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# Small, Secure, Interconnected: The next Internet Protocol


- **Date:** Thursday, Jul 9, 2026
- **Time:** 12:50–13:20 (30 min)
- **Room:** Stage 1
- **Event:** World Congress 2026 Europe

## Recording

[Watch recording](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100062-small-secure-interconnected-the-next-internet-protocol)

## Description

We keep building giant, centralized “one network to rule them all,” then spend years bolting on access controls, tickets, and spreadsheets. There’s an easier way: build small, human‑sized private networks that interconnect safely when you need them to. This talk shows how identity‑based networking, least‑privilege defaults, and explicit, auditable sharing let teams collaborate across companies without hair‑pin VPNs or six‑month firewall adventures. We’ll cover practical design patterns (identity as the perimeter; tags and groups, not subnets), the sharp edges you’ll hit (contractors, labs, and ghost machines), and a simple approach to cross‑organization access that you can explain to both auditors and developers. The goal is to make secure access boringly reliable and easy to revoke—so the fastest path is the secure path.


## Speaker

### [Ross Kukulinski](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@ross-kukulinski)

VP of Product & Interim VP Engineering, Tailscale


## Related talks at this congress

- [Trust Issues: Because Zero-Trust Isn’t Optional Anymore](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1097-trust-issues-because) — Jan Peer Stöcklmair
- [An alternative approach to digital sovereignty: Confidential Computing](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1380-an-alternative) — Mike Bursell
- [Beyond authentication: an open-source trust model for the agentic web](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1081-beyond) — Alexander Günsche, Sabrina Engling
- [The Developer Workstation Blind Spot: Why Your Security Stack Can't See What Matters Most](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1280-the-developer) — Marcus Wermuth