Featured Blogs

The .Name Domain Disrupted by Site Finder Patch

The "delegation-only" patch to BIND that was released for Internet Service Providers and others who wanted to block Site Finder service is reported to be disrupting emails to .name emails (that look like '[email protected]'). As a result, the Global Name Registry has submitted a letter to ICANN stating... more

Wikileaks DDoS of Spamhaus: Political Activism at Its Dumbest

A week ago, Paul Vixie wrote a thoughtful piece on the morality of DDos, for both sides of the equation of the Wikileaks issues. In it he summarizes things nicely: "Denial of service is not merely a peaceful protest meant to garner attention for a cause. Denial of service is forcible and it is injurious. It is not like any form of civil disobedience, but rather it is criminal behaviour more like looting." Well said, Paul... more

IPTV vs IPTV+RF

The further we move into discussions about the implementation of national broadband networks the more issues crop up that need to be discussed in this context. One topic that is currently getting a great deal of attention is the need (or not) for an RF video layer to be deployed over the fibre network. Both business and technical elements are involved in this, but let's start with some of the business elements... more

Privacy, Legal vs. Natural Persons, and the Never-Ending ICANN EPDP

It has been just over 3 years since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect, and the work within ICANN (type "EPDP 2a" into your acronym decoder ring) to develop a permanent Registration Data policy is progressing at a snail's pace. At issue is a proposed mandatory requirement for Contracted Parties (really just Registrars), to differentiate between "legal persons" (a fancy way of saying corporations and similar organizations) and "natural persons" (the kind that eat and breathe and schedule Zoom calls). more

Boobtube.com Shenanigan: Domain Name Exchanges Open to Market Manipulation?

VentureBeat is running a story by Mark Coker, going over the recent boobtube.com auction and its eventual cancellation due to misrepresentation of ownership. Mark writes: "Sedo, the world’s largest domain name auctioneer, sold a popular URL, Boobtube.com, for $41,688 last week, but then turned around and canceled the sale because the seller didn’t really own it." The author, who was also one of the boobtube.com auction bidders, questions the maturity and trustworthiness of the domain name exchanges, which are currently handling several hundred million dollars of trades. more

Alternatives for .COM ? (Part 1)

There are plenty of new domain names and if .COM never had any real identity or true meaning, it is quite possible that new gTLDs may bring new ideas to those who want to acquire a global identity without focusing on a country, a niche market, a specific industry, a community or just anything which does not cover "the world". I made a list of these new domain names with potential to replace .COM and I believe that the alternatives might be in the list down below. more

A Case for Further DNS Registrar Industry Self-Regulation

In most industries, businesses that blatantly act against the interests of their customers to favor their own internal profit centers would either not be allowed or else subject to controls and oversight by the government. It is universally regarded as an unfair and deceptive business practice. In the domain name registrar business, however, the normal practices of legitimate business dealings and customer protection seem woefully wanting. Kelly's Case described here illustrates the point... more

URLs: Ontologically Speaking

I was reading David Weinberger's reports on how the New York Times is planning on tackling its "link rot" problem where articles slip behind the pay-wall. Part of their solution appears to be to replace articles with their summaries. As usual, this got me thinking about telephony. Why don't phone calls and callers have URIs or URLs? ...Let's take addressing the endpoints first. Obviously, ENUM is one way of "Internetising" the phone number address space. more

The Future of Data Storage

One of the consequences of our increased use of broadband is a big increase in the amount the data that we store outside our homes and businesses. The numbers are becoming staggering. There are currently about 3.7 billion people using the Internet, and together we generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of online data every day. The trends are that by 2025 we'll be storing 160 zettabytes of data per year - a zettabyte is one trillion gigabytes. I store a lot more data online than I used to. I now store things in the cloud all day long. more

First Four Registry Agreements Signed for New TLDs

The first four new Top Level Domains (TLDs) have signed contracts with ICANN, known as Registry Agreements, to allow the applicants to operate new TLDs on the Internet. This is a historic event and marks the first of many new Registry Agreements which will be signed over the coming months as prospective new TLD operators complete the Initial Evaluation phase, pre-delegation testing, and finally sign Registry agreements. more

The Internet Lost in Translation

In 1949 a Bell Laboratory researcher, Claude Shannon, published a paper on a new science of "Information". Bell Labs had sponsored the research with the goal of improving phone networks but was not prepared to embrace the full implications of the new science which made explicit the distinction between information in the information sense and information encoded in numbers or bits... more

Carriers Skirting Rules on Network Neutrality vs. Free’s Innovative Network

From will they ever learn department, we are once again seeing attempts by incumbent carriers to skirt rules around network neutrality. They tried and failed with UBB. Now they are at it again with "speed boost" technologies. The two technologies at question are Verizon's "Turbo" service and Roger's "SpeedBoost". more

De Facto Rules a Boon to Rogue Players

In Ian Flemming's Thunderball M sends 007 to the Bahamas on a hunch that SPECTRE is hiding something there. Well, it's been our hunch for a while that the Bahamas "office" for the Registrar Internet.BS does not exist. Now we have confirmation of such. It has been documented in an explosive undercover expose by LegitScript that Internet.BS address as stated could not be verified, could not accept mail, and that the business itself could not actually be found in the Bahamas. more

Fighting Over the Scraps from ICANN’s Table

I've finally recovered from another ICANN meeting, frustrated as ever. 700 or so people flew halfway around the world to hear canned presentations, dueling-monologue public form sessions, and resolutions that left major issues unresolved, and to gripe in the hallways about how little was being done. more

Top-Level Domains for Addressing by Physical Context

This article proposes the reservation of a special use TLD to allow a more convenient addressing of devices by general physical location or context. ...As wireless networking and devices become more common there may be a need for a convenient way to address hosts by physical location or context, especially when the users themselves are using mobile or wearable devices. more