Featured Blogs

IGF 2015 Takes Action, Developing Best Practices to Address Internet Issues

After many months of hard work and preparation, the IGF community has published draft Best Practices on a range of key issues, complementing other intersessional efforts such as Policy Options for Connecting the Next Billion, and Dynamic Coalitions. Best Practices Forums (BPFs) offer the Internet governance community tangible ways to address Internet issues. more

Internet Society Releases Internet of Things (IoT) Overview: Understanding the Issues and Challenges

Near the end of the first decade of this century, the world reached an Internet milestone. The number of Internet-connected devices surpassed the number of people alive on planet Earth. At the time, seven billion devices had already been connected to the Internet, and this went completely unnoticed by most people. This moment represented an important sign of the rapid pace in which we are adopting technology and embracing Internet connectivity. more

Don’t Give up on Membership

Most of the ICANN community is headed to ICANN 54, the critical meeting in Dublin where some kind of an agreement on accountability reforms needs to be reached if the historic IANA transition is to take place. Only a few months ago, an open, multi-stakeholder process proposed to enhance ICANN's accountability by creating a very limited form of membership. It did not allow any individual in the world to become a member. It did not even allow any individual or organization with a domain name to become a member (as it should have). more

Rx for Dublin Progress: Board Transparency, Specificity, and Community Acknowledgement

In just a few days the ICANN 54 meeting will be up and running in Dublin, and schedule revisions are being implemented to devote even more time to discussion of accountability measures to accompany the transition of IANA stewardship. These developments come in the wake of the ICANN's Board pronouncement that it will not support either the "sole member" model (SMM) devise by the CCWG-ACCT (CCWG) after ten months of intensive labor, or even the "designator" model that it was considering as a possible fallback. more

The Cyber Security Ecosystem: Collaborate or Collaborate - It’s Your Choice

As cyber security as a field has grown in scope and influence, it has effectively become an 'ecosystem' of multiple players, all of whom either participate in or influence the way the field develops and/or operates. It's increasingly evident that, more than ever, it is crucial for those players to collaborate and work together to enhance the security posture of communities, nations and the globe. more

NANOG 65 Report

NANOG 65 was once again your typical NANOG meeting: a set of operators, vendors, researchers and others for 3 days, this time in Montreal in October. Here's my impressions of the meeting... The opening keynote was from Jack Waters from Level 3, which looked back over the past 25 years of the Internet, was interesting to me in its reference to the "Kingsbury Letter". more

IGF 2015 Tackling the Next Billion Online Challenge

Just two weeks ago, the United Nations hosted the Sustainable Development Summit (SDS) where the international community embraced a new global agenda. I was very pleased that ICTs were recognized as a crucial platform for the implementation of this agenda, which sets an ambitious goal to "significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020" (paragraph 9c of the text for the new Sustainable Development Goals). more

An Alternative to CCWG Overreach

ICANN is in the midst (I wouldn't yet say the middle) of its transition from oversight by the US Department of Commerce to oversight by something else. A Cross Community Working Group (CCWG) on Accountability delivered a long report in August that proposes a new oversight structure for ICANN. But it has the practical problem that the ICANN board really, really hates it. Having looked at it, I can't entirely blame them. more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 6: Final Thoughts

Today we just don't have an "Open" Internet. The massive proliferation of network-based middleware has resulted in an internet that has few remaining open apertures. Most of the time the packet you send is not precisely the packet I receive, and all too often if you deviate from a very narrowly set of technical constraints within this packet, then the packet you send is the packet I will never receive. more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 5: Security

Any form of public communications network necessarily exposes some information about the identity and activity of the user's of its services. The extent to which such exposure of information can be subverted and used in ways that are in stark opposition to the users' individual interests forms part of the motivation on the part of many users to reduce such open exposure to an absolute minimum. The tensions between a desire to protect the user through increasing the level of opacity of network transactions to third party surveillance, and the need to expose some level of basic information to support the functions of a network lies at the heart of many of the security issues in today's Internet. more

Mobile Broadband Penetration in Asia

The advent of mobile broadband triggered a huge change in broadband access across Asia. Following more than a decade of strong growth in almost all mobile markets in the region, an amazing transition to new generation mobile networks and services took place. By end 2014 there were a total of 1.2 billion mobile subscribers and with annual growth running at over 40% coming into 2015 the numbers were expected to hit 1.7 billion by end-2015. more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 4: Locality and Interdependence

The Internet was not originally designed as a single network that serviced much of the world's digital communications requirements. Its design was sufficiently flexible that it could be used in many contexts, including that of small network domains that were not connected to any other domain, through to large diverse systems with many tens of thousands of individual network elements. If that is indeed the case, then why is it that when networks wish to isolate themselves from the Internet, or when a natural calamity effectively isolates a network, the result is that the isolated network is often non-functional. more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 3: Local Filtering and Blocking

The public policy objectives in the area of content filtering and blocking space are intended to fulfil certain public policy objectives by preventing users within a country from accessing certain online content. The motives for such public policies vary from a desire to uphold societal values through to concessions made to copyright holders to deter the circulation of unauthorised redistribution of content. more

Generic Top Level Domain Insights for Q3 2015

Participants in the recently released Global Consumer described new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) as being "innovative", "trustworthy", "interesting", "informative", and "cutting edge". With such impressive descriptions, it appears that the industry has made significant progress in reaching the tipping point. Although Q3 reflects growth, it also highlights the varying degrees of performance and need for further advancement in developing consumer awareness and in turn, the health of the industry. more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 2: The Where and How of “Internet Fragmentation”

In defining what is meant by "Internet Fragmentation" it is useful to briefly describe what is meant by its opposite, an "Open and Coherent Internet". As we've explored in the previous section, "coherence" implies that each of the elements of the Internet are orchestrated to work together to produce a seamless Internet which does not expose the boundaries between discrete elements. more