TPRC 2024: The 52nd Research Conference on Communications, Information and Inter

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Abstract:
New legislation has prompted US regulators to develop processes by which crowdsourced Internet measurements can be used as part of a formal process to fix the National Broadband Map--the official record of where Internet access is (and is not). Currently, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Broadband Data Challenge (BDC) process assumes that the people who experience Internet inequities are willing and able to participate in this civic data work. However, there is a body of evidence that demonstrates that the demographics most likely to experience digital inequities are also unlikely to contribute to crowdsourced data collection efforts. Thus, it is critical to understand how the framing and design of this civic crowdsourcing work may prevent marginalized stakeholders from participating in efforts to rectify the National Broadband Map.

In this paper, we make three contributions. First we used the Theory of Planned Behavior to deductively examine six of the most common crowdsourced Internet measurement platforms to characterize how they may encourage (or hinder) people from marginalized groups from participating in a measurement-based challenge process. We focus particularly on the FCC Speed Test app, which is the official mechanism by which citizens can participate in the FCC BDC. Second, we conducted a case study to examine the incentives and barriers that influence citizen participation in the FCC BDC in a community in the Southwest (pop. 70,000). This involved conducting exploratory interviews with eight residents living in the more rural outskirts of the community and the development of a survey, which was completed by 36 residents living in the area. While the data is small, it provides useful insight into how different groups of people within a single community perceive of the challenge process with different priorities and concerns based on location, race, and ethnicity. Specifically, it reveals how non-white and Hispanic participants are much more likely to be concerned about issues of privacy when participating in crowdsourced data work. Finally, we conducted a measurement focus group in the same small metropolitan area, involving nine participants in a one-hour data collection walk around the neighborhood using the FCC Speed Test app. Through this activity, we found that the official tool for making challenges is relatively unappealing to citizens who are generally interested in participating in civic action, and needs to be substantially re-evaluated to be more engaging for a broader civic audience.


Through our analysis, we find that there are straightforward but important ways that crowdsourced measurement platforms could be designed in the future to support broader participation and the collection of more representative crowdsourced data sets. Moreover, we identify specific critiques with the current FCC BDC that will likely prevent participation by everyday citizens. Ultimately, for crowdsourced Internet measurement data to be meaningful and representative, regulators need to attend more critically and carefully to the design and deployment of crowdsourced measurement tools.

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As the speeds of residential consumer Internet access services continue to increase (especially in the download direction), speed is becoming less of a barrier to satisfactory Internet service. Attention is now moving to other measures of quality for access services, including latency and its dynamic variation (jitter), and packet loss.
The objective of this paper is to present data on actual measured latency and jitter in the Internet today, based on measurements from five different measurement platforms. We have two goals for this paper. First, we relate the results to possible impact on user Quality of Experience (QoE). Second, and equally important, these comparisons let us uncover limitations and inconsistencies in the various measurement methods, and point out barriers to accurate data collection.

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https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4925783

Abstract:
This paper studies the construction and use of undersea internet cables. In our model, firms decide whether to invest in new cables and then country-level demand for data leads to flows across the cable network. Investment in any one market affects global data flows. We estimate this model using new data on cable construction and usage via moment inequalities. Decomposing growth in internet usage into growth in demand and improvements in the cable network shows that the latter is an important contributor. Our counterfactuals highlight the role of business stealing and network spillovers in generating an inefficient allocation of cables.

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How do untrustworthy, non-compliant, and otherwise dangerous certificates arise in the Web? What are the causes that underlie the issuance of these certificates? To determine the ground truth, we compiled reports of public key infrastructure (PKI) incidents that have resulted from Certificate Authorities' (CAs) issuance of non-compliant certificates from 2001 to December 2021 from reliable public sources and provide an analysis using qualitative coding of the CAs description of the reported incidents. Our data sources had to be public, reliable, impartial, and trustworthy. These requirements eliminated incidents published in media without proper sources, for example Medium blog posts. The backbone of our incident collection was Mozilla’s Bugzilla where we collected 597 incident reports. Our results combine both qualitative and quantitative analyses. We document the trends in incidents including causes and types. We identify the parties that have erred, the ways in which they have failed, the patterns of behavior among and between CAs. We enumerate the common recommendations where we concur with the literature, and make some of our own. We argue that there is a need for systematic improvement in PKI now, and this need will only increase as the interaction space for warnings and indicators decreases with IoT and embedded systems. We also discuss potential avenues for future work to prevent future incidents and detect problematic certificates before issuance.

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Abstract
Society increasingly relies on the Internet as a critical infrastructure. Inter-domain routing is a core Internet protocol that enables traffic to flow globally across independent networks. Concerns about Internet infrastructure security have prompted policymakers to promote stronger routing security and the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) in particular. RPKI is a cryptographic framework to secure routing that was standardized in 2012. In 2024, almost 50% of routed IP address blocks are still not covered by RPKI certificates. It is unclear what barriers are preventing networks from adopting RPKI. This paper investigates networks with low RPKI adoption to understand where and why adoption is low or non-existent. We find that networks’ geographical area of service, size, business category and complexity of address space delegation impact RPKI adoption. Our analysis may help direct policymakers’ efforts to promote RPKI adoption and improve the state of routing security.

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Abstract
What is the role of broadband Internet in shaping political participation in Africa? This study leverages the staggered arrival of submarine Internet cables and the terrestrial backbone network in Africa to examine the influence of high-speed Internet on protests. Combining large-scale cross-country surveys on political behaviors and disaggregated data on conflict events, robust difference-in-differences estimates indicate a significant increase in both the likelihood of protest participation and the frequency of protests. This effect is particularly observed in countries that actively exercise political rights and civil liberties. The analysis explores two key mechanisms---information dissemination and coordination facilitation---with the latter being the predominant channel of explanation.

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By modelling the key economic features of data infrastructures and cloud services, we have shown how investments in information and data services affect labor markets, sectoral growth and related outcomes at the national level. We assess how regulatory choices shape the outcomes and describe the advantages and disadvantages of common decisions by governments as well as domestic and foreign businesses. We use a dynamic model that can be adjusted to analyze changes in, for example, energy prices, labor costs, taxation, investment boosts or declines. These have been applied to show the specific effects on data infrastructure businesses as well as banking, e-commerce and telecommunications in five countries: Egypt, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico and Turkey. Our results show not only the labor market effects but also demonstrate what tradeoffs are being made and how much they cost, the extent of the fragility of data infrastructures, and we measure the gaps that currently exist between well-served nations and less developed economies and how those gaps are likely to be exacerbated unless they are ameliorated by better policies, greater investment and stimulated demand.

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Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique cryptographic assets that represent digital media ownership. They have soared in popularity and trading prices. However, there exists a large gap in the literature regarding NFTs, especially regarding the stakeholders and online communities that have formed around NFT projects. Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is one of the most influential NFT projects. Through an observational study of online BAYC communities across social media platforms and semi-structured interviews with four participants who owned BAYC NFTs, we explored the experiences of NFT collectors within the online NFT community. Positive community experiences, i.e., personal expression and identity, mutual support among BAYC holders, and exclusive access to online and offline events, were expressed. Encountered challenges included scams and “cash grab” NFT projects, as well as trolling. The results of this study point to the welcoming, positive nature of the NFT community, which is a possible cause of the initial rise in popularity of NFTs. Demotivators, on the other hand, countered the established trustworthiness of NFT technology among its consumers. To address these issues, we proposed governance recommendations in terms of rulemaking and community policing.

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Abstract:
Although Internet routing security best practices have recently seen auspicious increases in uptake, ISPs have limited incentives to deploy them. They are operationally complex and expensive to implement and provide little competitive advantage. The practices with significant uptake protect only against origin hijacks, leaving unresolved the more general threat of path hijacks. We propose a new approach to improved routing security that achieves four design goals: improved incentive alignment to implement best practices; protection against path hijacks; expanded scope of such protection to customers of those engaged in the practices; and reliance on existing capabilities rather than needing complex new software in every participating router. Our proposal leverages an existing coherent core of interconnected ISPs to create a zone of trust, a topological region that protects not only all networks in the region, but all directly attached customers of those networks. Customers benefit from choosing ISPs committed to the practices, and ISPs thus benefit from committing to the practices. We discuss the concept of a zone of trust as a new, more pragmatic approach to security, that improves security in a region of the Internet, as opposed to striving for a global improvement. We argue that the aspiration for global improvement is unrealistic, since the global Internet includes malicious actors. We compare our approach to other schemes, and discuss how a related proposal, ASPA, could be used to increase the scope of protection our scheme achieves. We hope this proposal inspires discussion of how the industry can make practical, measurable progress against the threat of route hijacks in the short term by leveraging institutionalized cooperation rooted in transparency and accountability.