The major failure of air-traffic control yesterday was yet another sign that our outdated radar-based system needs to be replaced with a sleek new satellite-based one, right? That's the logical progression of much of the coverage out there.

The reality is that, yes, the system needs to be replaced. But yesterday's failure was a high-tech one that could afflict a system based on satellites, too.

The problem wasn't directly related to radar, but with the National Airspace Data Interchange Network, a system for processing flight plans and information for all flights in the country. It failed in both of its locations: Salt Lake City and Atlanta. This meant that automated regional FAA systems couldn't process flight information. As a result, controllers had to enter information manually. This caused delays that rippled across the country. "A satellite-based system would have had the same problem," R. John Hansman, an MIT aerospace and air traffic control expert, wrote to me this afternoon.

The Federal Aviation Administration hopes to roll out a Global Positioning System-based control system, called Next Generation or NextGen, in stages. By 2020 most planes will carry a cockpit gadget that continuously broadcasts the planes' GPS-derived location, altitude, and speed to ground controllers. In later years, the system will extend so that this information is picked up by other planes, too, so that pilots can gain more control over their routing and spacing. As they beam their position information to one another they'll be able, to some extent, to self-navigate. However, there will always be an FAA air-traffic system keeping track. It's unlikely that pilots will ever be permitted to make all takeoff, routing, and landing decisions entirely by themselves in the event of failures of national air-traffic computers, as happened yesterday.

The specter of the FCC's "Net neutrality" regulations looming over the wireless Internet are shaping events unfolding this week.

On Tuesday, in a turnabout, AT&T said it would allow iPhone owners to use Internet telephone services such as Skype via its 3G wireless network instead of just Wi-Fi. This means that people with Internet data plans can cut back on phone minutes and make near-free international calls via the wireless Internet.

Then, today, Google and Verizon Wireless agreed to collaborate on phones, PDAs, and netbooks, creating a mobile-Internet juggernaut based on Google's open-source Android mobile operating system. This will pose another big challenge to AT&T and Apple, which have sold more than 50 million iPhone and iPod Touch gadgets. Verizon has more than 87 million customers.

Interestingly, AT&T's turnabout came amid an FCC investigation into why Apple rejected Google Voice, telephony software for the iPhone. But the context is broader than that: the FCC's chairman--Obama appointee Julius Genachowski--announced in a recent speech that he would propose Net neutrality regulations that would force Internet services providers to offer equal access to the Web and all of its services and applications to all customers. Importantly, he made it clear that these proposed rules would also apply to wireless Internet access. (The actual draft regulations are due later this month.)

Skype complained to the FCC two years ago about AT&T blocking its software on iPhones. The impact could be huge: Skype says its iPhone and iPod Touch applications have been downloaded six million times.

"These two recent developments show that the devices are becoming less of a bottleneck to choosing carriers and applications, meaning that there's healthy competition even in the wireless arena," says Mung Chiang, a Princeton electrical engineering professor who is working on broadband access algorithms.

Today Genachowski hailed AT&T's move as "a decision I commend." Also citing Verizon's announcement, he added: "These are both wins for consumers."

The Somniloquy network adapter. Credit: Microsoft / UCSD.

While working on a story about routing Iinternet data based on electricity price fluctuations, I came across a clever idea for reducing the amount of power used by ordinary computers.

Researchers at Microsoft and UCSD created a network adapter dubbed Somniloquy (meaning to talk in one's sleep) that can process network traffic autonomously, allowing a computer's CPU, hard disk, display, and I/O buses to be powered down without losing connectivity.

As Bruce Maggs, VP of research at Akamai, points out in the story, energy-aware routing will only work if hardware uses significantly less power when idle. After we spoke, he sent me a link to the Somniloquy research project noting that it could help make existing hardware more power efficient.

The Microsoft-UCSD network interface (described in this paper) could take over many network-related tasks like bit torrent file-sharing, and managing a remote desktop connection and a VOIP account, allowing the connected machine to enter sleep mode without losing its network link.

The adapter consists of a gumstix module with a 200 MHz XScale processor, 64 MB of RAM, and a 2-GB SD memory card running embedded Linux. When the adapter detects that the connected machine has entered sleep mode, it copies over networking information and carries out simple communications on its behalf.

The researchers also show that the adapter can perform more complex tasks for its host. For example, they created a modified IM client capable of responding to network messages and waking the host computer when a proper message is received. They also developed a compact bit torrent client that continues to download a file while the host is in low-power mode.

It's a smart idea and I wouldn't be surprised to see such features in future desktop and laptop computers, especially as energy use becomes an increasing concern.