The Symposium

The ongoing and rapid growth of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), including the Internet, is an integral part of todays commercial, economic and social reality. However, it has now become clear that the current exponential growth of ICT and the Internet is not sustainable. Major ICT and Internet based companies are already experiencing difficulties due to the size and power requirements of servers, routers and data centres.

For several years the ARC Centre for Ultra-Broadband Information Networks (CUBIN), based at the University of Melbourne, has been researching aspects of the power and size required by technologies used in the Internet today and in the future. This team is one of only a handful of international research teams that are investigating the long term sustainability of ICT and the Internet.

This type of research is vital to ICT practitioners, companies and other experts who design, specify, build and utilise the Internet.

Therefore, CUBIN is organising a two day Symposium on the Sustainability of the Internet and ICT. This Symposium will have two themes:

Sustainability of ICT and the Internet (Day 1)
Using ICT and the Internet to improve environmental sustainability (Day 2)

The symposium will be held on Tuesday 25th and Wednesday 26th of November 2008 at the University of Melbourne, Parkville in Victoria.

The Symposium will focus on a range of critical issues including:

Energy demands of future ICT & Internet equipment
Sustainable architectures and protocols for the future
The impact of ICT/Internet growth in developing nations
Regulation and the sustainability of the Internet
Growth of Internet services and sustainability

The Symposium will offer the following benefits to participants:

Learn about technologies and design practices to reduce data centre power consumption
Be exposed to forthcoming technologies which promise a faster and lower power Internet
Collect ideas on how to use the Internet to reduce your company's carbon footprint
Become aware of regulatory models which may be implemented in the future
Contribute to and learn from discussions with other experts in the field
Participate in developing research plans to address the key challenges to a sustainable Internet

This Symposium is unique in that it includes experts from all areas of the Internet and ICT, presenting diverse perspetives on sustainability of the Internet and ICT. The speakers are practitioners and researches with expertise covering all aspects the industry including; devices, subsystems and systems, networks, protocols, data centre construction, power provisioning, carbon foot-print of ICT and global sustainability.

Given that the Symposium is a two day event and given the diverse range of issues which need to be covered, all speakers at the Symposium are by invitation only.

Symposium Organising Committee:

Mr. Robert Ayre, Dr. John Ellershaw, Associate Prof. Peter Farrell, Dr. Kerry Hinton, Ms. Angie Laoumtzis, Professor Rodney Tucker

Symposium Manager:

Ms. Angie Laoumtzis

Assistance provided by:

Ms. Anne Lopes, Mr. Norbert Nimmerval, Dr. Wayne Sorin

Web page support:

David Nguyen

Local IT support:

David Batterham