Internet access

About: Internet access is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 14994 publications have been published within this topic receiving 246896 citations. The topic is also known as: Internet access.

Ad Hoc Networking

Abstract: Ad hoc networks are to computing devices what Yahoo Personals are to single people: both help individuals communicate productively with strangers while maintaining security. Under the rules of ad hoc networking--which continue to evolve--your mobile phone can, when placed in proximity to your handheld address book, establish a little network on its own and enable data sharing between the two devices. In Ad Hoc Networking, Charles Perkins has compiled a series of technical papers about networking on the fly from a variety of laboratories and experts. The collection explains the latest thinking on how mobile devices can best discover, identify, and communicate with other devices in the vicinity. In this treatment, ad hoc networking covers a broad swath of situations. An ad hoc network might consist of several home-computing devices, plus a notebook computer that must exist on home and office networks without extra administrative work. Such a network might also need to exist when the people and equipment in normally unrelated military units need to work together in combat. Though the papers in this book are much more descriptive of protocols and algorithms than of their implementations, they aim individually and collectively at commercialization and popularization of mobile devices that make use of ad hoc networking. You'll enjoy this book if you're involved in researching or implementing ad hoc networking capabilities for mobile devices. --David Wall Topics covered: The state-of-the-art in protocols and algorithms to be used in ad hoc networks of mobile devices that move in and out of proximity to one another, to fixed resources like printers, and to Internet connectivity. Routing with Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), and other resource-discovery and routing protocols; the effects of ad hoc networking on bandwidth consumption; and battery life.

Second-Level Digital Divide: Differences in People's Online Skills

Abstract: Much of the existing literature on the digital divide - the differences between the "haves" and "have nots" regarding access to the Internet - limits its scope to a binary classification of technology use by only considering whether someone does or does not use the Internet. To remedy this shortcoming, in this paper I look at the differences in people's online skills. In order to measure online ability, I assigned search tasks to a random sample of Internet users from a suburban county in the United States. My findings suggest that people search for content in a myriad of ways and there is considerable difference in whether individuals are able to find various types of content on the Web and a large variance in how long it takes to complete online tasks. Age is negatively associated with one's level of Internet skill, experience with the technology is positively related to online skill, and differences in gender do little to explain the variance in the ability of different people to find content online.

CDMA/HDR: a bandwidth efficient high speed wireless data service for nomadic users

Abstract: This article presents an approach to providing very high-data-rate downstream Internet access by nomadic users within the current CDMA physical layer architecture. A means for considerably increasing the throughput by optimizing packet data protocols and by other network and coding techniques are presented and supported by simulations and laboratory measurements. The network architecture, based on Internet protocols adapted to the mobile environment, is described, followed by a discussion of economic considerations in comparison to cable and DSL services.

Digital Na(t)ives? Variation in Internet Skills and Uses among Members of the “Net Generation”*

Abstract: People who have grown up with digital media are often assumed to be universally savvy with information and communication technologies. Such assumptions are rarely grounded in empirical evidence, however. This article draws on unique data with information about a diverse group of young adults’ Internet uses and skills to suggest that even when controlling for Internet access and experiences, people differ in their online abilities and activities. Additionally, findings suggest that Internet know-how is not randomly distributed among the population, rather, higher levels of parental education, being a male, and being white or Asian American are associated with higher levels of Web-use skill. These user characteristics are also related to the extent to which young adults engage in diverse types of online activities. Moreover, skill itself is positively associated with types of uses. Overall, these findings suggest that even when controlling for basic Internet access, among a group of young adults, socioeconomic status is an important predictor of how people are incorporating the Web into their everyday lives with those from more privileged backgrounds using it in more informed ways for a larger number of activities.

A Measurement Study of a Large-Scale P2P IPTV System

Abstract: An emerging Internet application, IPTV, has the potential to flood Internet access and backbone ISPs with massive amounts of new traffic. Although many architectures are possible for IPTV video distribution, several mesh-pull P2P architectures have been successfully deployed on the Internet. In order to gain insights into mesh-pull P2P IPTV systems and the traffic loads they place on ISPs, we have undertaken an in-depth measurement study of one of the most popular IPTV systems, namely, PPLive. We have developed a dedicated PPLive crawler, which enables us to study the global characteristics of the mesh-pull PPLive system. We have also collected extensive packet traces for various different measurement scenarios, including both campus access networks and residential access networks. The measurement results obtained through these platforms bring important insights into P2P IPTV systems. Specifically, our results show the following. 1) P2P IPTV users have the similar viewing behaviors as regular TV users. 2) During its session, a peer exchanges video data dynamically with a large number of peers. 3) A small set of super peers act as video proxy and contribute significantly to video data uploading. 4) Users in the measured P2P IPTV system still suffer from long start-up delays and playback lags, ranging from several seconds to a couple of minutes. Insights obtained in this study will be valuable for the development and deployment of future P2P IPTV systems.