Internets: The changing role of Internet Protocols in evolving broadband technologies
Date
2021-07
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Abstract
This study, drawing from Langdon Winner’s theory, which identifies the ways in which technology and infrastructure have the embedded politics of their designers, asks questions related to the power of the transport layer of the internet’s infrastructure. I use a mixed methods approach to study the transport layer including media history, primary document analysis, and utilize data derived from a network protocol reader called Wireshark. The findings show that traditional scholarly framings of the transport layer of the internet dubbed as a set of ‘dumb pipes,’ passive, and everything interesting happening at the internet’s edges (Lessig, 2006; Pickard & Berman, 2019), may soon be out of date following the introduction of ManyNets by Chinese corporation, Huawei from 2018-2020, through an introduction for a New Internet Protocol (New IP). I challenge the concept of ManyNets with ‘internets’ as a historic analysis of the development of the transport layer of internet infrastructure shows a pattern in this concept of multiple internets, opposed to the newly introduced ManyNets. As this study finds, developments in the transport layer have been changing due to the ways citizens use the internet (e.g., shifts from text-based platforms to live-streamed content). This study shows that the transport layer of the internet’s infrastructure is a growing politicized space in constant flux.
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standardization, infrastructure studies, telecommunications policy, ManyNets, 5G, New IP, User Datagram Protocol (UDP), internet fragmentation
Citation
Cramer, D. (2021). Internets: the changing role of internet protocols in evolving broadband technologies (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.