Featured Blogs

Domain Name System to Be Featured Prominently in Upcoming Review of EU Safe Harbor Rules

In July 2019, Netzpolitik and others leaked an internal document by DG Connect that outlines the European Commission's thoughts on an update of the E-Commerce Directive. Based on this document, it seems that the domain name system and its actors will be prominently addressed in the Ursula von der Leyen's Commission-cycle from 2019 to 2025. more

Collaboration: A Means to Boost Enterprise Network Protection

In an age where cyber threats and attacks have reached a point of ubiquity, managing your organization's network security single-handedly may no longer be sufficient. The increasing volume and sophistication of threats, not to mention the continuous advancement in attack tools and their perpetrators' skills and know-how, has led to concerns on whether potential targets can keep up. more

Unlicensed Millimeter Wave Spectrum

I haven't seen it talked about a lot, but the FCC has set aside millimeter wave spectrum that can be used by anybody to provide broadband. That means that entities will be able to use the spectrum in rural America in areas that the big cellphone companies are likely to ignore. The FCC set aside the V band (60 GHz) as unlicensed spectrum. This band provides 14 GHz of contiguous spectrum available for anybody to use. This is an interesting spectrum because it has a few drawbacks. more

The Operationalization of Norms and Principles on Cybersecurity

With two simultaneous processes getting underway in the UN General Assembly's First Committee, the UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) and the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on Cybersecurity, and several technology and multi-stakeholder initiatives pushing cybersecurity improvement, the world of cyber norms has become both more interesting and more complicated. more

DoH Creates More Problems Than It Solves

Unlike most new IETF standards, DNS over HTTPS has been a magnet for controversy since the DoH working group was chartered on 2017. The proposed standard was intended to improve the performance of address resolutions while also improving their privacy and integrity, but it's unclear that it accomplishes these goals. On the performance front, testing indicates DoH is faster than one of the alternatives, DNS over TLS (DoT). more

What Is the Purpose of ICANN’s Comment Periods?

Almost every institution which purports to provide space for public accountability includes some sort of formalized process by which the public can have their say. And in almost every instance, they struggle with a tension between the desire to provide a commenting process which is meaningful and substantive (or, at least, which appears to be so), and a desire to adopt whatever course of action the institution thinks is best. more

What is a Security Mechanism?

Orin Kerr recently blogged about a 9th Circuit decision that held that scraping a public web site (probably) doesn't violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)... On its surface, it makes sense – you can't steal something that's public – but I think the simplicity of the rule is hiding some profound questions. One, I believe, can most easily be expressed as "what is the cost of the 'attack'"? That is, how much effort must someone expend to get the data? Does that matter? Should it? more

IGF Best Practice Forums, an Opportunity to Bring Your Experience to the Policy Debate

In the run-up to the 14th Internet Governance Forum in Berlin, Germany, 25 to 29 November, different groups are discussing best practices pertaining to specific internet governance policy questions. These groups are open and thrive on your input and experiences. Their findings will be presented at the IGF and published shortly after. The IGF Best Practice Forums intend to inform internet governance policy debates by drawing on the immense and diverse range of experience and expertise... more

The Internet of the Future – What Happens Behind the Scenes?

Today's Internet is a critical infrastructural element whose continued development influences industries, cultures, and the private space of most individuals. However, the world-encompassing network sometimes needs to be adapted to new requirements to keep pace with current innovations. We have recently seen accelerating development of Internet usage on the user side. Whether it is online shopping's expansion or the greater distribution of mobile devices or streaming services... more

Busy Skies: Weighing the Downside of Launching Huge Numbers of Satellites for Broadband

I was looking over the stated goals of the broadband satellite companies and was struck by the sheer numbers of satellites that are being planned. The table further down in the blog shows plans for nearly 15,000 new satellites. To put this into perspective, consider the number of satellites ever shot into space. The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (NOOSA) has been tracking space launches for decades. more

Corporate Domain Name Management Becoming More Difficult – Is Anyone Surprised?

Brandsight recently concluded their Third Annual Domain Management Survey. Designed to uncover issues of greatest concern to corporate domain name professionals, the survey was sent to more than 300 companies. The companies that responded spanned all verticals, ranging from financial services to high-tech to consumer packaged goods. Of those that responded, 18% had portfolios smaller than 500 domains... more

Keeping a Free and Open Internet Starts at the Root

??Dynamics at the Internet's core erode stakeholder legitimacy and aid Sino-Russian efforts for multilateral control. ???At the beginning of what became a prolonged process for privatization, the U.S. Government established a framework of fundamental guiding principles for governance of the Internet's root. These principles were designed to work to preserve a free and open nature for a global network that was to be elastic, extensible, and – at more than two decades – enduring. more

The Utility Formerly Known As WHOIS

Muscle memory is a funny thing. We don't even think about it really, but when we do the same thing over and over again, it just becomes second nature to us. This is how we've come to use WHOIS over the past two decades to get contact information for registered domain names. If you wanted to see who owned a domain, you'd simply do a WHOIS search. I've probably done hundreds of thousands of them during my time in the industry. Well as of this week, a major step in the retirement of WHOIS officially took place. more

Inter-Satellite Laser Link Update

Inter-satellite laser links (ISLLs) and electronically steerable flat panel antennas are critical technologies for constellations of low-Earth orbit (LEO) Internet-service satellites. Low-cost antennas are critical for the mass consumer market, and ISLLs are required for an effective Internet backbone in space. In an earlier post, we saw that progress is being made on antennas; this one looks at ISLLs. more

DNS-over-HTTPS: Privacy and Security Concerns

The design of DNS included an important architectural decision: the transport protocol used is user datagram protocol (UDP). Unlike transmission control protocol (TCP), UDP is connectionless, stateless, and lightweight. In contrast, TCP needs to establish connections between end systems and guarantees packet ordering and delivery. DNS handles the packet delivery reliability aspect internally and avoids all of the overhead of TCP. There are two problems this introduces. more