Two IT projects at Karlstad University will receive funding from Internetstiftelsen (The Internet Fund). One project will focus on improving fifth generation mobile networks, 5G, and the other on further developing the anonymity service TOR.
In total, five projects have been granted funding and a share in the 1,4 million SEK that Internetstiftelsen provides. Since its start in 2004, nearly 75 million SEK have been distributed to projects that in one way or another contribute to a positive development of the Internet. In order to apply for funding, the projects have to be independent and non-commercial and applicants may be both individuals and organisations.
- Technical projects in infrastructure and standardisation work rarely end up in the limelight. Meanwhile, the development of Internet infrastructure is crucial for us to use the Internet for communication and innovation in a good and competitive way. Our Internet Fund is one of few actors to finance projects within this field, says Danny Aerts.
More on the projects at Karlstad University
More effective data transport for 5G
In recent years, both the number of mobile devices as well as the demands they place on mobile data networks have reached a record increase. In order to keep up with this development, the fifth-generation mobile network (5G) is now being standardised, and researchers at Karlstad university are now provided funding to contribute to this. 5G will offer a higher bandwidth and lower latency by using bands of higher frequency bands than the current 4G networks. However, higher frequency bands also mean a fast-varying quality of communication, since shorter radio waves are easily disrupted by, for example, intermediate objects. The researchers at Karlstad University will be exploring how this might affect common Internet applications. The project will also examine how TCP, the technology typically used for Internet communication, may be adapted and used by applications in order to decrease the negative effects of fast quality variations.
Improving the anonymity network Tor
Researchers at Karlstad University have been granted funding in order to improve Tor: an anonymity network with more than two million daily users that can be used for anonymous Internet use, in order to evade online censorship, and to share information anonymously. Tor is designed to have as low latency as possible. This however leads to a weaker anonymity protection against strong attackers such as large Internet service providers and IT companies that may be capable of performing so-called correlation attacks, where an attacker observe both incoming and outgoing traffic to/from the Tor network, which may de-anonymise users. The project will investigate new forms of correlation attacks in order to gain a better understanding on how users might be targeted, and thus in the long-term contribute to improving the protection provided by the anonymity network.
