Featured Blogs

5G for Fixed Connectivity in Cuba

ETECSA reports that over 110,100 Cuban households have DSL connectivity using their Nauta Hogar service. There are also shared facilites – 986 WiFi hotspots (127 in Havana) and 347 Navigation Rooms (44 in Havana) with 1,309 computers (304 in Havana). These services are dead-ends on the road to hoped-for "computerization." The Cuban population is around 11 million so, after three years, roughly one person in 100 lives in a Nauta home and the services are limited geographically... more

The Early History of Usenet, Part III: File Format

When we set out to design the over-the-wire file format, we were certain of one thing: we wouldn't get it perfectly right. That led to our first decision: the very first character of the transmitted file would be the letter "A" for the version. Why not a number on the first line, including perhaps a decimal point? If we ever considered that, I have no recollection of it. more

The Early History of Usenet, Part II: Hardware and Economics

There was a planning meeting for what became Usenet at Duke CS. We knew three things, and three things only: we wanted something that could be used locally for administrative messages, we wanted a networked system, and we would use uucp for intersite communication. This last decision was more or less by default: there were no other possibilities available to us or to most other sites that ran standard Unix. Furthermore, all you needed to run uucp was a single dial-up modem port. more

The Early History of Usenet, Part I: The Technological Setting

Usenet -- Netnews -- was conceived almost exactly 40 years ago this month. To understand where it came from and why certain decisions were made the way they were, it's important to understand the technological constraints of the time. Metanote: this is a personal history as I remember it. None of us were taking notes at the time; it's entirely possible that errors have crept in, especially since my brain cells do not even have parity checking, let alone ECC. Please send any corrections. more

Cybersecurity Standards Practices as Cyber Threats

One of the most embarrassing and pernicious realities in the world of cybersecurity is the stark reality that some industry cybersecurity standards practices are themselves cyber threats. How so? Most industry and intergovernmental standards bodies serve as means for assembling the constantly evolving collective knowledge of participant experts and package the resulting specifications and best practices as freely available online documents to a vast, diverse universe of users. more

Do Cable Companies Have a Wireless Advantage?

The big wireless companies have been wrangling for years with the issues associated with placing small cells on poles. Even with new FCC rules in their favor, they are still getting a lot of resistance from communities. Maybe the future of urban/suburban wireless lies with the big cable companies. Cable companies have a few major cost advantages over the wireless companies, including the ability to bypass the pole issue. The first advantage is the ability to deploy mid-span cellular small cells. more

Trump’s Strange WRC-19 Letter

The 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-19) is underway. It is the latest in a continuum of treaty-making gatherings that began in 1903 and is devoted to the now 116-year-old art of globally carving up the radio spectrum among designated uses that is instantiated in the Radio Regulations treaty agreement. Not unexpectedly, the event includes designation of 5G spectrum that flows from the requirements long set in 3GPP and GSMA. more

What to Expect From SpaceX Starlink Broadband Service Next Year and Beyond

Last May, SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted "6 more launches of 60 sats needed for minor coverage, 12 for moderate" and SpaceX President and CEO Gwynne Shotwell recently said they planned to be offering service in parts of the US in mid-2020, which would require six to eight 60-satellite launches. The first of those launches will be in the middle of this month on a thrice-flown Falcon 9 booster. (They will also need customer terminals and Elon Musk has used a prototype to post a tweet from his home). more

DNS Wars

The North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG) is now quite an institution for the Internet, particularly in the North American Internet community. It was an offshoot of the Regional Techs meetings, which were part of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) framework of the late 80s and early 90s. NANOG has thrived since then and is certainly one of the major network operational forums in today's Internet – if not the preeminent forum for network operators for the entire Internet. more

Considerations on the High-Level Panel’s “Internet Governance Forum Plus” Model

The Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will convene in Berlin three weeks from tomorrow. One of the highlights of the meeting could be the main session on Internet Governance and Digital Cooperation that is to be held on Day 1, 26 November 2019. The session is to consider some of the recommendations contained in the June report from the UN Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation, most notably the panel's proposal to revamp the IGF... more

Challenging Domain Names for Abusive Registration: UDRP and ACPA

There are predatory-domain name registrants, and there are registrants engaged in the legitimate business of acquiring, monetizing and reselling domain names. That there are more of the first than the second is evident from proceedings under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). "Given the human capacity for mischief in all its forms, the Policy sensibly takes an open-ended approach to bad faith, listing some examples without attempting to enumerate all its varieties exhaustively. more

More Privacy for Domain Registrants – Heightened Risk for Internet Users

A recent exchange on CircleID highlighted a critical need for data to inform the debate on the impact of ICANN's post-GDPR WHOIS policy that resulted in the redaction of domain name registrant contact data. A bit of background: in my original post, I made the point that domain name abuse had increased post-GDPR. A reader who works with a registrar (according to his bio) commented: "Can you back up that statement with data? Our abuse desk has actually seen a reduction in abuse complaints." more

Monetising Solutions for the Telcos

Developments in the telecommunications industry and the broader digital economy have opened up many new markets over the last few decades. Telecoms has changed from a more or less standalone, horizontally-organized industry to one that has become a key facilitator in a range of vertical markets. The keyword that is used to indicate that change is "smart." We are talking about smart transport, smart energy, smart cities and so on. more

Will Legacy TLDs Have a Long Legacy?

We all live in a world where the rapid pace of innovation can be both exciting and challenging. From keeping up with the latest consumer technologies, such as new mobile apps, social media platforms, and digital assistants like Alexa to business-driven innovations like Things (IoT) to Artificial Intelligence, the one certain thing we all face is change. In the Top-Level Domain (TLD) arena, can the same be said about legacy TLDs? more

.COM Contract Amendment Coming Soon for Public Comment

Last Thursday, during VeriSign's Q3 2019 quarterly earnings call, CEO Jim Bidzos offered statements that seemed to be carefully calibrated to satisfy Wall Street's curiosity about protracted negotiations with ICANN on a Third Amendment to the .com Registry Agreement while also appearing to distance the company from the soon-to-be forthcoming product of that year-long effort. more