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Facebook spent just short of $1 million dollars on lobbying from July to September this year, more than double the amount it spent during the same period a year ago, public records show.

The social network spent $980,000 on lobbying in the third quarter, a giant leap from the $360,000 it spent during the third quarter of 2011. Facebook's record lobbying spending is sign of the social network continuing to flex its muscle in Washington as it faces concerns from lawmakers on online privacy and the policies it has in place to protect its wealth of user data. Facebook's total lobbying spending for the first nine months of this year tallied in at nearly $2.6 million, almost double the $1.3 million the social network spent in all of 2011. It also marks the second quarter in a row that Facebook has spent nearly $1 million on lobbying.

Continuing ratings struggles at Nickelodeon opened the door for PBS and Disney Channel to snag more spots in the top 10 programs among kids 2-5 in September, according to Nielsen NPower national program ratings for the month.

Last month, PBS held six of the top 10 programs, Disney Channel had three and Nickelodeon had two. In September 2011, Nickelodeon held five of the top 10 shows while PBS had four and Disney Channel had one. Two of the top 10 preschool programs in September of this year were new shows -- PBS' Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, which premiered in September, and Disney's Doc McStuffins, which launched in March. It was PBS' strongest ratings with kids 2-5 in 10 years, with the public broadcaster owning the top six spots for Curious George, Thomas & Friends, Cat in the Hat, Super Why!, Daniel Tiger's and Dinosaur Train.

The internet is a pretty communist institution: when you sent a packet over the web, it may go through a dozen different networks, but in most cases no money changes hands. Somebody at each connection point has simply given their okay to exchange the traffic with your ISP or any one of the other links in the chain. Kind of like when you spot your friends a beer knowing they’ll cover your drink in the next round. And that’s how 99.5 percent of the interconnections take place between global networks work.

According to a study from the OECD covering peering arrangements between providers of bandwidth around the world, most interconnections take place “on a handshake basis, with no written contract and the exchange of data happening with no money changing hands.” This new OECD report notes that the benefits of this approach to peering have brought prices for data down to 100,000 times less than that of a voice minute. Thanks to a survey of 4,300 networks, representing 140,000 direct exchanges of traffic on the internet, the study offers up evidence that less regulation on the internet is a good thing, even if it doesn’t seem initially to protect the consumer interest.

Academic researchers have improved wireless bandwidth by an order of magnitude -- not by adding base stations, tapping more spectrum, or cranking up transmitter wattage, but by using algebra to banish the network-clogging task of resending dropped packets. By providing new ways for mobile devices to solve for missing data, the technology not only eliminates this wasteful process but also can seamlessly weave data streams from Wi-Fi and LTE -- a leap forward from other approaches that toggle back and forth.

"Any IP network will benefit from this technology," says Sheau Ng, vice president for research and development at NBC Universal. Several companies have licensed the underlying technology in recent months, but the details are subject to nondisclosure agreements, says Muriel Medard, a professor at MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics and a leader in the effort. Elements of the technology were developed by researchers at MIT, the University of Porto in Portugal, Harvard University, Caltech, and Technical University of Munich. The licensing is being done through an MIT/Caltech startup called Code-On Technologies.