Featured Blogs

Trusted Notifier Arrangements Require Trust: Why Unpacking Misunderstandings Around Trusted Notifiers Is Important for Dealing With DNS-related Abuse

Domain Name System (DNS) Operators (Registries and Registrars) receive notices asking them to take action on a wide range of alleged technical and content-related abuses. However, there is a fundamental question of when it is appropriate to act at the DNS level and the evaluation of whether the alleged abuse meets a sufficient threshold for action at the DNS level. Additionally, given the volume of abuses occurring on the internet, existing resources, mechanisms, and protocols available in-house to Operators are in many cases insufficient to address abuses in a timely fashion. more

Domain Security: An Underused Cybersecurity Strategy and First Line of Defense in Your Zero Trust Model

Domain security is a critical component to help mitigate cyberattacks in the early stages - your first line of defense in your organization's Zero Trust model. According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), most cyberattacks - including ransomware and business email compromise (BEC) - begin with phishing. Although losses due to ransomware now exceed billions annually, most ransomware protection and response measures don't adequately address phishing risks in the early stages of an attack because they don't include domain security measures to protect against the most common phishing attacks. more

National Broadband Growth is Slowing

Leichtman Research recently released the U.S. broadband customer statistics for the end of the fourth quarter of 2021. The numbers show that broadband growth has slowed significantly for the sixteen largest ISPs tracked by the company. LRG compiles these statistics from customer counts provided to stockholders, except for Cox, which is privately owned. Net customer additions sank each quarter during the year. more

Annual Review of .fr ccTLD, With Growth of +6% in 2021

Like 2020, the year 2021 saw exceptional conditions, with the persistence of the health crisis. As the registry for the .FR TLD, Afnic was well placed to observe the adaptation of French society to these exceptional conditions, particularly from the viewpoint of the digital transition process. Following on from a historical record in .fr domain name creations in 2020 (793,441), the 776,514 in 2021 have confirmed the take-up of digital benefits by French users, with registrations still up 12% as compared to 2019. more

Big Data’s Role in Helping Shipping Firms Weather the Supply Chain Crisis

When it comes to the economy, the global supply chain was one of the biggest casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic. Port closures and soaring infection rates hampered logistics providers' ability to schedule deliveries and predict risks. In turn, manufacturers' demand projections were challenged, leading to empty shelves worldwide. A lack of shipping containers has affected supply chains, with shippers scrambling to find usable containers before they disappear into service. more

Ukraine: What Are the Likely Implications for Norms and Discussions in Cyberspace?

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24 February, and the events since, have shocked and horrified the world. The immediate focus must be on protecting the safety, security and human rights of the Ukrainian population. But we can already see how the war will also impact broader global events, discussions and behaviour, particularly relating to the digital environment. more

The Danger of Weaponising the DNS in the Ukraine Russia Conflict and Good News

As we watch the Ukraine and Russia conflict over boundaries and territories, I chanced upon a YouTube video showing the region of Europe and how, for the last 1000 years, national boundaries and names of nations have changed where in 1142, you had nations like Muslim Spain, Kievan Rus. In 1143 the Kievan Rus included modern-day Ukraine and Crimea, and in 1163 bulk of Central and Southern Europe was the Holy Roman Empire... more

Network Requirements for the Metaverse

I've often joked that I don't play computer games because I'm holding out for a holodeck. While that may sound ridiculously far-future, we're on the verge of seeing the web-based virtual reality that will be a major step towards a holodeck. There is already some awesome virtual reality software and games where a person can get immersed in another world using a headset. more

Telstra’s OneWeb Deal Caught Up in the Russian War

Telstra might regret having signed a commercial deal with London-based OneWeb as this company has now become a pawn in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Telstra agreed to host two OneWeb gateway Earth stations in Australia, one in the west and one in the north, which would also cover the APAC region, with a third Earth station currently under discussion for the east coast. more

Big Future for Telemedicine?

According to a report just released by McKinsey & Company, we are on the verge of seeing a major shift to health care from home. The report says that as much as $265 billion in annual fees to Medicare and Medicare Advantage could shift to homes by 2025. We've already seen the start of the trend towards telemedicine. The spending on telemedicine was 38 times higher in 2021 compared to 2020. Most of that shift is obviously due to the pandemic. more

Routing Without Rumor: Securing the Internet’s Routing System

The Domain Name System has provided the fundamental service of mapping internet names to addresses from almost the earliest days of the internet’s history. Billions of internet-connected devices use DNS continuously to look up Internet Protocol addresses of the named resources they want to connect to - for instance, a website such as blog.verisign.com. Once a device has the resource’s address, it can then communicate with the resource using the internet’s routing system. more

The IPv4 Market in 2021

Price was the story of the 2021 IPv4 market. Large and small organizations alike continue to invest in their IPv4 infrastructure causing demand for IPv4 address space to intensify. Meanwhile, supply remains constrained. These market factors drove prices up at a historic rate in 2021. more

SpaceX Starlink in Ukraine – a Week Later

Last week I wrote about the arrival of a truckload of SpaceX Starlink terminals in Ukraine and their potential value to government and resistance leaders. A lot has happened in the ensuing week - this is an update. Last week, using Mike Puchol's Starlink tracking service, I found that users in Kyiv would have 100 percent uptime with connections through as many as nine satellites to ground stations in Turkey, Poland, and Lithuania. more

Why Over Compliance With Sanctions at Internet Infrastructure Level Can Have Devastating Effects on Ordinary People

On Friday, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's digital transformation minister, asked Cloudflare and Amazon to stop serving Russian web resources and protecting Russian services. He said in a tweet that Ukraine was "calling on Amazon to stop providing cloud services in Russia." He also said that "Cloudflare should not protect Russian web resources while their tanks and missiles attack our kindergartens." more

How Not to Take Russia Off the Internet

Last week the Ukrainian government sent a letter to ICANN asking them to revoke the ".ru", ".рф" and ".su" top-level domains. It also said they were asking RIPE, which manages IP addresses in Europe, to revoke Russian IP addresses. Both ICANN and RIPE said no. Other people have explained why it would have been a policy disaster, but beyond that, neither would actually have worked. more