In a past life, I worked at Delft University of Technology. This is a description of my research there.

ISPs are not just in the business of selling access to their networks: their business is rather selling access via their networks to the entire Internet. This is a result of network externalities: the value that a consumer derives from a product or service increases as a function of the number of other consumers of the same or compatible products or functions[Econ1996]. ISPs' customers expect the highest possible value from their ISP subscription, i.e., access to the entire Internet. It is therefore necessary for ISPs to interconnect with one another to exchange traffic destined for each other's end users. In the telephony world, this interconnection is co-ordinated by the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) and by various regulatory offices, like OPTA in the Netherlands and Oftel in the UK. In the Internet world, there is no such central co-ordination. Each ISP makes its own, independent decision about its peering and transit relationships. These decisions are influenced by many factors, both technical and commercial. As an example of the latter, in 1997 UUNET attempted to end peering with a number of smaller backbones and instead charge them for transit[Kende1999], because peering with these smaller backbones conflicted with UUNETs image of top-level ISP. Because of peering disputes (like the UUNET case) and other commercial strategies, the Internet topology grows less transparent. A recent study[Labo2001] shows that more than five percent of the currently routed Internet address space lacks global connectivity.

In more theoretical terms, the co-ordination of interconnecting ISPs can be seen as a network organisation [Powell1991]. ISPs are involved in an intricate latticework of (peering and transit) relationships with other ISPs, mostly competitors and these relationships are essential to their functioning.

The goal of this research is twofold:

- As a scientific goal, we would like to be able to understand how the interaction between ISPs (with regard to their interconnection relationships) can be used to explain the nature of the resulting network.

- As a more practical goal, we would like to contribute to the provision of QoS by ISPs to their customers by defining ways to co-ordinate the ISPs' interconnection agreements with regard to

I am a founding member of the Internet Whistleblowers research group. We are a group of researchers concerned with the uncontrolled evolution of the Internet and its impact on our social life, regarding the effects on regulatory, economical and infrastructure issues. We think that the social and economical expectations at this time and under the current conditions are overheated, creating a lot of air bell companies and forgetting the weak and the dark sides of the Internet.