As we mark World Internet Day on Thursday 29 October, Associate Professor in Computer Science Xiaodi Huang (pictured inset) in the Charles Sturt University School of Computing and Mathematics said the future of the internet offers the prospect of smart regions and intelligent campuses, among other things.

The likely future development of the internet can be projected by considering three questions:

1. What can be connected to the internet?
2. Where and how can we access the internet?
3. What resources are provided on the internet?

As we’ve already witnessed with the rapid uptake of the internet in the last 30 years, increasingly everything - people, workplaces, houses, factories, and shops - will be connected to the internet.

Where and how we access the internet will be through multiple interfaces. These include through conventional computing, as well as mobile devices (phones and laptops), wore devices (clothing and accessories, such as watches), and through a range of household appliances, as is already happening with refrigerators and television sets which are becoming so much more than they traditionally were.

More resources will be provided via the internet, and the content will increasingly be provided using virtual reality.

A related question arises; how will users consume the internet?

The ‘Internet of Things’ (also known as IoT), artificial intelligence, and big data will make people more aware of their world and their behaviour, and will likely lead to how we modify both.

For those not yet familiar with the expression the ‘Internet of Things’, it is the interconnection via the internet of computing devices embedded in everyday objects, enabling them to send and receive data.

As for more localised impacts of the internet, the idea of ‘smart regions’ is a target, and an ongoing work-in-progress, since the smart region has not yet been implemented completely, nor likely ever will be.

The presence of Charles Sturt University in regions is an example, because across a range of vital disciplines, the University not only provides qualified personnel to staff a range of industries and sectors, but it collaborates with numerous organisations to improve systems for service delivery and to enhance the environment.

Another example of the significance of the internet has been demonstrated throughout the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, with the internet enabling more people to work and study from home.

The Internet of Things is generating and will generate a large amount of data in real-time which are be stored and processed in fog and cloud computing, and will be widely used in regional areas.

In other words, people, agriculture, transport - everything from regions - will be connected to the internet. Regions will not be isolated, but rather will be connected to the world via the Internet.

At the tertiary education level, systems at Charles Sturt University will develop and deploy more internet course resources and applications, creating ‘intelligent campuses’. Augmented reality and virtual reality are already used to teach some subjects, and will be used increasingly.

Students will have digital profiles which keep the records of their learning experience at Charles Sturt, such as how many times they access the subject sites and when, thus creating digital profiles of students that can be part of the assessment of their studies.

Academics in the Charles Sturt School of Computing and Mathematics specialise in the areas of internet technologies and networking, and are involved in a number of international, national, and local research projects.

They supervise higher degree research students, publish widely in international journals and present at conferences, and are editors and editorial board members of international journals.

The Charles Sturt School of Computing and Mathematics internet research and development areas include but are not limited to: cybersecurity; artificial intelligence (AI); recommended systems; blockchain; web vulnerabilities; social media networks; anomaly-based intrusion detection; wireless sensor networks; Internet of Things (IoT); smart transportation systems; IoT in agriculture and environment; and prospects of the internet.

As a leading provider of information technology education and training in Australia, Charles Sturt IT courses have attracted a large number of students.

For example, Charles Sturt is one of CISCO’s leading Education Strategic Partners. We blend industry certifications (CISCO Certified Network Associate (CCNA) / Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP)) as the integral part of the courses.  

We will incorporate into our subjects some top emerging networking technologies, including machine reasoning, optical networking, cognitive radio and Citizens Broadband Radio Service, etc.

Charles Sturt offers courses on internet technologies and their applications at the undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels. Specifically, the topics of the subjects in these courses range widely from traditional technologies such as protocols, architraves, and wireless networks, to recently advanced ones such as Internet of Things, virtualisation, and cloud computing.