Profile
Research
Research profile intelligence connects person, company, institution, and other entity coverage for readers comparing the subjects behind BTW.MEDIA reporting. The page helps compare public profiles, related events, evidence packs, role changes, operating footprints, governance exposure, organisational links, and market relevance while keeping organisation and people records distinct from ordinary news chronology. Readers can understand the subject behind the headline, the evidence supporting that profile, and the infrastructure or market relationships that make the profile relevant. They can see who or what the profile represents, which public sources support it, how it connects to companies, markets, governance bodies, or events, and what changes may deserve continued attention as the subject evolves.
History
Email Came Before IP: Morocco’s Uneven Internet Opening, 1993–96
Morocco’s first recorded connection in this story could deliver email, but not the full set of Internet services later associated with a routed IP link. The gap between those milestones shows why “the Internet arrived” needs a service definition.
CASE FILE
Who Owns the Executable Copy of the Law?
The OECD’s consultation says the enacted text remains the law while software may carry a reusable, machine-executable version of its rules. That boundary is clear on paper. The harder question is who can show which version a public service actually ran, what interpretation it…
Creators
Fred Baker and the Router Standard That Was More Than a Checklist
RFC 1812 was asked to help buyers specify routers and engineers implement them. Its own warning is what makes that assignment useful: no single list can contain the whole requirement set, and no standard can certify what a particular running network does.
History
The Gateway Came Before the Market: Laos’s Internet, 1998–99
Laos’s first permanent international Internet link and the arrival of commercial dial-up were separate events. The gap between them reveals how authorization, gateways and ordinary telephone lines shaped access.
History
Veronica Could Find a Title, Not the File: Gopher Search, 1992–95
Veronica made a growing Gopher universe searchable by collecting the words people had already put in its menus. Its scale came from a modest promise: find the label, return the live route, and leave the document where its publisher kept it.
History
One Cable Company, Many Local Gatekeepers: FLAG, 1997
FLAG’s Europe–Asia cable was financed and run as a cross-border wholesale system, yet the equipment at its national landings still depended on local telephone companies. Its history shows where private capital changed the cable business—and where it stopped.
Story
PeeringDB ends routine public beta releases, retaining previews for major UI and API changes
After an August trial, PeeringDB now sends routine releases from internal testing to production. Its product manager says the test drew no feedback; significant interface and API changes will still receive a public beta.
History
Ariadne Built Greece’s Research Network Before IP Became Its Default
Ariadne linked Greek universities and research institutes through a multiprotocol service before its successor network made TCP/IP the common direction. The 1993 record shows how access, international gateways, protocol conversion and user support fit together—and where the IP…
History
Amsterdam’s Digital City Had Citizens, Not a City Council
De Digitale Stad made the unfamiliar Internet feel like a place a resident could enter. The civic vocabulary opened a door; it did not give account holders the authority of a municipality.
Global Institutional
ACSK-RIPE’s May Timestamp Does Not Yet Explain AS210263
ACSK-RIPE’s May Timestamp Does Not Yet Explain AS210263 intelligence summary explains the development, the public evidence available to readers, the organisations involved, the regional context, market exposure, and the infrastructure consequences that may follow. The Global…
History
The Infrastructure Names Stayed in .int for 20 Years After .arpa Took Over
A namespace can have a new home long before its old records disappear. The history of .int’s infrastructure names shows why those are separate jobs.
History
The Café Was Public; Its Users Were Accounted For: Tunisia’s PubliNet Rules
Tunisia tried to widen Internet access through small public centres. The record also shows how a café became a managed access point, where the operator’s duties shaped what “public” meant.
History
Online Was Not Permission: MIT’s Zephyr Made Presence a Network Service
MIT built Zephyr for a campus filling with networked workstations, where a broadcast could not follow a user across buildings and ordinary mail was too slow for a printer failure or a class announcement. Its answer joined authenticated identities, location records, subscriptions…
History
Cambodia’s 1997 Full-Time Link Needed a Public Bargain
Cambodia’s first full-time Internet connection was a small, expensive international circuit. Making it useful beyond a ministry office required a second design: a public-purpose partnership that could subsidize schools and nonprofits while commercial operators built a market…
Creators
Robert Moskowitz and the Host Identity Behind an IP Address
An IP address tells a network where to send a packet, but applications and security controls often ask it to answer a different question: which host is at the other end? Robert Moskowitz’s work on the Host Identity Protocol separated those jobs. The distinction can preserve a…
History
The Network Could Ask a Node Its Name—and It Could Refuse: IPv6 Node Information Queries
When IPv6 made local addresses easier to create than to remember, debugging still needed a way to ask a machine what it knew about itself. RFC 4620 proposed one: a direct ICMPv6 question with a bounded scope, a reply the node could decline, and no claim to replace DNS.
Asia-Pacific Institutional
The Philippine Open Internet Exchange: Policy First, Peering Second
A government science institute has operated the Philippines' flagship neutral internet exchange since 2007, and a 2013 administrative order pushed state traffic through it. The September 2026 membership snapshot shows what that combination actually built — and where the model…
ICANN
When a Name Outlives Its DNS Registration
If a registrant lets a DNS name expire but keeps its counterpart in another naming system, the label has not disappeared. It has changed state in one place and stayed active in another. ICANN’s technical study makes that choice visible; the harder question is who can prove that…
History
MAE-East Was a Room, Not a Policy: The Early Internet’s Shared Exchange
A shared Ethernet made it easier for early providers to meet in northern Virginia. It did not make them exchange routes. MAE-East shows why a common physical point and a common network policy are different things.
History
A Terminal Could Say No: TELNET’s 1983 Option Negotiation
Two machines did not need identical terminals to share a remote session. TELNET’s 1983 specification began with a modest common model, then let each end ask for particular changes and refuse what it could not support.