Re: Network Information API

Hi all,

Quick question, is there any discussions on the privacy and security implications of network api somewhere? If not, it might be a good idea to consider that aspect, too.

All the best,
Ehsan

From: Thomas Steiner <tomac@google.com>
Date: Thursday, 22 October 2020 at 12:25
To: Yoav Weiss <yoav@yoav.ws>
Cc: Thomas Steiner <tomac@google.com>, Tarun Bansal <tbansal@google.com>, Noam Helfman <noamh@microsoft.com>, Ilya Grigorik <igrigorik@google.com>, Addy Osmani <addyo@google.com>, W3C Devices and Sensors WG <public-device-apis@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Network Information API
Resent from: <public-device-apis@w3.org>
Resent date: Thursday, 22 October 2020 at 12:24

On Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 10:00 AM Yoav Weiss <yoav@yoav.ws<mailto:yoav@yoav.ws>> wrote:
+Tarun Bansal<mailto:tbansal@google.com> +Noam Helfman<mailto:noamh@microsoft.com>  - FYI

Hey Thomas!

This was somewhat discussed in the WebPerformance WG yesterday (rough minutes<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1inejuvPONXPOLKTCcUzOBhPh6QOckMcltnR-E3xyZVQ/edit?ts=5f809f01#heading=h.8gfnc7p4nih>, video<https://youtu.be/aID3BvpU_pE>).
Regarding spec work, at least on my end, there's desire (but not necessarily immediate capacity) to revamp the API to ensure it provides more value to developers while emitting less entropy.

Yeah, the objective is shared between the two WGs :-)

The use cases, at least as far as I'm concerned, are not around `type`, but around providing accurate measurement of the network conditions (so around `effectiveConnectionType` and `RTT`). (e.g. this blog post<https://blog.algolia.com/netinfo-api-algolia-javascript-client/>)

Just to clarify, I meant the use cases as outlined in the spec<https://wicg.github.io/netinfo/#requirements-and-use-cases>. Marcos Caceres confirmed my suspicion that it all started with .type, and then later on more details were added, but the use cases in the spec not updated.

Maybe Addy has more case studies.

That would be great!

If folks at Device & Sensors are interested in collaborating on NetInfo at the WICG or elsewhere, that'd be awesome! :)

We're definitely interested, judging from the discussion today.

Cheers,
Tom