Featured Blogs

Broadband and Food Safety

I recently saw a presentation that showed how food safety is starting to rely on good rural broadband. I've already witnessed many other ways that farmers use broadband like precision farming, herd monitoring, and drone surveillance, but food safety was a new concept for me. The presentation centered around the romaine lettuce scare of a few months ago. The food industry was unable to quickly identify the source of the contaminated produce and the result was a recall of all romaine nationwide. more

A Closer Look at the “Sovereign Runet” Law

In December 2018, a bill on the "stable operation" of the Russian segment of the Internet was introduced and got the title "Sovereign Runet" in mass media and among the public. It was adopted after 5 months later, despite doubts about the technical feasibility of its implementation. The law is very ambitious in its intent to simultaneously control Internet traffic and protect Runet from some external threats, but legislators still have no idea how it would actually work. more

SpaceX Reports Significant Broadband Satellite Progress

SpaceX delayed last Wednesdays Starlink launch due to high winds and on Thursday they decided to do a software update and postpone the launch until next week, but they revealed significant progress in their Starlink mission press release and in tweets by and a media call with Elon Musk. The mission press release said SpaceX has significantly reduced the size and weight of their satellites. more

A Report on the ICANN DNS Symposium

By any metric, the queries and responses that take place in the DNS are highly informative of the Internet and its use. But perhaps the level of interdependencies in this space is richer than we might think. When the IETF considered a proposal to explicitly withhold certain top-level domains from delegation in the DNS the ensuing discussion highlighted the distinction between the domain name system as a structured space of names and the domain name system as a resolution space... more

Know Someone Who Has Made the Internet Better? Postel Service Award Nominations Deadline May 15

Do you know of someone who has made the Internet better in some way who deserves more recognition? Maybe someone who has helped extend Internet access to a large region? Or wrote widely-used programs that make the Internet more secure? Or maybe someone who has been actively working for open standards and open processes for the Internet? more

Gall’s Law and the Network

In Systemantics: How Systems Really Work and How They Fail, John Gall says: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system." In the software development world, this is called Gall's Law... more

How Do You Know if You’re Choosing the Best IP Geolocation API?

If you can't address your customers and the people interacting with your network face to face, at least know where they are -- anywhere in the world, anytime you want to. That's possible with geolocation technology, and many businesses are keen on acquiring the best IP geolocation API for cybersecurity and other purposes. However, before committing to a particular solution, each product needs to be carefully evaluated according to the exact needs of a prospective buyer. more

Satellite Internet Service Progress by SpaceX and Telesat

This has been a busy week in the race to deploy constellations of low-earth orbit (LEO) Internet-service satellites. In their quarterly report, Telesat mentioned progress in two, disparate markets. As I noted earlier, they have signed their first LEO customer - Omniaccess a provider of connectivity to the superyacht market. more

Efficient Threat Intelligence: Learning the Secrets

How can our threat intelligence platform deliver more? This is a question many business professionals employing threat intelligence practices are asking themselves as their companies continue to fall short against the machinations of modern-day cybercriminals. The truth is that while threat intelligence is certainly not a silver bullet, organizations often make a mistake when they opt for a platform without considering several important factors that can help them evaluate the market better and deploy the practice more effectively. more

Understanding 5G: A Basic Primer

The initial, essential step toward understanding 5G is to perform an intellectual body purge of the endless disgorging of cluelessness and disinformation that emerges from the Washington White House and radiates out around that city and then to the outside world that it infects. The institutes, pundits, self-professed experts, summits, and even the U.S. press all pretty much feed out of the same trough of 5G political slop that gets passed around as incantations of ignorance, spin, and K-street lobbying. more

UDRP Complaint: Actually, a Motion for Summary Judgment

Trademark owners (and here I'm talking about those with U.S. registrations even if they are foreign entities) have a choice of forum for challenging alleged cybersquatting domain names. They can either sue in district court under the ACPA, or get a quicker and less expensive result by filing a complaint and asserting a claim under the UDRP. But to get to a quicker and less expensive result everything about the process is accelerated, and this begins with drafting the complaint. more

What Is the Business Case for 5G?

There is much hype around 5G, but none of it is new. We saw the same propaganda -- fueled by the manufacturers -- in the run-up to the launch of the 3G and 4G versions of the mobile technology. Driverless cars and a range of other IoT applications can indeed potentially open new revenue streams. The reality, however, is that these markets might not eventuate until somewhere between 2025 and 2030. more

Greater Caribbean Cooperation Needed to Combat Cyber Crimes

The Caribbean is under virtual siege as incidents of cyber attacks and cyber crimes surge across the region. "The sophisticated use of technology by highly incentivised criminal organisations has created unprecedented opportunities for transnational crime elements that no one region, country or entity can fight on its own. More inter-regional cooperation and collaboration are needed to develop and implement smart and integrated approaches to fight new and emerging cyber threats." more

The Borg in Us All: Is Resistance Futile?

One of the main roles played by science fiction is to portray fundamental issues and questions that face humanity long before they actually become relevant to our daily lives. We cannot always be sure of where our reality ends, and fiction begins. Star Trek storylines including Borgs are a good example. In the storyline, Borgs are part organic, part artificial and created eons ago, yet they seem to presage the challenges in our contemporary personal reality and challenges in the Internet's cyberspace. more

Spamtraps Are Overblown… by Senders

One of the fascinating parts of my job is seeing how different groups in email have radically disparate points of view. A current example is how much value senders put on spamtraps compared to ISPs and filtering companies. I understand why this is. In all too many cases, when a sender asks why they're mail is going to bulk or being blocked, the answer is "you're hitting spamtraps." The thing is, spamtraps are almost never the only reason mail is being blocked. more