Featured Blogs

Not So Private Thoughts at IETF 105

At IETF 105, held in Montreal at the end of July, the Technical Plenary part of the meeting had two speakers on the topic of privacy in today's Internet, Associate Professor Arvind Narayanan of Princeton University and Professor Stephen Bellovin of Colombia University. They were both quite disturbing talks in their distinct ways, and I'd like to share my impressions of these two presentations and then consider what privacy means for me in today's Internet. more

Open Access for Apartment Buildings

San Francisco recently passed an interesting ordinance that requires that landlords of apartments and multi-tenant business buildings allow access to multiple ISPs to bring broadband. This ordinance raises all sorts of regulatory and legal questions. At the most recent FCC monthly meeting, the FCC jumped into the fray and voted on language that is intended to kill or weaken the ordinance. more

Recalibrating the DoH Debate

At the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) it is time we accept the wide range of drivers behind (and implications of) standards and for stakeholders to start listening to each other. A protocol recently released by the IETF, DNS over HTTPS (DoH), is at the centre of an increasingly polarised debate. This is because DoH uses encryption in the name of security and privacy and re-locates DNS resolution to the application layer of the Internet. more

A Mexican Standoff in Wonderland

Wikipedia defines a Mexican standoff as "a confrontation in which no strategy exists that allows any party to achieve victory. As a result, all participants need to maintain the strategic tension, which remains unresolved until some outside event makes it possible to resolve it." This would be an apt way to describe what may be possibly occurring presently between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and its largest ratepayer, VeriSign. more

Latecomer Amazon Will Be a Formidable Satellite ISP Competitor

In spite of being a latecomer to the race to deploy a constellation of low-Earth orbit (LEO) broadband Internet satellites, Amazon's Project Kuiper will be a formidable competitor. SpaceX, OneWeb and Telesat already have test satellites in orbit, but Amazon has several strategic advantages. For a start, each of the LEO broadband competitors plans to end the digital divide by providing global connectivity to end-users and small organizations in underserved areas... more

We Need Public 5G Spectrum

Last October the FCC issued a Notice for Proposed Rulemaking that proposed expanding WiFi into the 6 GHz band of spectrum (5.925 to 7.125 GHz). WiFi has been a huge economic boon to the country, and the FCC recognizes that providing more free public spectrum is a vital piece of the spectrum puzzle. Entrepreneurs have found a myriad of inventive ways to use WiFi that go far beyond what carriers have provided with licensed spectrum. more

The Internet and My 53 Years Online

With the upcoming celebration of the 50 years of the Internet, I'm trying to figure out how the traditional story misses the powerful idea that has made the Internet what it is -- the ability to focus on solutions without having to think about the network or providers. It's not the web -- thought that is one way to use the opportunity. The danger in a web-centric view is that it leads one to make the Internet better for the web while closing the frontier of innovation. more

GDPR Fine Enough or More Disclosure?

The UK cares about its citizens' privacy to the tune of a $229 million (US) fine of British Airways for a breach that disclosed information of approximately half a million customers. It's exciting -- a significant fine for a significant loss of data. I think GDPR will lead to improved security of information systems as companies scramble to avoid onerous fines and start to demand more from those who provide information security services and products. more

The Untold History of the First Cyber Moonshot

A dialogue between Michael Warner (Historian, United States Cyber Command) and Tony Rutkowski (Cybersecurity engineer, lawyer and historian). Michael is chairing a cyber history panel at the October biennial Symposium on Cryptologic History hosted by the National Security Agency; his panel will include discussion of the almost unknown key role of cryptologist Ruth Nelson leading a team in the 1980s in a major initiative to secure public internet infrastructure. more

New TLD Applications: What’s the Status of the Next Round?

For many industry participants, the timing around opening the next round of new Top-Level Domain applications has been frustrating, to say the least. However, with the recent ICANN Marrakech meeting now complete, we thought it timely to provide an update for those who may be interested to apply in the next round or for those merely following the journey. more

The Question of Fairness in UDRP Decision-Making

In disputes under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), parties should be able to rely on Panels delivering predictable, consistent, and legally reasoned decisions. In large measure, this depends on Panels analyzing the facts objectively through a neutral lens and applying principles of law consistent with the jurisprudence. However, the results are not always seen by the losing party as having achieved a fair result. more

The Ageless Warning of Icarus

It wasn't that long ago that, during a visit home, my brother asked me, "Why are you so stuck on this Internet thing?" His direct question caused me to realize that I had never actually stopped and considered why I was investing so much time – and in such a highly visible manner – into Internet governance when I wasn't being compensated for doing so and, in fact, was – not putting too fine of a point on it – flat broke. more

Will Broadband Go Wireless?

For years it's been impossible to go to any industry forum without meeting a few folks who predict that residential broadband will go wireless. This buzz has accelerated with the exaggerated claims that fast 5G broadband is right around the corner. I've seen even more talk about this due to a recent Pew poll that shows that the number of people that only use their cellphones for data has climbed significantly over the last few years – I'm going to discuss that poll in another upcoming blog. more

How the Internet Can Be Enormously Accelerated Without Fiber-Optic Cables or LEO Satellites

We got used to it: if we open a website, it's always like stop and go on a high-traffic highway or city traffic jam. At some point, we will reach the destination. The constant stalling is due to a traffic rule for the Internet called TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). The TCP/IP protocol family comes from the American defense industry. It was introduced by DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) in the early 1970s. At that time, no one had the Internet as the need of the masses on the screen. more

DNS and the Internet of Things: Opportunities, Risks, and Challenges

The ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) has recently published SAC105, a report on the interplay between the DNS and the Internet of Things (IoT). Unlike typical SSAC publications, SAC105 does not provide particular recommendations to the ICANN Board, but instead is informative in nature and intends to trigger and facilitate dialogue in the broader ICANN community. more