Featured Blogs

Network Design: If You Haven’t Found the Tradeoff…

This week, I ran into an interesting article over at Free Code Camp about design tradeoffs... If you think you've found a design with no tradeoffs, well... Guess what? You've not looked hard enough. This is something I say often enough, of course, so what's the point? The point is this: We still don't really think about this in network design. This shows up in many different places; it's worth taking a look at just a few. more

Popular ccTLDs for Domain Name Disputes

As I've written before, the registry operators for many country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) have adopted the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) or a variation of it, while other ccTLDs have crafted their own dispute policies, or none at all. Although no ccTLD appears as frequently as .com in domain name disputes, it's interesting to see which ccTLDs are subject to dispute the most often. more

A Look Back at How the Internet of Iraq Came to be Dependent on Telecoms Based in Kurdistan

On the 25th of September, the northern autonomous region of Iraq known as Kurdistan voted to become an independent country. This vote has led to a current standoff between the central Iraqi government and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), with the Kurds threatening to cut off internet service into Iraq in retaliation for any punitive measures inflicted by Baghdad on the KRG. The following analysis was written by Doug Madory of Oracle Dyn after ISIS took control of Mosul, Iraq in 2014. It describes how the internet of Iraq came to be dependent on international connections through telecoms based in Kurdistan. more

Cuba’s (Hopefully Limited) ADSL Expansion

In 2015, ETECSA announced/leaked a plan to make ADSL service available in 50% of Cuban homes by 2020. I was skeptical. Doing so would mean investing a lot of money for obsolete technology between 2015 and 2020. They have recently announced the availability of ADSL connectivity at homes in portions of seven cities and, by December, they say some home connectivity will be available in every province. more

Internet Week Guyana Advances Caribbean Tech Development Agenda

Around the world, the growing sophistication of cyber criminals is challenging the capacity of governments, businesses and individuals to defend themselves. In the Caribbean, governments are forging strategic partnerships with regional actors like the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) and the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), the region's largest volunteer-based community of network engineers, computer security experts and tech aficionados. more

Two More Crypto Holes

If you work in computer security, your Twitter feed and/or Inbox has just exploded with stories about not just one but two new holes in cryptographic protcols. One affects WiFi; the other affects RSA key pair generation by certain chips. How serious are these? I'm not going to go through the technical details. For KRACK, Matthew Green did an excellent blog post; for the other, full details are not yet available. There are also good articles on each of them. What's more interesting are the implications. more

ARIN Board Challenged to Diversify

Before the American Registry for Internet Numbers' 40th Public Policy Meeting closed last week, members were reminded that the elections for two seats on its Board of Trustees was an opportunity for needed change. The opening of polls last Thursday marked the end of an era. The clue was the candidates. For the first time in ARIN’s history, at least one seat on its board would not be filled by an elected white male. more

The Role of the BFR in SpaceX’s Satellite Internet Service

SpaceX started with their Falcon 1 booster followed by several versions of the Falcon 9. The Falcon Heavy will fly later this year, and the rocket that will take the first person to Mars is called, for now, the Big F*ing Rocket or BFR. The 150-ton BFR payload will be ten times that of the Falcon 9. It will have an extra landing-guidance engine for reliable reusability and SpaceX also expects to be able to soft-land and reuse the second-stage payload rocket as well as its protective nose cone, substantially reducing cost per launch. more

The Darkening Web: Is there Light at the end of the Tunnel?

In his book "The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace" (Penguin Books, New York 2017), Alexander Klimburg, an Austrian-American academic, gives "Internet Dreamers" a "Wake Up Call". He tells us the background-story why people start to be "anxious about the future of the Internet", as the recent ISOC Global Internet Report "Paths to Our Digital Future" has recognized. Klimburg refers to Alphabets CEO Erich Schmidt, who once said that "the Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity does not understand". more

ADNDRC Launches “Guide to HKIAC Domain Name Dispute Resolution”

In celebration of Hong Kong Arbitration Week (15-20 October 2017), the Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre (ADNDRC) at the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC), the first ICANN accredited Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) provider based in Asia, will launch its landmark Guide to HKIAC Domain Name Dispute Resolution (the "Guide"). more

Inevitability of Global Standards for Non-Terrestrial Spectrum Sharing

Three companies, SpaceX, OneWeb and Boeing have announced ambitious plans to put thousands of Internet-service satellites in non-geostationary low-Earth orbit (NGSO) and other companies like ViaSat and SES are currently operating hundreds of communication satellites in medium-Earth and higher, geostationary orbits. With so many satellites orbiting in different planes and at different altitudes, there are bound to be frequent "inline events"... more

Celebrating 167 Years of Public International Law for Cyber Security

On 30 September 1850 at Dresden, the first international treaty was issued among the first sovereign nations to internet their national electronic communication networks. It was known as the Dresden Convention, and culminated several weeks hammering out basic requirements and techniques to implement an internet spanning the Austro-German European continent at the time, and established a continuing "Union" of signatories to evolve the provisions of the treaty. more

Trademark Rights Paramount to Contract Rights for Domain Names

UDRP decisions come down from providers (principally from WIPO and the Forum) at the rate of 7 to 10 a day. Complainants mostly prevail; this is because in 90% of the cases (more or less that percentage) respondents have no plausible defense and generally don't bother appearing, although default alone is not conclusive of cybersquatting; there must be evidence of infringement. When complainants do not prevail, it is not because they lack rights... more

Will October Be Our Biggest Month Yet for .brand TLDs?

I'll admit I tend to get evangelical when I'm talking about .brands. To me and the team at Neustar, every development in this space is exciting and significant and we're always eager to share the latest news and insights. But you don't have to be a .brands nut to see that the last few weeks have shown some serious signs of momentum. And it makes me wonder, with everything that's developed in just the last week or two, could we be set for October to be the biggest month in .brands we've ever seen? more

“Keep Those Eyebrows Up!” - Cybersecurity at the Global Women’s Forum

News of cyberattacks is slowly becoming a new normal. We are still at a stage where high-profile cases, like the recent attack against the American credit reporting company Equifax, in which 145.5 million users had their personal information compromised, raise eyebrows. But we need those eyebrows to stay up because we should never accept cyber threats as the new normal. more