Featured Blogs

FCC’s “Commercial Reasonableness” Standard Already a Dismal Failure

T-Mobile filed a petition today making it clear that the FCC's commercial reasonableness standard is a failure. Anyone following net neutrality knows that the FCC is proposing to authorize discrimination and pay-for-priority deals known as fast lanes. The FCC is claiming we need not worry, however, because the FCC can make sure that entrepreneurs and users face only "commercially reasonable" discrimination. more

Why Do We Accept $10 Security on $1,000,000 Data?

Last week we heard of yet another egregious security breach at an online provider, as crooks made off with the names, address, and birth dates of eBay users, along with encrypted passwords. They suggest you change your password, which is likely a good idea, and you better also change every other place you used the same password. But that's not much help since you can't change your name, address, and birth date, which are ever so handy for phishing and identity theft. more

DOTCOM Act Passes House as Rubio Leads Senate Call for IANA Oversight Hearings

The Shimkus Amendment to the $601 billion National Defense Authorization Act (HR 4435) passed the House of Representatives on May 22nd by a mostly partisan vote of 245–177. While all 228 Republicans present and voting supported the amendment only 17 Democrats voted "aye", with 177 in opposition. Final passage on the entire bill was a bipartisan vote of 325–98. The Senate has not yet passed its version of a FY 2015 Pentagon funding bill, and once it does all the differences between the two versions must be reconciled before it can be sent to President Obama for his signature. more

Help ICANN Fix Whois Conflicts With Data Privacy Law

ICANN has opened a comment period in relation to whois conflicts with local law / data privacy law. Of course anytime ICANN, or anyone else, tries to make any changes to whois policy there are issues. Whois is, for a variety of reasons, an emotive subject... under EU law many feel that registration details for domain name registrants need to be handled in a manner that is more compatible with the EU Directives and local law more

The Demand and Supply Imbalance in Telecoms

You can't open a newspaper today, listen to the radio, or watch TV without hearing about the enormous explosion in the use of telecommunications technology - be it fixed or mobile broadband, the internet, social media, smartphones, tablets, wearables, IoT, cloud computing, the list is endless... Yet, at the same time, many telcos and ISPs are struggling to maintain their profitability. This defies economic logic. more

Demystifying Premium Domain Names

For the purpose of this article it is not necessary to concentrate too much on defining what a Premium domain name is and what it is useful for: all that we need to know is simple, a premium domain name is often a memorable generic name, short or medium in length and highly valuable due to its relevance in search. However, when it comes to finding out how to register a premium domain name then it becomes much more difficult because you won't necessarily know where to go. more

Preserve Dot ART

ICANN has a choice: it can promote the arts or destroy their common identity. ".ART " can become an authentic Internet address for the arts and represent its community. We are on the cusp of an extraordinary opportunity with the simple use of a single word: a virtual place within the Internet for the arts and a virtual palace to the arts built site-by-site by millions of artists and art institutions each with an individualized artistic contribution gathered around the simple namespace of ".ART." more

Human Network, Human Challenges

It has now been about eight months since I joined the Internet Society as the Director of Deployment & Operationalization and I still get asked on a fairly regular basis "what do you do?" Well, with ISOC's Chief Internet Technology Officer Leslie Daigle's recent departure, and with my time here having exceeded both my first 120 days and my first 6 months, this seems like the right moment to reflect on my brief tenure here so far and perhaps pontificate a bit on where we're going - and why. more

Webinar Tomorrow (May 22) - IPv6 and Telecom: IPv4 is Finally Running Out. Now What?

What is the impact of IPv6 on telecommunications, VoIP, unified communications, etc? Why should telecom operators care about IPv6? What VoIP systems already support IPv6? What efforts are underway within organizations like the IETF and the SIP Forum to ensure that telecommunications can work over IPv6? more

IP Addresses in Cars, Car Manufacturers as Internet Registries? - Another Need for IPv6 Now!

I recently came across an interesting piece about the use of IP addresses in the Tesla model S. The part that caught my attention and led to this post is that the car uses the private IPv4 address subnet 192.168.90.0/24 to address different nodes e.g. the centre console is 192.168.90.100 and the dashboard/navigation screen is 192.168.90.101. Put your geek hat on for a moment as you ponder that! more

Universal Acceptance of All TLDs Now!

Universal acceptance of top level domains hasn't really meant much to most Internet users up until now. As long as .COM was basically the default TLD, there wasn't much of an issue. No longer. With 263 delegated strings (according to ICANN's May 12, 2014 statistics) adding to the existing 22 gTLDs that were already live on the net after the 2004 round of Internet namespace expansion, the problem of universal acceptance gets very real. more

The Rotten Roots - Summary of Issues and Sources on Net Neutrality

The timeline of the Net Neutrality issue has been detailed here. And quoting from Vox: 'Wheeler said that peering is "an issue that we are investigating, it's an issue we are very interested in, but it's not the issue here today."' more

Is Today the Beginning of the End of Net Neutrality?

Today, May 15, 2014 a vote will be taken at the FCC. Today the Internet we know can change forever. Today at 10:30 am EST the FCC meets to vote on the issue on whether or not allow the collection of special rates to provide certain services through the Internet for those who can afford it. A "faster lane" has been called... Who will pay for the use of this improved infrastructure? more

New gTLDs Will Work Way Better Than Vanity Domains Did

There are updates in the domain name business that I have never been able to understand: one of them is called "vanity domain names". A vanity domain name is a domain that keeps on using the first and the second level domain, to form a keyword; the third level domain is sometimes used too. Good examples of these would be: webc.am or marmala.de, aud.it or del.icio.us. more

House Committees Taking Aim at IANA Transition Proposal

In an unanticipated move a third Committee of the US House of Representatives has weighed in with concerns regarding the NTIA's proposed transition of the US role as counterparty to ICANN's IANA functions contract to one with the "global multistakeholder community". On May 13th the House Armed Services Committee Report for HR 4435, the Defense Authorization bill, was released. more