Featured Blogs

IPv6: Do as I Say or Do as I Do?

How important is it for a vendor, service provider or integrator to be using a service or technology that it is pushing on its clients? When Voice over IP (VoIP) came out Cisco began a gigantic push, having its salespersons pitch it to anyone and everyone on their client list. But Cisco had not yet deployed VoIP within its own corporate network. It was still making use of traditional voice systems from vendors that today it probably considers competitors. Many people on the receiving end of a sales pitch recognized this... more

What’s in a Name?

What's the difference between .local and .here? Or between .onion and .apple? All four of these labels are capable of being represented in the Internet's Domain Name System as a generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), but only two of these are in fact delegated names. The other two, .local and .onion not only don't exist in the delegated name space, but by virtue of a registration in the IANA's Special Use Domain Name registry, these names cannot exist in the conventional delegated domain name space. more

The WSIS Deal

There is considerable coverage this morning (or this evening in Tunis) on the last minute WSIS deal struck yesterday. The gist of the coverage rightly reports that the U.S. emerged with the compromise they were looking for as the delegates agreed to retain ICANN and the ultimate U.S. control that comes with it (note that there is a lot in the WSIS statement that may ultimately prove important but that is outside the Internet governance issue including the attention paid to cybercrime, spam, data protection, and e-commerce). This outcome begs the questions -- what happened? And, given the obvious global split leading up to Tunis, what changed to facilitate this deal? more

Top 10 Spam Stories of 2008

Well, it's a yearly tradition in the western hemisphere that at the end of the year, we compose a top 10 list of the 10 most . Since it is now 2009, I thought that I would create my own list of the top 10 spam stories of 2008. Now, not all of these will be universally applicable to everyone, they are the top 10 stories as seen by me. more

Domain Name Registry-Registrar Vertical Separation: The Economic, Anti-Trust Red Herring

ICANN has operated on the fundamental principle that there should be separation within the domain name marketplace between registries (wholesale) and registrars (retail). This fundamental principle has been a pillar upon which ICANN has provided registrants (consumers) with increased choice, innovation, and price savings. Therefore it was with great surprise when ICANN staff unilaterally undertook this initial vertical separation analysis through exclusive consultation with ICANN contracting parties (registrars and registries), while totally excluding non-contracting parties (individual, business and non-commercial registrants)... more

Blockchain Domains and What They Could Mean for Online Scams and Brand Protection

Blockchain domain names, domains that are stored on blockchain or cryptocurrency exchanges, are part of a growing, unregulated, and decentralized internet. Right now, blockchain domains are used mostly by cryptocurrency users, but they are growing in popularity - the Ethereum name service reported over 2.2 million .eth domain name registrations in 2022. At the same time, crypto scams are also exploding, reaching a total of $3.5 billion in losses in 2022. more

The IoT Cyber Seal Fog

For four days in Southern France, cybersecurity experts from a broad array of different countries and sectors gathered for the annual ETSI Security Conference. The event undertaken by one of the world's major industry information-communication (ICT) standards organisations was intended to take stock of the state of cybersecurity and trends. more

Internet Governance and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Part 8: Articles 22-25

This article is Part 8 of the series of articles discussing human rights in the digital age and published here on CircleID.2 When we commenced this analysis of the UDHR, and the relevance of its principles to our rights and duties within the Internet ecosystem, we committed ourselves to work through the UDHR one Article at a time. With this Part 8 we are four-fifths through that task. more

No Free Super WiFi, But the US Still Needs Improved WiFi Coverage

The FCC has long battled for a more efficient deployment of unused spectrum, endeavouring to adapt rules governing 'white space' TV spectrum (largely gifted to broadcasters years ago, and generally in the 700MHz band) to newly released spectrum (in the 600MHz band). This will considerably improve wireless broadband coverage where it is needed most... Certainly, in the US's disjointed broadband sector there are considerable challenges ahead... more

A Look Back at the World of IP Addressing in 2018: What Changed and What to Expect

Time for another annual roundup from the world of IP addresses. Let's see what has changed in the past 12 months in addressing the Internet and look at how IP address allocation information can inform us of the changing nature of the network itself. Back in around 1992 the IETF gazed into the crystal ball and tried to understand how the internet was going to evolve and what demands that would place on the addressing system as part of the "IP Next Generation" study. more

Data on Cuba’s SNET and a Few Suggestions for ETECSA

I've written several posts on Cuba's user-deployed street networks (SNET), the largest of which is SNET in Havana. (SNET was originally built by the gaming community, but the range of services has grown substantially). My posts and journalist's accounts like this one describe SNET, but a new paper presents SNET measurement data as well as descriptive material. more

The Internet of Things: Solving Security Challenges from the Fringe to the Core

News flash: to help fight California's drought, Samsung is offering a $100,000 prize to the innovator who creates "the most effective use of IoT and ARTIK [Samsung's IoT platform] technology for reducing water consumption by individuals or municipalities." When the average reader of this news headline needs no explanation of what "IoT" means or what this contest is about, we know IoT, or the Internet of Things, is for real. There are already an estimated 25 billion connected devices around the world, according to expert estimates. more

Discussion at the Internet Governance Forum in Geneva

While travelling home from Geneva, I was thinking quite a lot on the relationship between a ccTLD (registry) and a Country. This is because many countries are starting to talk louder and louder about the responsibilities Countries have on critical infrastructure, or (possibly more important) the management of the critical infrastructure. Will for example any (none?) of ccTLD operators (servers) sustain a denial of service attack of a scale similar to the attack on the root servers? What can ccTLD operators do to resist the malicious attacks? Should this be discussed? more

So, Who Really Did Invent the Internet?

The beginnings of the Internet are shrouded in myth and misunderstandings that have led to some claims of proprietary ownership of the Internet. Where and when did the Internet begin? The only thing Internet historians seem to agree on is that it was not 1969, or the Pentagon, (or for that matter Al Gore). From there on, there is a wide divergence of views as to when, where, and by whom the Internet may have been invented... more

Securing the DNS in a Post-Quantum World: Hash-Based Signatures and Synthesized Zone Signing Keys

In my last article, I described efforts underway to standardize new cryptographic algorithms that are designed to be less vulnerable to potential future advances in quantum computing. I also reviewed operational challenges to be considered when adding new algorithms to the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC). In this post, I'll look at hash-based signatures, a family of post-quantum algorithms that could be a good match for DNSSEC from the perspective of infrastructure stability. more