Featured Blogs

Rodney Joffe Wins a Well-Deserved Mary Litynski Award

Every year M3AAWG gives an award for lifetime work in fighting abuse and making the Internet a better place. Yesterday at its Dublin meeting they awarded it to Rodney Joffe, who has been quietly working for over 20 years. I can't imagine anyone who deserves it more. more

8 Things to Look for in a Registrar Automation Platform

In today's world, domain name registrars play a very important role in the functioning of the domain name ecosystem. This is in stark contrast from the Registry-dominated industry most of us have been used to seeing over the past decade. After the introduction of New gTLDs, Registrars have been elevated to a strategic and important pedestal because they're the first contact point to end customers of domain names. more

How to Maximise Registrations Through Effective Registrar Relationships

There are some surefire ways to get channel engagement and drive registrations, but doing what everyone else is doing is not going to cut it in the world of new TLDs. Successful Registrar engagement requires an investment of time far in advance of what some Registry Operators appear to be expecting, both in terms of ongoing relationship management as well as continually providing tools which make it easier for Registrars to sell your extension over other TLDs. more

Fadi’s Resignation, Sepp Blatter’s Resignation - Others Should Consider Resigning as Well…

Fadi Chehade, the incumbent President and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), on 21 May 2015 announced his intention to leave ICANN by March 2016. No actual reasons were given for his summary and unexpected decision to stop being the head of an organization that he has led since 2012 -- against the background that Fadi Chehade had recently received an ICANN Board-approved contract extension up till 30 June 2017; together with a slate that has a long list of things to do with many uncompleted assignments. more

The Role of the Internet in the UN Sustainable Development Goals

We see the Internet as a critical enabler for sustainable development. Our vision is that it can unlock human capabilities and we are committed to working with all stakeholders to fulfill the Internet's development potential. To that end, next week in New York the United Nations will be convening an Expert Group Meeting on "Advancing a Sustainable Information Society for All". The Internet Society (ISOC) has been invited to participate to this discussion among other experts. more

FIFA Scandal is Bad News for Obama Administration and U.S. Proponents of ICANN Internet Transfer

The headlines surrounding bribes and corruption within FIFA are an ominous sign for those in the United States, especially the White House, who are advocating for the transfer of control of the main root zone of the Internet to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN"). Specifically, these charges against FIFA are undermining the public's trust in quasi-government organizations like FIFA, ICANN, the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee ("IOC") (to name a few), that operate outside the purview of a national government. more

Parallels Between Our Oceans and Internet Governance #WorldOceanDay

Today is June 8th and World Ocean Day. As I ponder on the threats and challenges to the world's ocean with the enormous stresses such as overfishing, pollution, ocean acidification that threatens all global standards of living, I cannot help but think about the startling similarities that global internet governance faces with its respective stresses of increasing cyber security vulnerabilities, threats, breaches of trust, growing cyber crime, breaches of privacy and data protection, identity thefts, pedophilia and many other things that threaten global public interest and our safety within an internet ecosystem. more

Notes from NANOG 64

The North American Network Operator's Group held its 64th Meeting in San Francisco in early June. Here's my impressions of some of the more interesting sessions that grabbed my attention at this meeting... At the start of the year, the US FCC voted to reclassify Broadband Internet access services under Title II of the US Telecommunications ACT -- effectively viewing Internet access providers as common carriers, with many of the rights and responsibilities that goes with this classification. more

EuroDIG Sessions on Friday, June 5, about Cybersecurity, Network Neutrality, IANA, Access and More

What do Europeans interested in Internet policy think about cybersecurity, network neutrality, IANA, improving Internet access and other topics? Tomorrow the second day of the European Dialog on Internet Governance (EuroDIG) 2015 in Sofia, Bulgaria, will cover all those topics and many more. I've listed some of the sessions that either I or my Internet Society colleagues are participating in. I will personally be involved as a panelist on the two sessions about cybersecurity. more

Competing Processes Obfuscate Internet Policy-Making in India

Net Neutrality has become a hot topic in India, following a brief but high-profile national debate instigated by a consultation paper from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that solicited views on what net neutrality is, and whether regulations protecting it are needed in India. The paper also hinted at possible regulation of all kinds of online services (like Skype, Uber, or Google) in the future. But no-one could have predicted what happened next... more

Rapidly Changing Triple and Quadruple Play Business Models

It is interesting to follow what is happening with triple and quadruple play broadband prices in competitive markets. Through triple and quadruple play, customers are increasingly getting more services for the same money. As most fixed telecoms markets are still largely monopolistic in nature, basic access charges remain high; but good prices are even available in markets with healthy wholesale competition, if one shops around. more

Facebook and PGP

Facebook just announced support for PGP, an encrypted email standard, for email from them to you. It's an interesting move on many levels, albeit one that raises some interesting questions. The answers, and Facebook's possible follow-on moves, are even more interesting. The first question, of course, is why Facebook has done this. It will only appeal to a very small minority of users. Using encrypted email is not easy. more

Registry Lock - or EPP With Two Factor Authentication

For the last couple of years, the most common attack vector against the DNS system is the attack against the registrar. Either the attack is on the software itself using weaknesses in the code that could inject DNS changes into the TLD registry, or social engineering the registrar support systems and the attacker receives credentials that in turn allows the attacker to perform malicious changes in DNS. DNSSEC is the common security mechanism that protects the DNS protocol, but by using the registrar attack, any changes will result in a proper working DNS delegation. more

The Internet of Things: Solving Security Challenges from the Fringe to the Core

News flash: to help fight California's drought, Samsung is offering a $100,000 prize to the innovator who creates "the most effective use of IoT and ARTIK [Samsung's IoT platform] technology for reducing water consumption by individuals or municipalities." When the average reader of this news headline needs no explanation of what "IoT" means or what this contest is about, we know IoT, or the Internet of Things, is for real. There are already an estimated 25 billion connected devices around the world, according to expert estimates. more

What’s Going on in China’s Domain Name Industry?

Recently, there has been a lot of noise about China tightening control of the new top-level domains and how it could severely damper domain name registrations in China and one should make preparation for the worst. Initially, I tried to stay out of this as I know all the players behind this. But given that at least 3 people have emailed me asking what's going on, I decided to clear the air here. more