Featured Blogs

Metrics of Major Standards Bodies

In a recent CircleID posting related to the ITU-T, the demise of that body over the years and the underlying causes were described. Among other questions, it raises the question of where has the industry technical collaborative activity gone. The short answer is just about everywhere else. This was exemplified by a recently compiled spreadsheet of some 200 different cloud forums prepared by the ITU-T's own cloud coordination group. more

The Mailbox That Saved DNSSEC

A very long time ago, back in the ancient time of year 2006, the registry for .se domains, also called .SE, opened up for signing .se zones with DNSSEC. In those days .SE did not have a registrar/registry model and my own company Interlan was then an agent for .SE. One day I suddenly got a mail from .SE regarding secure DNS -- DNSSEC. ...I almost immediately saw the benefits that such a solution could give to a better and more secure Internet. more

Why Passwords Have Never Been Weaker and Crackers Have Never Been Stronger

The past few weeks, I've been on this security kick particularly when it comes to encryption. I'm developing my own app in my spare time. So I'm trying a whole bunch of things, no doubt making plenty of mistakes in the process. Luckily, the data I am protecting is only quasi-valuable so I can afford to take a hit due to my own conscious incompetence. Anyhow, I ran across this article on Ars Technica yesterday entitled "Why Passwords have never been weaker - and crackers have never been stronger." It's a long article and it will take you a while to read it, but here is my summary. more

Do Agencies Already Have the Authority to Issue Critical Infrastructure Protection Regulations?

The President and Congress are deliberating how best to ensure appropriate cybersecurity protection for private sector critical infrastructure. Legislative action and Executive Order are both under consideration. It is possible, however, that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) already has sufficient statutory authority to enact new cybersecurity regulations through the normal notice-and-comment rulemaking process. more

It’s Time to Put a Bow on the URS: Our Work is Almost Done

For years our community has struggled with the rules of the URS - the Uniform Rapid Suspension - aimed at taking down the "worst of the worst" domain name registrations in a manner faster and cheaper than its predecessor, the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy - the UDRP. On June 27, in Prague, a diverse group met to discuss the fate of the URS. To my surprise, it was a rare "kumbaya" moment, and that makes it worthy of comment. more

Privatizing the ITU-T: Back to the Future

The awkwardly named International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) by any measure is a highly unusual body. It is the only global intergovernmental organization where Nation States produce detailed technical standards for telecommunications. Even more amazing is that it produces these standards for a field that is so dynamic and globally competitive as telecommunications. What is not well known is that the ITU-T was once a private standards body... more

4 Items for Applicants to Consider in Planning, Even As You Wait

With the effective deregulation of the domain name industry through the imminent launch of up to 1,000 new gTLD's, the competitive landscape is going to get a whole lot hotter over the next 24 months. We will likely see some financially and commercially successful ventures. It is likely that we will see many unsuccessful ones as well. The gap between success and failure will be slim. more

The Federal Cybersecurity Regulation Already in Place

While Congress and the White House deliberate possible actions on FISMA reform and increased oversight of critical infrastructure, relatively little attention is being given to the government-wide cybersecurity regulation already in place, the Data Quality Act (DQA). Unlike FISMA, which primarily governs the government's internal cybersecurity processes, and contemplated legislation and/or Executive Order(s), which would likely also include a focus on critical infrastructure protection, the DQA contains a unique mandate. more

The ITRs and Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is a top-of-mind issue with calls for individual vigilance, national legislation, and international treaties to address gaps that are exploited causing significant harm and financial loss on a daily basis. The vast majority of these calls are well-intentioned though even among the best-intentioned, some are poorly directed. Such is the case with all of the proposals that would introduce security into the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). more

Similarity of gTLD Applications: Required Reading for Evaluators

ICANN's evaluators should look at data published on "gTLD application similarity analysis". This sort of data helps dramatically reduce time and expense for the evaluation of new gTLD applications while increasing quality. The principle is simple: find the similarities between the 1930 applications. It is a proof-of-concept project by Arnoldo Mueller-Molina, a young Costa Rican researcher with a doctorate in computational analytics. more

Tracking Outages

The idea of tracking data outages spawned from an early discussion on the outages forum including feedback from an outages survey about having a status page for (un)planned outages as a central resource. The purpose of such effort is to have a wider focus that one could view as opposed to having to check dozens of provider status pages. There were many ideas put forth but nothing really panned out and things kinda fell on the back burner. more

IPv6: The Summer It Finally Happened

A decade old guessing game finally came to an end during these 2012 summer months. America was supposed to be hopelessly behind while Europe had not much to show after a decade of spending lavishly EU money on IPv6 related projects. China and Japan were thought to be light years ahead of everybody else. But in the end, it was the might of the American Content Industry that tipped the scales. more

OpenFlow - The Programmable Network Revolution

Over the past few months I have made regular references to OpenFlow. This is an exciting new development that fits in very well with several of the next generation technology developments that we have discussed in some detail over the past few years -- new developments such smart cities and smart societies, the internet of things. Such networks need to operate more on a horizontal level, rather than the usual vertical connection between a computing device and the users. more

Mobile Users Now and in the Future: A Snapshot

Like many of us in the technology industry, I am captivated by the growing adoption of mobile. It's changing multiple industries at a pace that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago. And my own interest accelerated when Afilias acquired another Irish company named dotMobi. ...since a mobile domain is not useful without mobile sites, dotMobi developed a site-building tool called goMobi that is used globally by hundreds of thousands of site owners. Because of that, we have unique information about who is using the mobile Web, and how they're using it. more

My Comment on Forbes - Why Is the UN Trying to Take over the Internet

Forbes just published this article that's being shared all over my facebook friends feed. I left a comment on the article that I've copied and pasted here, as it is just about long enough to qualify as a CircleID post by itself... The problem is that peering isn't always settlement free -- and even if it is, if and only if there's an equitable amount of traffic exchanged between two ISPs. And then there's transit, where you pay another network to carry your packets for you. more