the ultimate distributed platform that allows communication, the provision of services, and competition from any corner of the world. But as the Internet has matured, it seems to have fed the creation of large, centralized entities that provide most Internet services. The most visible aspects of this involve well-recognized Internet services, but it is important to recognize that the Internet is a complex ecosystem.