Featured Blogs

NIS 2.0 and Its Impact on the Domain Name Ecosystem

I recently appeared on the 419 Consulting podcast to discuss the European Union's NIS 2.0 Directive and its impact on the domain name ecosystem. I encourage all TLD registries, domain name registration service providers, and DNS operators to listen to the recording of that session which Andrew Campling has made available. more

Solar Storms Threaten Broadband and Power Grids: Understanding the Impacts and Preparations

Many readers will have seen recent news that the aurora borealis, or northern lights, were visible deep into the South for several days. This phenomenon is caused by a geomagnetic storm that is caused by strong solar flares. Solar flares can cause problems on Earth by emitting clouds of magnetized particles and hot plasma. more

13th Registration Operations Workshop: Join Us Online on June 4th, 2024

As a member of the ROW Planning Committee, I am writing this post on behalf of the Committee and welcome all community members to join us on June 4th. We are celebrating ROW's 10th anniversary! A decade of collaboration and inspiration! Thank you to the incredible community that has fueled this journey! more

A Transport Protocol’s Perspective on Optimizing Starlink Performance

Digital communications systems always represent a collection of design trade-offs. Maximizing one characteristic of a system may impair others, and various communications services may choose to optimize different performance parameters based on the intersection of these design decisions with the physical characteristics of the communications medium. more

Building Resilient Broadband Networks: Lessons from the Power Industry’s Transformation

It's almost impossible to talk about broadband at the community level without talking about resiliency and redundancy. It's hard to find rural communities that haven't experienced a broadband outage due to a fiber being cut somewhere. The issue hits the news when there are reports of regional or national broadband outages. more

NETmundial +10: Inspiration for Multistakeholder Digital Governance, but Is It Enough?

Last week (29-30 April), Global Partners Digital (GPD) joined other civil society groups, business actors, the technical community and governments in São Paulo, Brazil for NETmundial+10: the ten year follow up to the landmark NETmundial process in 2014, which set out principles for multistakeholder approaches to Internet governance. In the intervening decade, the policy landscape has been transformed by an increase in policy and normative frameworks related to digital technologies, as well the advent of new technologies—particularly AI—and their attendant opportunities and challenges. more

ISPs and AI: Enhancing Customer Experience and Network Efficiency

One of the most common questions I've been asked lately is what I think the impact AI will have on the broadband industry. All of the big ISPs in the industry have actively been pursuing the use of AI. For example, AT&T Labs says it is investigating the use of AI to optimize the customer experience and auto-heal the network. Comcast says that it is using AI to help process petabytes of data every day. more

A New Analysis of the Newest New-GTLDs

As the new-gTLD programme - the ICANN initiative to add a large number of new domain extensions (top-level domains, or TLDs) to the Internet - continues to see ongoing launches of new TLDs, we conduct a new retrospective of the activity landscape of the most recent extensions to have been launched. This new study focuses on all new-gTLDs to have entered their Sunrise or General Available periods since the start of 2023, following a previous overview by Stobbs of the full new-gTLD landscape. more

Annual Observatory on .FR Activity: New All-Time Record for .FR Domain Name Create Operations

Afnic, the Registry of the .FR Top Level Domain, published its annual review on .FR activity in 2023 and analysis of market trends. This growth was due in particular to a significant increase in the number of .FR domain name create operations in 2023 (+6.4%). A new all-time record was reached, with 801,427 create operations, the 800,000 threshold for the number of create operations in a year being passed for the first time. more

São Paulo Multistakeholder Guidelines: A Blueprint for Inclusive Digital Governance

The São Paulo Multistakeholder Guidelines adopted at last week's NETmundial +10 conference (Sao Paulo, 29-30 April 2024) provide a breath of fresh air in the current digital debates. They untangle quite a few confusions and offer a pragmatic path forward. The NETMundial statement resolves terminological confusion between internet and digital by combining two terms in the phrase 'internet governance and digital policy'. more

Cogent Communications Offers $206 Million in Secured Notes Backed by IPv4 Addresses

Cogent (CCOI) recently announced that it was offering secured notes for $206M. The unusual part is what it’s using as security: some of its IPv4 addresses and the leases on those IPv4 addresses... Cogent has been leasing out addresses for several years. All internet service providers (ISPs) give IP addresses to their users, but Cogent was among the first to lease those addresses independently of internet access. more

The State of the Internet - 2024

It’s been a while since I took a look at the worldwide Internet. The statistics cited below come from Datareportal. The world population in January 2024 was 8.08 billion, up 74 million from a year earlier, a growth rate of 0.9%. There were 5.61 billion unique mobile subscribers in January, up 138 million (2.5%) over a year earlier. 5.35 billion people used the Internet at the end of 2023, up 97 million (1.8%) from a year earlier. more

Do We Need IPv4 at Home/SOHO Any More?

CLAT/NAT64 is utilized across many mobile networks globally, and I am only talking about Ethernet and Wi-Fi in home and small office/home office (SOHO) environments. I experimented by completely disabling IPv4 at home and established a SSID where my MacBook Pro operates without an actual IPv4 address. The MacBook supports CLAT (RFC 6877), and by implementing PREF64 (RFC 8781) and DHCP Option 108 (RFC 8925) in my network, I was able to achieve a 100% IPv6 environment. more

Embracing On-Chain Domains for a Safer Internet

From the humble beginnings of ARPANET to the birth of the internet as we know it today, domain registrars have been the silent architects of our online activity. Now, as we stand on the cusp of the Web3 revolution, domains are set to undergo yet another profound transformation. Internet innovations have given us a remarkable ability to connect, but now we are bouncing against the limits of this paradigm. more

What Defines a Stakeholder in Internet Governance? (Netmundial+10 Special)

What defines a stakeholder in Internet governance? Is it a professional occupation, an ideology, or a specific methodology? One of the key themes emerging in the Netmundial+10 event has been that of stakeholder involvement, participation and representation in different IG mechanisms. The numeric increase in contributors to these processes since the original Netmundial is palpable. However, questions remain about the definition of a stakeholder and the premises under which these actors should engage in policy work together. more