[CasearianDaoist]

This work is mostly derived from Internet2 and abilene. I do not see the visionary work her. You could have published the list of abstracts 20 years ago and still have gotten an international flavor to them (and then we were all told the the ISO standard way much more nuanced and superior to TCP/IP dontchaknow.) It is the IEEE after all. I remain unconvinced. Try doing some search for lambda networks and that sort of technology.

In fact, I predict that we will not even be using TCP IP in another 12 years. The US is way out on the forefront of protocol technology - "internationalist PC geek" editor policy notwithstanding. Just the amount of research dollars alone dwarfts the rest of the world. Do you really think it is going to come out of the Univ. of Waterloo or Beijing? I stand by my statement.

[Lessismore]

It is the IEEE after all.

The "I" stands for "Institute", not "International".

While this issue may be oriented towards the technologies you cite, other issues cover the whole field.

In communications technology, Europe and Asia are now as advanced as the US. This was not the case as recently as the '80s.

Besides the research work being done outside the US, there are excellent commercial companies, e.g. Nokia in wireless, Bookham in integrated optics, JDS Uniphase in optical components, etc.

The US doesn't have any particular lead in lambda networking. Unless, lacking a George Gilder, they have a "hype gap".