About SIG-IOT

The Special Interest Group on Internet and Operation Technology (SIG-IOT) of IPSJ was organized in April 2008 through the integration of the Distributed System and internet Management technology (SIG-DSM) and the Quality Aware Internet (SIG-QAI). Approximately 500 people are enrolled in this group.

SIG-DSM was initially established in 1996 to discuss the technologies for developing and operating large-scale distributed systems at universities or companies. As the Internet explosively grew, the topics were shifted to technical issues that many organizations had about the construction or administration of network systems, and also to the wide variety of applications that not only administrators but also users are deeply concerned with.

Meanwhile, SIG-QAI was established in 2001 to discuss various issues for the improvement of the quality of communication services over the Internet and research topics for the construction of high-quality next generation Internet. Since the quality of communication over the Internet was very poor at that time, various research proposals, mainly how to smoothly pass along voice and video streams, were actively discussed. As the bandwidth of the Internet improved, the research topics widely spread into technologies such as the reliability and stability of various communications and techniques for the construction and operation of networks systems.

Each SIG, SIG-DSM and SIG-QAI, have different origins although their situations in regards to the information and communication fields in social environments has been changed. The research areas of these SIGs have overlapped, and it has been difficult to see a difference between the research fields of the two SIGs from the point of view of the participants. Moreover, even if the names of both SIGs have the keyword "Internet", there was a tendency for the targeted research field to be only the Internet.
However, there is a wide range of research fields related to the Internet, such as communication methods, construction techniques, management practices, and their applications. Therefore, it seemed to be important to share information between the two SIGs.

So, the two SIGs were integrated and named Internet and Operation Technology (IOT) to clarify the target areas as the technologies of the Internet in general, and the technologies for the construction, operation, and administration of large-scale distributed systems, including the Internet, and to make it possible to involve more people.

The first memorable IOT workshop was held in Kagoshima City in May 2008, and was co-hosted by the technical committee on Information and Communication Management (ICM) of the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers (IEICE).

Target research area and action plan

The target research area of SIG-IOT is the technologies for the Internet in general and the techniques for the construction, operation, and administration of large-scale distributed systems, including the Internet -- architecture and communication methodologies for the Internet, the technologies necessary for ensuring a quality evaluation of the network communication, technologies for the construction of network systems with/without support for user authentication/authorization, techniques for the improvement and evaluation of network performance, methods for system monitoring and managing, and technologies for the construction, operation, and administration of large-scale distributed systems. In particular, this group will be very useful for people who are working as system administrators or who are developing products to support such systems to obtain information that may not be obtained anywhere else since specific cases on practical systems have also been and will be reported on.
Four workshops and one symposium will be organized by the group annually, and a special section in the IPSJ journal is also planned annually, which had been managed by SIG-DSM. The first one by SIG-IOT will be issued in March 2009.

Some joint workshops are scheduled to be co-hosted with other SIGs or technical committees whose research areas are related to this group, such as Information Communication Management (ICM) or Internet Architecture (IA) of IEICE for research collaboration. Such joint workshops had been held regularly by SIG-DSM and SIG-QAI before with great success.
The first IOT Symposium will be held in December 2008 in Kyoto. All presentations at the symposium are to be selected from submitted full-papers with reviews. Exhibitions will also be held as a part of the symposium and many products closely related with the research areas of the IOT will be displayed.
There is also a plan to participate in the Multimedia, Distributed, Cooperative, and Mobile Symposium (DICOMO) as one of organizing SIGs.
SIG-IOT also supports the operations of the International Symposium on Applications and the Internet (SAINT), which is co-sponsored by IPSJ and IEEE CS, in place of SIG-QAI, which had supported SAINT from the beginning.
The fields of operational technologies may look modest and tend to be shunned, especially by young people, but it must be an important portion of the fundamentals of the information and communication infrastructures that continue to grow. We hope the activities of SIG-IOT help to convey the importance of the field.