Featured Blogs

2022 Domain Name Year In Review

I can hardly believe it's that time of year again -- time for our annual top 10 year in review. Having been at this for more than 20 years, you'd think I'd seen it all? But with the domain name industry, things are always in flux, and I could never have predicted some of these items. So without further ado -- here are the top 10 biggest stories from 2022. more

ICANN’s Changing of the Guard – Part 1

On the 21st of December, ICANN announced that Goran Marby had stepped down as ICANN's sixth CEO. As the ICANN Board commences its search for its next CEO, I thought it would be useful to look back at ICANN's selection process for its previous CEOs and how each tended to be driven by the unique challenges confronting ICANN at that time. more

The Christmas Goat and IPv6 (Year 13)

2022 was not a normal year for me. We sold our company of almost 25 years to Interlan Gefle AB to Nordlo Group, and I also moved away from Gävle city to Boänge, a small rural village outside Sandviken where my ISP (AS20626) still isn't ready for IPv6 in my location.... ☹ ( I use a Mikrotik with a Wireguard tunnel to solve my IPv6 today.) It's 2023 when I'm writing this, and I can't understand why ISPs still haven't deployed IPv6! more

ISPs and the Digital Divide

It seems almost monthly that I am asked about the role that ISPs should take in making sure that we solve the digital divide. I think that people are somewhat shocked every time when I tell them this is not a role for ISPs. In explaining my answer, let me start by parsing what is meant by the question. We are about to see a lot of grant funding for getting computers into homes and training folks on how to use them. more

Space Weather and Broadband

There was an interesting phenomenon that happened in September when Starlink launched 49 new satellites. The satellites were successfully deployed by the rocket, but as the satellites were being maneuvered to reach the final orbital slots, there was a geomagnetic storm that caused 38 of the satellites to fall back to earth. Space storms happen when radiation affects the magnetosphere that surrounds the earth.  more

Does the UDRP Interfere With Free Speech Rights? – The StopSpectrum.com Decision

How to properly balance the commercial rights of a complainant with the free speech rights of a respondent has challenged a generation of Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) panelists. Panelists have adopted a variety of approaches and consensus has been elusive. Paragraph 4(c)(iii) of the Policy provides that a respondent may have a right or legitimate interest in a disputed domain name... more

Cuban Undersea Cable Politics

Undersea cables between the U. S. and Cuba have long been intertwined with politics. In 1887, The New York Times reported on the inauguration of a cable in support of the Cuban insurgents fighting for independence from Spain -- a precursor to the Spanish-American war. Phone service between the U.S. and Cuba began in 1921 with AT&T's installation of an undersea cable and AT&T dominated international telephony to Cuba until the 1990s. more

A New Definition of 6G

We now know how wireless carriers are going to continue the string of new G generations of cellular technology. 5G was originally defined to include spectrum up to 90 GHz or 100 GHz. In the last few years, international standards bodies have been developing new 6G standards in what is called the terahertz wavelengths between 100 GHz and 1 THz. more

Is Secured Routing a Market Failure?

The Internet represents a threshold moment for the communications realm in many ways. It altered the immediate end client of the network service from humans to computers. It changed the communications model from synchronized end-to-end service to asynchronous and from virtual circuits to packet switching. At the same time, there were a set of sweeping changes in the public communications framework... more

Internet Society Seeks Nominations for 2023 Board of Trustees

Are you (or someone you know) passionate about protecting the global, open Internet? And ensuring that it is available to everyone? Do you have experience in Internet policy, standards, or development? If so, please consider submitting a nomination for a seat on the Internet Society Board of Trustees to help guide the future of the organization. The Internet Society supports and promotes the development of the Internet ... more

A Repeat Performance for Cable TV 3Q22

Traditional cable providers in the United States continue to lose cable TV customers at the same fast pace as the second quarter of the year. In the third quarter, the cable companies list 1.68 million customers after losing over 1.65 million customers in the second quarter. These numbers come from Leichtman Research Group, which compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders, except for Cox, which is privately held and estimated. more

The Technical Problems of the UN’s Internet Governance Forum Will Not Simply Solve Themselves

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has, for several years, experienced technical problems that have nothing to do with the local staff or host countries of the event. In fact, the volunteers who were part of the local staff of its 17th edition, held in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, were constantly overcompensating for issues with a great deal of goodwill.  more

How Safe Are Your .KIDS?

This year has been one of the busiest years for domain launches in quite a while. Before the end of 2022, we'll see one more significant domain launch, namely .KIDS, on November 29, 2022. This extension is being launched as a safe space on the internet for children and parents. The registry has set out some very strict use policies to make this happen. Some companies have already registered their brands during the Sunrise Period, while others have taken up names in the Community Sunrise. more

FCC Implements Broadband Labels

The FCC voted recently to implement consumer broadband labels. This was required by section 60504 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The new rules will become effective after the Office of Management, and Budget approves the new rules and after the final notice is published in the federal register. ISPs will then generally have six months to implement the labels. The labels look a lot like the nutrition labels that accompany food. more

The DNS at the IGF

It's unclear what this means in the long run. Do bad actions and actors go undetected? Do we lose our visibility into network management? What is a "secure" network, and how do we secure it using traditional techniques of network perimeter traffic inspection when all the network traffic is opaque? If we can't see inside the DNS anymore, then how can we tell if (or when) the DNS has been captured by one or two digital behemoths? more