HIIT and Cambridge joint work on ACM Computing Review

The joint work between HIIT and Cambridge University recently made to ACM Computing Review.

The published paper "Bridging the Gap between Internet Standardization and Networking Research" highlights the value of collaboration between academia and industry by describing the differences and similarities between how the two communities operate.

ACM Computing Review:

"Bridging the gap between the network research community and Internet standards is an important topic. Most network research has not been turned into an Internet standard, while some research comes a long way in order to become an Internet standard. Very few studies investigate this issue because it extends beyond purely technical concerns.

The authors have an advantage in investigating this issue since they have tightly collaborated on projects with academic researchers and industrial professionals. They thoroughly present their observations and share their experiences in this paper. The challenges for this gap are defined in two parts: technical challenges and nontechnical challenges. A good point is that the authors share the nontechnical challenges that  might be ignored by researchers and industrial professionals. The authors, aware of the gap, also find two major opportunities that can extend research works to standardization contributions, which is encouraging to networking researchers.

Based on their past experiences, the authors share two concrete case studies: mobile traffic offloading and Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) transition technologies. The mobile traffic offloading case shows substantial scientific results, but it also shows an under-performing standardization effort. This case proves that the proposal, which does not fit in an existing mindset, is usually a failure. On the other hand, the case of IPv6 transition technologies shows good results in both academia and industry, because the research proposal has extensibility and minimum impact on the existing infrastructure. The authors then share their lessons and suggestions to bridge the gap. These are honest and useful to both academia and industry. Readers will see the potential for comprehensive collaboration between networking research and Internet standardization."