The “Barriers for Internet Access of Services (Bias)” workshop was convened by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) from Januar 15-17, 2024 as a three-day online meeting. Based on the submitted position papers, the workshop covered three areas of interest: the role of community networks to Internet Access of Services; reports and comments on the observed digital divide; and measurements of censorship and censorship circumvention. -This report summarizes the workshop's discussion and serves a reference for reports on the current barries to Internet Access.¶
-Note that this document is a report on the proceedings of the workshop. The views and positions documented in this report are those of the expressed during the workshop by participants and do not necessarily reflect IAB views and positions.¶
+The “Barriers for Internet Access of Services (Bias)” workshop was convened by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) from January 15-17, 2024 as a three-day online meeting. Based on the submitted position papers, the workshop covered three areas of interest: the role of community networks in Internet Access of Services; reports and comments on the observed digital divide; and measurements of censorship and censorship circumvention. This report summarizes the workshop's discussion and serves as a reference for reports on the current barriers to Internet Access.¶
+Note that this document is a report on the proceedings of the workshop. The views and positions documented in this report were expressed during the workshop by participants and do not necessarily reflect IAB's views and positions.¶
- This Internet-Draft will expire on 14 July 2024.¶
+ This Internet-Draft will expire on 28 July 2024.¶TODO Introduction¶
+The Internet as part of the critical infrastructure affects many aspects of our society significantly, although it impacts different parts of society differently. The Internet is an important tool to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) [SDG] and to globally support human rights. Consequently, the lack of meaningful access to digital infrastructure and services is also a form of disenfranchisement.¶
+Solely having Internet access is not enough. At the same time as we work to connect the next billion people and reduce the digital divide, it is also important to understand persistent and novel inequalities in the digital age when accessing content and services. There are more and more barriers to meaningful access to the services and applications that run on the Internet. Even if Internet connectivity is available, information and services access may remain challenged and unequal.¶
+This IAB workshop has aimed¶
+to collect reports about barriers to accessing content and services on the Internet, e.g. based on filtering, and blocking as well as due to general inequality of technological capabilities, like device or protocol limitations.¶
+to help the Internet community get a better understanding of how the Internet functions in different parts of the world and which technology or techniques need to be used to gain access to content.¶
+to build an understanding of what “being connected” to the Internet means: What is the Internet to users? What is needed to be meaningfully connected? What are the minimum requirements to be able to access certain parts of the content and services provided over the Internet?¶
+This document is a report on the proceedings of the workshop. The views and positions documented in this report are expressed during the workshop by participants and do not necessarily reflect IAB views and positions.¶
+Furthermore, the content of the report comes from presentations given by workshop participants and notes taken during the discussions, without interpretation or validation. Thus, the content of this report follows the flow and dialogue of the workshop but does not attempt to capture a consensus.¶
+TODO Session 1¶
+The workshop was organized across three days with all-group discussion slots, one per day. The following topic areas were identified and the program committee organized paper submissions into three main themes for each of the three discussion slots. During each discussion, those papers were presented sequentially with open discussion held at the end of each day.¶
+The first day of the workshop focused on the role of Community Networks [RFC7962] as a way to overcome the barriers to Internet Access. Community Networks are self-organized networks wholly owned by the community and thus provide an alternative mechanism to bring connectivity and internet services to those places that lack commercial interest.¶
+Presentations ranged from highlighting the need for measuring Quality of Experience (QoE) for Community Networks, to the potential role the Content Delivery Network (CDN) can play in Community Networks, to the role of Satellite Networks, and finally, to the vital role of the spectrum in this space.¶
+ -TODO Session 2¶
+TODO Session 3¶
+TODO Session 2¶
+This session focused on reports of censorship as observed during recent years in different parts of the world, as well as on the use of and expectation on censorship circumvention tools, mainly use of secure VPN services.¶
+The censorship reports, with a focus on Asia, and specifically India, as well as Russia, as an example where censorship changes significantly recently, discussed the legal frameworks and court acts that put legal obligation on regional network providers to block traffic and also measurements to validate the blocking as well as analyses how blocking is implemented, i.e. which protocols are used but also which kind of devices are used to configure the blocking rules and where are they deployed.¶
+Further, the possibility and prevalence for using VPNs for circumvention has been discussed including user expectation and an analysis of security short-comings of commercial VPN services. This analysis has shown various problems that lead to data leaks, not upholding user expectations especially when used in authoritarian regimes for censorship circumvention or private communication.¶
TODO Position Papers¶
+19 position papers were submitted to the workshop call for papers. 11 were selected for publication. Paper that were not published either (2) only provided a very prelimited analysis of an idea that was felt to incomphrehensive for discussion at the workshop, or address problem that were beyond the scope as dedciated for the workshop discussion by e.g. discussing cyber security threads as a barrier for participation or implication of technology in regulation that impose blocking. Both of these topics pose a potential severe risk on the open Internet, however, these risks might provide a high risk for all Interent users but do not nessearily imply an unbalance.¶
+All accepted papers are available at: https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/biasws/materials/¶
+This is the list of all published papers:¶
+Commuity Networks: +* L. M. Martínez-Cervantes, R. Guevara-Martínez: Community Networks and the Quest for Quality +* T. Benson, M. Fayed: A ‘C’ in CDN: Access service to and from the Internet for community networks at-cost +* P. Hu: Closing the Performance and Management Gaps with Satellite Internet: Challenges, Approaches, and Future Directions +* R. Rennó: Maximising Connectivity: The Spectrum's Vital Role in Technology Access¶
+Digital Divide: +* R. Holz, N. Nazemi, O. Tavallaie, A.Y. Zomaya: Evidence for a digital divide? Measuring DNS dependencies in the context of the indigenous population of Australia +* S. Hussain: Universal Acceptance of Domain Names and Email Addresses: A Key to Digital Inclusion +* R. Habib, S. Tanveer, A. Inam, H. Ahmed, A. Ali, Z.A. Uzmi, Z.A. Qazi, I.A. Qazi: A Framework for Improving Web Affordability and Inclusiveness +* J. Ott, G. Bartolomeo, M.M. Bese, R. Bose, M. Bosk, D. Guzman, L. Kärkkäinen, M. Kosek, N. Mohan: The Internet: Only for the Fast (and Furious)? +* L.Y. Ohlsen: BIAS workshop - M-Lab Position Paper submission¶
+Censorhsip: +* S. Nurliza Samsudin: iMAP (Internet Monitoring Action Project) 2023 Internet Censorship Report +* G. Grover: The infrastructure of censorship in Asia +* S. Basso: How Internet censorship changed in Russia during the 1st year of military conflict in Ukraine¶
+In addition to the submitted paper two invited talks were presented based on published papers:¶
+