Featured Blogs

CENTR Replies to ITU Study on ccTLD Governance

The Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries (CENTR) announced today their response to Professor Michael Geist's draft survey report "Government and country-code top level Domains: A global survey", which was conducted on behalf of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in December 2003. "In the last decade the general trend has been to de-regulate markets in the Communications Industry, which continues to stimulate economic growth and innovation, and it seems perverse that this ITU supported report is seeking to go against the proven successful trend," said Paul Kane, chairman of CENTR. more

Focus on gTLD Niches, Not on the Number of Registrations

Applicants for the recently approved launch of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) should seriously take into account niche markets instead of focusing on the number of registrations. Drawing on failure and success drivers when it comes to Internet start-ups, it becomes clear that the failures of recently introduced generic top-level domains (gTLDs) - such as .biz and .info - are due to their focus on the number of registrations (i.e., scale) instead of focusing on niche markets. On the other hand, start-up successes have been consequences of prudent initial niche strategies. more

Domain Registrars File Lawsuit Against ICANN

Members of the Domain Justice Coalition filed a lawsuit today requesting a temporary restraining order and other relief against ICANN to block the implementation of a domain name Wait Listing Service (WLS). The WLS was proposed by VeriSign, Inc. (pdf) and approved by ICANN in federal court in Los Angeles. The suit challenges ICANN's failure to comply with its internal decision-making process requirements when it approved implementation of the WLS in the face of opposition from domain name registrars, resellers and consumers. more

Trademark Owners Should Consider .mp Domain Name Registration

Saipan DataCom, Inc.’s upcoming late March 2009 open launch of chi.mp (“Content Hub & Identity Management Platform) has implications for trademark holders that seem to have gone unnoticed to date. Chi.mp is a free platform that enables social network users to create social hubs on their own stand-alone hosted Web sites... As an attorney representing both trademark owners and domain name registries, I see chi.mp as a unique situation. more

IPv6… Canada About to Score?

USA-Canada World Championship hockey games never fail to elicit great excitement. In the IPv6 adoption world league however, the US seems to have a convincing lead over their northern neighbour but the game is not over yet, here come the Canucks. Internet evolution, and IPv6 in particular, were the major themes at the ISACC (ICT Standards Advisory Council of Canada) Plenary meeting in Ottawa mid April... more

What’s My Name Got to Do With It?

For about 3 years I had been studying graphic design and finally after much searching decided to use bmw-design.com for my domain name. I chose bmw for my initials Bernadette Maria Walker. I searched for availability on Network Solutions and was happy to see that it had not been taken, so I registered my new domain name. This all seemed very innocent to me and I even designed my logo around this name. Then 5 days later I got this letter via FedEx from BMW Motor Company in Germany... more

Israel’s Brutal Gaza ICT Infrastructure Demolition Derby

Over two years of war, Israel has decimated Gaza's ICT infrastructure, crippling connectivity, impeding emergency response, and isolating civilians from the digital world, while cementing long-standing control over telecommunications under the guise of national security. more

Google: Not All ccTLD’s Are Created Equally in Generic Search Rankings

There is a very interesting video posted on YouTube.com from Matt Cutts of Google who answered the question about how ccTLD's are viewed by Google especially when they are being used as domain hacks. Here is the question: "We have a vanity domain (http://ran.ge) that unfortunately isn't one of the generic TLDs, which means we can't set our geographic target in Webmaster Tools. Is there any way to still target our proper location?" more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 1: What Is “Open Internet”

I'm sure we've all heard about "the Open Internet." The expression builds upon a rich pedigree of term "open" in various contexts. For example, "open government" is the governing doctrine which holds that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight, a concept that appears to be able to trace its antecedents back to the age of enlightenment in 17th century Europe. more

5G Base Stations $13,000 in China

Most carriers don't order 200,000 5G base stations, so they will pay more, but that's the actual price for the joint procurement of China Telecom and China Unicom. The 200,000-300,000 cells the two jointly are upgrading are probably more than the entire rest of the world will add. The second Chinese network, jointly built by China Mobile and China Broadcast, is growing even faster. more

Searching for Truth in DKIM: Part 3 of 5

Last year, MAAWG published a white paper titled Trust in Email Begins with Authentication [PDF], which explains that authentication (DKIM) is “[a] safe means of identifying a participant-such as an author or an operator of an email service” while reputation is a “means of assessing their trustworthiness.”

Verizon vs. iREIT et al Court Documents: What Can We Learn?

Verizon filed sued against iREIT and Domain Marketplace a couple of weeks ago in a Texas court, alleging cybersquatting. David Kesmodel's blog broke the story, and I used the PACER system to obtain the court filings, which are posted here. Exhibit 5 makes fascinating reading, especially when point #43 in the main statement of claim says "Exhibit 5 details only one famous trademark for each letter of the alphabet." more

A Look at DNS Trends and What the Future May Hold

We used to think of computer networks as being constructed using two fundamental common infrastructure components: names and addresses. Every connected device had a stable protocol address to allow all other devices to initiate a communication transaction with this device by addressing a data packet to this protocol address. And every device was also associated with a name, allowing human users and human use applications to use a more convenient alias for these protocol addresses. more

WebRTC/RTCWEB Congestion Control Workshop on July 28 in Vancouver

As we start moving more real-time communications into web browsers with the upcoming WebRTC/RTCWEB offerings, what do we do about congestion control? How do we ensure that all these browser-based communications sessions share the network fairly? With RTC capabilities now already available in builds for browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, how do we deal with the expected increase in voice, video, chat and data traffic? more

IPv4 Prices: Supply and Demand in 2023

In early 2022 the discount that had been available for large blocks of IPv4 addresses disappeared. For the first time in years, /16 blocks and larger began to sell at an increasing premium. By Q2-2023, small and medium-sized blocks sold for a 30-35% discount to larger ones. At the same time, the tighter range of prices that had persisted for nearly a decade fractured and blocks traded in wide ranges throughout 2022 and the first half of 2023. more