Understanding Internet Access in the Developing World Ihsan Qazi (LUMS) Host: Anderson Thursday, April 12, 2018, 12:00 pm CSE305 Maps and directions <https://www.cs.washington.edu/visitors/getting_here> Abstract
In this talk, I will present my recent research on Internet access in developing countries. In the first half of my talk, I will present a study on the characteristics of mobile devices in developing regions. Using a dataset of 0.5 million subscribers from one of the largest cellular operators in Pakistan, I will present an analysis of cell phones being used based on different features (e.g., CPU, memory, and cellular interface). Our analysis reveals potential device-level bottlenecks for Internet access, which can inform infrastructure design for improving mobile web performance. (This work appeared in ACM IMC 2016) Another accessibility challenge in developing countries is the rise in Internet censorship events, which can have a substantial impact on various stakeholders in the Internet ecosystem (e.g., users, content providers, ISPs, and advertisers). In the second half of my talk, I will discuss how Internet censorship poses an economic threat to online advertising, which plays an essential role in enabling the free Web by allowing publishers to monetize their services. Then I will describe a system we designed that enables relevant ads while retaining the effectiveness of censorship resistance tools (e.g., Tor). (This work appeared in ACM HotNets 2017)
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