“Will the Internet survive the congestion of the network due to the increased traffic generated by the COVID-19 pandemic situation?” and “What is currently the state of internet “health” during the COVID-19 pandemic?” This are the two questions which prof. dr. Borka Jerman Blažič, is debating in her recently published article on the offical website of the Slovenian Association for Computer Communications and Internet (ISOC-SI).

In the recent weeks, many people are wondering whether the Internet will withstand due to increased traffic while the majority of the world’s population is browsing and using internet on behalf of changing the lifestyle in these mesaures in pandemic time. The Previous data on the increase of intrenet traffic, is showing that the Internet is very durable and whilst there have been no major problems detected, which is understandable. However, The COVID-19 pandemic has once again exposed the long-standing problem in the global world and here at home, where the digital the division of the population between the poor and the rich is divided. The poor have no access to the internet, no matter where they are in the world. This issue also raised the issue of Internet access, paying e-bills and telephone communications for the Internet-connected part of the population.

How much Internet  traffic has augmented in the last days of March:

Business, home broadband, and wireless usage was up 24% compared to the same day in February in USA. Other new traffic patterns include:

Instant messaging: Up by 63%
Text messaging: Up by 41%
Voice calls: Up by 33%
Video: Up by 4%
Emailing: Down by 18%
Web browsing: Down by 5%

The company also reports these increases in conference activity:Audio, web and video conferencing tools: Up by 400% more minutes
Large-scale webcast events: Up by 200%
AT&T’s global audio-conferencing solution: Up by 200%.

Read the whole article (in Slovenian language): HERE

Primož Cigoj, our associate of Laboratory for open systems and networks, has developed and set up an on-line platfrom CoronaLive.info to monitor the global spread of pandemic of new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 . The platform presents county-by-country statistics and graphical displays in an easy-to-use and friendly way, in addition to local news and latest post from Twitter’s online social network. The purpose of CoronaLive.info is to provide an overview of the frequencies of infected, deceased, and recovering people across the globe. 

web: CoronaLive.info

Professor Peter Kirstein left this world on Wednesday, 8 January 2020. Professor Kirstein was, along with famous american computer legends Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, the frontrunner in research and development of communication between computer networks. Their efforts led to the development of today’s standard internet protocol TCP/IP.  Professor Kirstein also helped establish the first cross-atlantic internet line between USA and Europe (GB).  During his carieer he contributed a lot to the expansion of internet services and establishing internet infrastructure in Europe.

We collaborated intensively with professor Kirstein on the COSINE-EUREKA 8 project (1985–1991), which helped us in the growth and build of secure internet services, such as digital signatures and public key infrastructure in the year 1992. Later, in 2008–2010 we also collaborated in the development of a video-conference system Global Plaza.

Professor Kirstein will be missed especially for his optimism, friendship, teamwork, and wisdom.

The ERK 2019 conference was held on September 23-24, 2019, in Portorož, Slovenia. It was organized by the IEEE Slovenia Section together with Faculty of Electrical Engineering University of Ljubljana and other Slovenian professional societies. From the Laboratory for Open Systems and Networks, the researcher Samed Bajrić  presented a research paper with the title “Reducing the number of solutions in the unit commitment problem using variations with repetition”, which is joint work with Izudin Softić, Nedžmija Demirović, Marina Pejić and Midhat Umihanić (all professors from Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Tuzla, BiH).

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.