At the INTERNET 2021 conference, that was held from July 18, 2021 to July 22, 2021 – Nice, France, the authors, Borka Jerman Blažič and Primož Cigoj were awarded with »Best paper award« for their contribution ”Web Vulnerability in 2021: Large Scale Inspection, Findings, Analysis and Remedies«. The paper reported about the findings of the research carried out between 2019 and 2021 within the work on PhD thesis, oriented to develop a tool for web vulnerability discovering at large and the service and for announcing the web users and owners about the present vulnerabilities. The research results pointed out that the percentage of vulnerable web sites is lower in regions where population has a high level of digital skills.

The book “Don Quihote in Slovenia or how Internet arrived in Slovenia”, written by prof. Borka Jerman Blažič and published by the Publishing Company e-Besede, provides very detailed information in narrative form about all scientific research that has contributed to the development of the computer networks, which are now known as the Internet and Internet services.

In the book, the basic components of the Internet are described in the context of the protocol stack war that took part in the eighties of the last century between the academics on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The long-lasting war delayed the development of the open computer systems and networks until 1991, when the Internet communication model, known as communication between the server and user device, emerged victorious. The book points to the advantages of the Internet communication model, among which are the intermediate devices that connect the Internet protocol stack with the underlying communication infrastructure composed from different technologies. In addition, the author points out that the Internet is a communication infrastructure without central governance, as the only central Internet infrastructure is composed from the hierarchical Domain Name Servers Infrastructure (DNS), which is the main glue that interconnect the Internet networks. The DNS infrastructure provides the mapping between the device numeric Internet address to the mnemonic name of the Internet components, for example “www.ijs.si”.

In the second part of the book, the author presents the events around Slovenia in the process of independence that coincided with the actions for setting up the first Internet network in the country and its inclusion in the world Internet. The book also contains 100 original documents from that time.

The Laboratory for Open Systems and Networks at Jozef Stefan Institute, together with 19 partners from 12 countries from Europe, America and Africa, marked the 25th anniversary of the ISABEL videoconferencing system. In the past, the system was used to carry out a number of large-scale distributed events with participants from all over the world. With the goal of participating in these events in 1997, the members of the laboratory also established the first broadband optical ATM connection of Slovenia with the rest of the world. Experience in mastering new technologies and the results of further research on networks and videoconferencing systems were used in several successful European Union projects, such as NICE, UNIVERSAL, PROLEARN and GLOBAL, and the establishment of our infrastructure group.