Featured Blogs

Wikileaks Calls for Boycott of Domain Registrar eNom

In the aftermath of the shutdown of Wikileaks.org by a court order issued at the request of Swiss Bank Julius Baer, Wikileaks has called for the boycott of registrar eNom. eNom is best known as the domain registrar that complied with the federal government's order to shut down a Spanish travel agency because it did business with Cuba -- the agency was not under U.S. jurisdiction and so was hardly violating U.S. law, but their domain was registered in the United States, and that was good enough for the feds. more

Changes to the Domain Name Marketplace

The new gTLD program and the introduction of 1200+ new domain name registries has significantly altered the marketplace dynamics. New domain name registries must navigate an environment that is, to an extent, stacked against them. This article recommends creation of some improvements and a general de-regulation of the marketplace to encourage innovation and promote its overall health. ICANN, or a combination of Registry Operators, should fund a brief, thorough study of the current marketplace because of the changes that have occurred from the original marketplace for which current regulations were developed. more

The JavaScript Ecosystem

JavaScript started out as a simple extension for the browser but has become so much more. In part, this is true in building on rich concepts going back to Lisp. Along the way, it has challenged the givens of programming and given us a high-performance flexible language along with rich libraries and rich tools. We're just beginning to discover the possibilities. more

Internet Governance Back in the Limelight

In my special role as adviser to the UN Broadband Commission I reported extensively in 2013 on the WCIT-12 conference in Dubai. Unfortunately the world disagreed on a way forward in relation to internet governance. However, despite all the grandstanding of the USA and its western allies, simply ignoring it and saying "there is no room for governments to be involved in internet governance" - will not make the issue go away. more

Oklahoma Spammer Fighter Loses Even Worse

Last December I wrote about Mark Mumma, who runs a small web hosting company in Oklahoma City and his battle with Omega World Travel a/k/a cruise.com. Mumma lost his CAN SPAM suit agains them in December, but Omega's countersuit for defamation went to trial last week, and I hear that the jury awarded Omega $2.5 million in damages, which Mumma is not likely to be able to pay. This may be painted in some circles as a huge defeat for anti-spam activists, but it's not... more

ICANN Board Appoints 2015 NomCom Chair

During its September 9, 2014 meeting, the ICANN Board selected the Chair of the 2015 Nominating Committee (NomCom). The 2015 NomCom will begin its work In Los Angeles, immediately after the close of ICANN's 51st International Meeting due to be held in mid-October. ICANN's Nominating Committee is charged with identifying, recruiting and selecting nominees of the highest possible quality for key leadership positions at ICANN. more

A Clear Case for ISP Regulation: IP Address Logging

Over on the Network Neutrality Squad yesterday, I noted, without comment, the following quote from the new Time Warner Cable privacy policy bill insert: "Operator's system, in delivering and routing the ISP Services, and the systems of Operator's Affiliated ISPs, may automatically log information concerning Internet addresses you contact, and the duration of your visits to such addresses." Today I will comment, and explain why such logging by ISPs creates a clear case for regulatory intervention, on both privacy and competition grounds. more

Think Beyond .com: From Country Codes to Internationalized Domain Names

One of the major takeaways from the Web Globalization Report Card is the importance of providing "front doors" to your localized websites. These doors begin with the addresses themselves, which may not include the .com domain. In fact, I'd recommend that most localized websites not use the .com domain, as this is an overloaded domain. This article looks at the many ways brands are creating more localized addresses, beginning with country code top-level domains (ccTLDs). more

DNS Reflection/Amplification Attack: Proved

Last year there was a "threat" by anonymous group to black out Internet by using DNS Reflection/Amplification attack against the Internet DNS Root servers. I even wrote a little article about it: "End of the world/Internet". In the article I was questioning if this was even possible and what was needed as general interest and curiosity. Well, looking at the "stophaus" attack last week, we are getting some answers. more

The Risk Factors of CDNs and Centrality

On the afternoon of June 17 of this year, there was a widespread outage of online services. In Australia, it impacted three of the country's largest banks, the national postal service, the country's reserve bank, and one airline operator. Further afield from Australia, the outage impacted the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and some US airlines. The roll call of affected services appeared to reach some 500 serv more

Voice Over IP – an Inflection Point

Voice over IP (VoIP) represents a sharp break from the traditional telephony. The story of VoIP is important in helping us think beyond the simplistic framing of a "digital transition". The first stage of any technology is emulating the old. Indeed, digital telephony was just like traditional analog telephony -- just FBC (Faster, Better Cheaper) but not fundamentally different. Merely changing from analog to digital isn't transformational in itself. But it creates the opportunity for transformation. more

SnapNames: Why the WLS is Better for Consumers

In 2002, VeriSign, the registry for .COM and .NET domain names, proposed the idea of a centralized, registry-level "wait list" for currently registered domain names. The system would let anyone around the world get "next in line" for a name that is registered now but may become available later.

This new registry service, titled Wait List System (or WLS), would augment what is now an ad-hoc group of registrar-level services that are useful, but aren't always fully dependable or even available to the general public. more

XXX Litigation Looms

The XXX drama isn't over. Today ICM Registry announced that it would file a reconsideration request with ICANN and a judicial appeal to challenge redactions and omissions from the internal US government documents released to it under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. These could prove to be opening moves in a more extended round of litigation. In connection with its judicial appeal, ICM Registry released 88 pages of internal US Commerce Department documents obtained under the FOIA showing how the U.S. handled its application. more

Notes from NANOG 81

As the pandemic continues, the network operator community continues to meet online. NANOG held its 81st meeting on February 8 and 9, and these are my notes from some of the presentations at that meeting... Ethernet, developed in 1973 at Xerox PARC, was a revolutionary step in network architectures in many ways. The common bus architecture imposed several constraints on the network that have echoed through the ensuing four decades in all kinds of ways. more

IPv4 Addresses Not Property, Canada Weighs in on the Nortel/Microsoft Transfer

The recent tempest in a teacup on ARINs PPML list over the transfer of IP address blocks from Nortel (a company in Chapter 11) to Microsoft has some interesting Internet Governance dimensions that are yet to be discussed. One aspect that has been overlooked amidst all the sound and fury, is the governmental perspective on IP address transfers. more