Image: Capcom

For some online applications, network performance is critical. Any online gamer will agree, and timing is especially critical for online fighting games: a few milliseconds can literally make the difference between a hit and a miss.

Most readers will be aware that most applications send data over the Internet using the TCP transport protocol, sacrificing a bit of speed for reliability, or could also opt to use UDP for maximum performance, while accepting some data might never arrive. Whatever option you go with, you’ll still have to deal with unstable networks: some data might arrive quickly, while a little while later the network becomes more busy, slowing down the communication. For applications that are so dependent on timing, neither TCP nor UDP by itself is a good enough solution.

It turns out that there’s a lot more an application can do to deal with fluctuating network latency. Prepare to enter the world of Netcode, where specific code is added to the game itself to deal with this challenge.

In general there are two approaches: delay based, which is basically waiting long enough so that all data will hopefully arrive in time, or rollback, which is to just move forward in anticipation of what’s most likely to happen, and correct for any mistakes later when and if different information is received.

There’s a lot more to say about this topic. If you’re interested, I would love to refer you to this great in-depth article on arstechnica.com.

Mouth mask
Image: Anna Shvets on Pexels

When talking about networks, the spread of viruses has always been a concern. Still, with the spread of the real-life Coronavirus bringing turmoil all over the world, it’s easy to realise some things are more important than computer networks: our health and the health professionals working tirelessly to keep us safe.

In the meantime, let’s have a look at some of the different ways the Covid-19 virus is not just influencing the daily lives of millions of people, but our networks as well.

  • Many of us are now working from home, increasing the demand for applications that support online collaboration, video conferencing and distance learning. Many companies are now providing free access to such services. Also, demand for webcams is reaching new heights.
  • While we’re sitting behind our computer, working from home, one of the best things we could be doing is to participate in Folding at home: using our computer’s processing power to simulate the dynamics of COVID-19 proteins and help in the hunt for new therapeutic opportunities.
  • Netflix and Youtube will reduce the quality of their video streams at the request of the European Union. With many of us confined to our homes, streaming services are seeing increased use and this measure will help ensure enough Internet bandwidth will stay available to conduct our other business online.
  • The registry of domainnames within the .org top level domain was going to be sold to a private equity company. This sale might be delayed, as many charities, NGO’s and right groups are depending on these .org domains for their online presence.
  • Finally, for all of us still trying to ‘catch ’em all’, Pokemon Go has made it easier to capture those rare ones, without having to leave your home.
Image: Wi-Fi Alliance

If there’s one theme that keeps reappearing on this blog, it’s that our Internet keeps getting faster. While the first hardware supporting Wi-Fi 6 and the improved WPA3 security is slowly becoming available, the experts are already busy planning for a newer version, which we assume will be called Wi-Fi 7.

So, what can we look forward to? Of course, Wi-Fi 7 will bring another improvement in transmission speed, up to the point where Wi-Fi would become a serious alternative for the Ethernet cables still found in many homes and businesses.

More interestingly, the IEEE is looking at ways to use the radio signals to detect people moving around their rooms. This could have many useful applications: imagine your smart lights turning on and off automatically, when you walk around your home. Or think of an app that warns you if your grandmother hasn’t moved from the bedroom all day. Useful, but also a little scary when considering your privacy: the radio frequency signals would be sensitive enough to even detect your breathing!

Another area of interest is communication between vehicles, to help support self-driving cars. This is an up and coming market, which helps explain why the people behind 5G have also been looking at providing technology in this area.

Now, if they could just get around to standardizing the prononciation. Still not sure whether it’s Wai-Fai or Wee-Fee, but you could let me know in the comments below

HTTPIf there’s one protocol that made the Internet as popular as it is today, it has to be HTTP. The protocol which, as you surely know, is used to browse the web, is getting an update!  Actually, there aren’t really a lot of exciting things I can tell you about HTTP version 3, but it is going to make browsing the web a little bit faster by using QUIC as the underlying transport protocol, instead of good old TCP.

While still a draft standard, big players like CloudFlare, Firefox and of course Google Chrome are offering support, so we can expect HTTP/3 to take off. Thanks to the people at Google that work tirelessly to make our Internet that much faster.

Sold
Image: Thirdman on Pexels

This news may not surprise you. After all, we’ve known for well over 30 years that we don’t have quite enough addresses on the Internet to go with. However, the problem is becoming more urgent: RIPE NCC, the organisation that manages IP addresses for Europe and large parts of Asia, is down to their last few millions of available IPv4 addresses and is expecting to run out altogether by the end of 2019.

RIPE NCC IPv4 address space chart

So what happens after all addresses are gone? If you’re an Internet Service Provider in need of more address space, you’ll be put on the waiting list and if you’re lucky, you may be handed a smaller range of leftover addresses.

For the real solution to the problem, we need to look further back…

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Birthday Balloons
Image: Morgan Lane on Unsplash

The World Wide Web is celebrating its birthday.  Thirty years ago, at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee first proposed an information system that would be able to link documents on different servers together using hypertext. For many people, the Internet and WWW pretty much mean the same thing, but there was in fact an Internet before the Web: people would send e-mails, discuss in newsgroups, read documents using Gopher or search FTP servers using Archie. However, it’s fair to say that without the Web, the Internet would never have grown into the force it is today.

The Web has brought us many good things, like e-commerce, social media and funny cat videos, but recently we’re beginning to see more of a dark side too: more and more of our life is being controlled by a few giant online corporations, we’re reading fake news, our privacy is at risk and hackers are after us. So, what can we expect for the next few years?

Tim Berners-Lee actually has some great ideas on that, as he explains in the Guardian: “The web is for everyone,” he says, “and collectively we hold the power to change it. It won’t be easy. But if we dream a little and work a lot, we can get the web we want.”

Great Wall of China
Image: Joel Danielson on Unsplash

A surprisingly large number of countries exercise at least some control over what content their citizens can and cannot access on the Internet. In many cases, this means very selective blocking of information considered to be harmful, but a handful of countries have developed much more powerful tools to regulate Internet access for political and social reasons. I’m planning to write a few articles about Internet censorship, starting with a look at the country that didn’t just build the great wall to keep outsiders out – it also build the Great Firewall. We’ll start in China!

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Russian nesting dolls
Image: Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash

Dutch intelligence apprehended four Russian hackers, associated with the Russian secret service unit GRU, in the process of trying to hack into the OPCW, the international organisation keeping an eye on the use of chemical weapons. Apart from being a job well done, the Dutch operation also gives us some insight into the way the Russian cyber operatives go about their business.

Pictures provided by the Dutch Ministry of Defence show that the GRU operatives rented a car and hid all kinds of computer and network equipment in the trunk. Then they quietly parked the car next to the OPCW building, putting them in a good spot to intercept the organisation’s WiFi communications and allowing them to try to hack into the network.

Their equipment included a computer with an extra battery to power everything, connected to a cellphone, an extra powerful WiFi antenna hidden under a coat as well as a WiFi pineapple. This device, that you can buy online for about $100 dollars (though I’m unsure whether GRU would allow for the budget to get the optional morale patch)  is essentially a WiFi access point that is specifically equipped to listen in on WiFi traffic in the area.

If there’s a lesson to be learned: if you see four guys in a Citroën C3 parked around the corner, double-check to make sure you’re still connected to the right access point!