Featured Blogs

Is Internet Part of the Curriculum of Universities?

Recently I joined my son, who is in his final high school year, to visit the open day of the newly founded Leiden University College in The Hague. The school focuses on Liberal Arts & Science and offers a broad education on (international) politics, philosophy and economy. The idea is to prepare the next generation internationally oriented public servants and leaders of the future. Among others they have former Dutch Minister of Foreign affairs and Secretary General of NATO Jaap de Hoop Scheffer as a college professor. more

Goodmail Shutting Down

Yesterday Goodmail sent out mail to all their customers announcing they are ceasing operations and taking all their token generators offline as of 5pm pacific on February 8th. While this is a bit of a surprise on one level, I'm not that shocked. Ken Magill mentioned in August that Goodmail was on the sales block and rumors have been circulating for weeks about significant changes coming to Goodmail. ... Despite the free service, people at some of those ESPs told me they were having difficulty getting customers to adopt Goodmail. more

The U.S. “Scorecard” for Brussels: Draconian Trademark Rules & The End of Private-Sector Leaders

The U.S. "Scorecard" for Brussels Proposes Draconian Trademark Rules - And May Mean the End of Unlimited New gTLDs and/or the ICANN Experiment in Private Sector-Led Internet Governance... On Friday, January 28th the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) circulated its submission to ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) containing suggestions for what positions the GAC should push for at its February 28 - March 1 meeting with ICANN's Board to air disagreements over provisions of the Proposed Final Applicant Guidebook (AG) for new gTLDs. more

The Central IPv4 Pool is Gone

Yesterday, the Asia-Pacific registry got the last two blocks in the central IPv4 pool. The IANA has been sitting on five /8s (one per regional registry), and these will be handed out (along with the fragments from the legacy class B space), one to each registry. The IANA IPv4 registry doesn't yet reflect this. more

Where High Speed Internet Meets Smart Grid

Advanced internet technologies, energy management and the smart grid are coming together in a mid-sized city in South Tennessee. Tennessee based utility EPB has completed one of the fastest internet pipelines in the world and has activated the first automated switches on its electricity network. The combination constitutes the backbone for a DOE-funded smart grid network that is expected to save the utility and businesses tens of millions of dollars annually. more

Lessons from Egypt: We Need to Protect Our Connected Minds

We need to protect the power that allows us to connect our collective intelligence, as described a few weeks ago in my blog on connected minds. I argued that in order to address some of our global challenges we have to start looking at a radically new way to address them. The events in Egypt brought home the fact that if it comes to the crunch any government can disconnect us simply by bringing the Internet and other communications systems down at will... more

San Francisco is the Best Place to Kick Off the New gTLD Program

With the ICANN Silicon Valley in San Francisco meeting just six short weeks away, the Internet community's hopes of seeing the launch of the new generic top-level domains (gTLD) program have been once again reinvigorated. A meeting of the ICANN Board of Directors last week produced encouraging resolutions that have given hopeful gTLD applicants the clearest indication yet that San Francisco will be the venue for the final approval of the Applicant Guidebook and the beginning of the Internet's next extraordinary phase of evolution. more

Are We at the Dawn of a New Cold War?

Over the past say six months there are trends and events on and around the Internet that made me come up with this bizarre sounding question. Still it may actually make sense if we look at some facts. I'll be honest up front. This is a contribution that is not totally thought over and more a compilation of ideas and impressions gathered over the past weeks and months. Still, it could well serve as the beginning of a discussion on giving the recent events a place. There's nothing better than a provocative question in that case! Let's start here. more

Global Patterns in IPv4 Allocation Statistics

In January 2007 we highlighted that the IPv4 allocation rate had increased significantly since early 2004. By 2006 it was clear that continued growth would see IPv4 exhaustion occur sometime between 2010 and 2015. In October 2010 we revisited the subject in the CircleID articled 'Graph Shows Decline of IPv4 Almost Linear'. ... Now, in January 2011, we are very close to the exhaustion of the IANA pool of IPv4 address space. more

Uncertain Knowledge

The establishment media frequently attack the Internet as spreading inaccurate, unchecked rumors as news. While that is certainly true, the Internet is also demonstrating that the establishment media is no better. In the past weeks we have been told that the Stuxnet virus was written by US and Israeli intelligence. The evidence? Some un-named Israeli intelligence officers grinned broadly at reporters when the subject was mentioned. Is that what it has come to? more

Cable Trounces the Telcos

Yesterday, Netflix posted graphs of how well various ISPs deal with Netflix video streams. The results are striking. All the cable companies easily beat all the phone companies with the exception of Verizon where we're seeing a mix of DSL and FiOS results. more

Some Observations on Reachability of Egyptian Networks and Providers

Different media are reporting that Internet and other forms of electronic communications are being disrupted in Egypt. Presumably after a government order in response to the protests. Looking at BGP data we can confirm that according to our analysis 88% of the ‘Egyptian Internet’ has fallen of the Internet. In this post I’ll share some observations I made with regards to the reachability of Egyptian networks and providers. more

Egypt’s Internet Blocked - I Call on My Friend Tarek Kamel to Unblock It and Join His People

Internet all over Egypt has been blocked in an unprecedented revolt. I call on my friend Tarek Kamel, Egypt's Minister of Telecommunication, to overturn this oppressive decision and to unblock the Internet in all Egypt immediately and to join his people in their peaceful revolt. I have known Tarek Kamel for more than a decade and long before he became minister back in the days when he used to say he had no authority and that the decisions were in the hands of his boss and that he was a mere decision-less adviser to then Minister of Telecommunication, Mr. Nazif. more

21st Century Triple Networks: Ubiquitous 4G, WiFi, & Wires

The best engineers on the planet are coming to the same conclusion: a hybrid 4G/WiFi/landline network is the way to meet mobile demand. Folks like John Donovan of AT&T and Masayoshi Son of Softbank in Japan had this vision around 2007-2008. As the iPhone/iPad/Android made the coming demand clear, networks planners around the world evolved similar strategies. more

Can the US Deliver on the President’s ‘Sputnik’ Vision?

In general I think this was another good political speech from the President. However, as we have seen in the past, skilled rhetoric doesn't necessarily give rise to action. If Congress reflects the mood of the American people then the nation is not yet ready to change - or, as the President said, to embark on a new 'Sputnik' vision. The fact that the word 'Internet' was used several times (in absolutely the right context - and often teamed with 'innovation') clearly shows that the President understands the importance of the digital infrastructure. This has not changed since his original campaign in 2008. more