How do we help develop the next generation of champions for an open Internet? As many of us who were involved in the early years of the Internet are getting older, how do we help inspire a new wave of advocates for an open Internet available to everyone? As we face so many threats to "the Internet way" from many different forces - governments, corporations, criminals, and other organizations - how do we help build the corp of people who understand Internet technology and policy issues and can help shape the future of this Internet we have all come to rely on? more
In spite of having a slow, expensive, government-controlled Internet infrastructure, Cuba is undergoing what Ted Henken and Sara Garcia Santamaria refer to as a digital revolution. The digital revolution might be said to have begun in 2007 when Yoani Sánchez launched her blog "Generation Y." Internet access was difficult -- she would get illegal connectivity at tourist hotels, and the blog was initially hosted in Germany. Soon, the Huffington Post began publishing her posts, and she has subsequently received many international awards, including the Ortega y Gasset Award for Digital Journalism in 2008. more
On March 13, 2019, I published an article on CircleID, Portrait of a Single-Character Domain Name, that explored the proposed release and auction of o.com, a single-character .com domain name that was registered in 1993 and assigned to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) by Dr. Jon Postel. Although the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has since raised serious objections... more
On 19 February 2020, ICANN announced that ICANN67 would be held via remote participation out of an abundance of caution associated with the COVID-19 outbreak. Little did we know at the time that twelve months later, ICANN meetings would still be held via remote participation. For a community that has been accustomed to meeting face-to-face at least three times a year since ICANN1 in Singapore in March 1999, this has created a tremendous challenge for how we conduct our business. more
Many industry onlookers and potential future applicants may be aware of the significant step the New gTLD Round 2 Program took recently when ICANN's policy body, the GNSO Council, unanimously approved the recommendations put forward in the final report from the community-led Subsequent Procedures Working Group and sent it to the ICANN Board for approval. more
We're edging closer every day to seeing WiFi 6 in our homes. WiFi 6 will be bolstered by the newly approved 6 GHz frequency, and the combination of WiFi 6 and 6 GHz spectrum is going to revolutionize home broadband. I don't think many people understand how many of our home broadband woes are caused by current WiFi technology. WiFi has been an awesome technology that freed our homes from long category 5 wires everywhere, but WiFi has a basic flaw that became apparent when homeowners started to buy hordes of WiFi-enabled devices. more
On July 2, 2002, Damien Cave published an interview on Salon.com with John Gilmore, "original 'cypherpunk' and all-around Internet supergeek," titled "It's time for ICANN to go." In this wide-ranging interview, Gilmore -- an early employee of Sun Microsystems who also co-founded Cygnus Software (acquired by Red Hat) and was an early supporter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Internet Society (ISOC) -- offered blunt insight and eye-opening historical detail... more
I was in a conversation with a close friend the other day, you know the kind where you have been friends for so long that you have endured each other experimenting with changed politics, evolving religion, and if you are unlucky, flirtations with multilevel marketing. We were discussing politics that day, which is not unusual given our ancient friendship and the recent change at the helm of the United States. more
The experience of interviewing a data scientist is like none other. Over the past year, we've interviewed more than 100 data scientists, and most, if not all, of them are brilliant. After all, they are a data scientist and have spent many years mastering their craft. The purpose of this post is to potentially assist technology leaders who are considering hiring a data scientist or a data science team. There are five items of consideration. more
I think every client who is considering building a fiber network asks me how long the fiber will last. Their fear is having to spend the money at some future point to rebuild the network. Recently, my response has been that fiber is a hundred-year investment -- and let me explain why I say that. We're now seeing fiber built in the 1980s becoming opaque or developing enough microscopic cracks that impede the flow of light. more
For the past hundred years or so, the world's vendors of communication networks and services have collaborated -- largely among themselves -- with great success. That paradigm continues today for 5G with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and an ecosystem cluster of related organizations where industry and affected government agencies worldwide successfully work on a massive scale. more
SpaceX has begun the process of securing licenses to operate its Starlink Internet service in the Caribbean. I don't know which nations they are considering, but would advise them to seriously consider Cuba -- Starlink service in Cuba would benefit the Cuban people, SpaceX, and the US. What's in it for Cuba? Fixed home and commercial connectivity in Cuba are limited, slow, and expensive, but they do have shared connectivity... more
For many years the consuming topic in DNS circles was that of the names themselves. If you wind the clock back twenty years or so, you will find much discussion about the nature of the Internet's namespace. Why were there both generic top-level labels and two-letter country codes? If we were going to persist with these extra-territorial generic country codes in the namespace, then how many should there be? Who could or should manage them? And so on. more
Dr. Bento J. Lobo, an economist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga undertook a study to quantify the benefits of the municipally-owned fiber network in Chattanooga. Any citywide fiber network brings economic development to a community, but a municipally-owned system brings additional benefits because of the way that the business is more deeply integrated into the community. more
One of the oddest aspects of FCC monitoring of broadband is that the agency has accepted the premise that any broadband product faster than 25/3 Mbps is adequate broadband. This means that the FCC has completely accepted that broadband provided by cable companies is adequate and is something the agency doesn't have to be concerned with. The FCC makes the automatic assumption that broadband from cable companies is good broadband... more
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