Featured Blogs

OMB Focuses On Cybersecurity

Ensuring federal cybersecurity is essential to protecting national security. According to some media reports, recommendations have been made to the Bush Administration to "create a distinct administrative cybersecurity position within the Homeland Security Department to oversee progress in the federal government and act as a liaison with private industry." However, before new bureaucracy is created, it is important to recognize the practical cybersecurity policies and projects that are already being undertaken by the Administration. more

Can Technology Can Spam?

It seems to be impossible to implement a law against spam - unsolicited bulk email - without making a hash of it. At best, anti-spam laws are ineffective; at worst, they cause more problems than spam itself. Can technology fare any better? ...But despite this flurry of initiatives, we are yet to see a definitive answer to the spam problem. An Anti-Spam Technical Alliance has been formed by Microsoft, America Online, Yahoo! and EarthLink, but these companies continue to proffer competing solutions. Meanwhile, the technology being deployed in the spam wars is causing collateral damage, in the form of 'false positives' - email that is incorrectly categorised as spam, and so never reaches its intended recipient. more

The US as Keeper of a ‘Free’ Internet?

The imminent expiration date (September 30) of the joint project agreement between ICANN and the US government, establishing the US as unilateral supervisor over Internet's addressing and Domain Name System (DNS) operations, has rejuvenated the call for an internationalization of Internet oversight. The average Internet user, however, is unlikely to benefit from a change in the current status quo as both alternatives, full privatization and intergovernmental oversight, are bound to affect both the Internet's innovative power and the personal liberties enjoyed by its users. more

Business Case for IPv6 - Part 1

When discussing IPv6, it is easy to forget that we are ultimately talking about an enhanced version of an existing network protocol. Sure, it brings about a number of technical advantages. But when viewed in isolation - without a business case - there really are not that many drivers that would place IPv6 on the agenda of the top decision makers looking after budgets. For IPv6 to gain serious momentum, this has to be changed. more

Securing the DNS in a Post-Quantum World: New DNSSEC Algorithms on the Horizon

One of the "key" questions cryptographers have been asking for the past decade or more is what to do about the potential future development of a large-scale quantum computer. If theory holds, a quantum computer could break established public-key algorithms including RSA and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), building on Peter Shor's groundbreaking result from 1994. more

One Year Later: Who’s Doing What With IPv6?

One year on from the World IPv6 Launch in June 2012, we wanted to see how much progress has been made towards the goal of global IPv6 deployment. Both APNIC and Google are carrying out measurements at the end user level, which show that around 1.29% (APNIC) and 1.48% (Google) of end users are capable of accessing the IPv6 Internet. Measurements taken from this time last year show 0.49% (APNIC) and 0.72% (Google), which means the amount of IPv6-enabled end users has more than doubled in the past 12 months. more

Bruce Schneier to Speak About Internet Surveillance at IETF 88 Technical Plenary Next Week

How do we harden the Internet against the kinds of pervasive monitoring and surveillance that has been in recent news? While full solutions may require political and legal actions, are there technical improvements that can be made to underlying Internet infrastructure? As discussed by IETF Chair Jari Arkko in a recent post on the IETF blog, "Plenary on Internet Hardening", the Technical Plenary at next weeks IETF 88 meeting in Vancouver, BC, Canada, will focus on this incredibly critical issue. more

Governing the Internet: The Model is the Message

In 1964, Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan famously wrote, "The medium is the message." This phrase popped into my head last week as I listened to the opening speakers at the Internet Governance Forum in Nairobi. McLuhan meant that the form in which a message is delivered - the medium - embeds itself in the meaning of the message. The medium influences how the message is perceived and understood and is therefore inseparable from the message itself. What does this have to do with the Internet? more

Will Obama Re-Nationalize ICANN?

Speaking at a Technology University of Delft conference on the internationalization of infrastructures, Professor Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger made some unique and provocative observations about the future of the ICANN tether to the U.S. government. Mayer-Schoenberger was trying to predict the position of the three main players: the EU, the US and China... more

ALAC Meets the ICANN Board

For three years, I've been a member of ICANN's "Interim" At-Large Advisory Committee, ALAC. At this Vancouver meeting, for the first time, the ICANN Board met with us, and Bret captured it on mp3 for podcast. ALAC criticized ICANN's proposed settlement with VeriSign, and then spoke about the problems with the current structure for at-large participation. more

MIT 2010 Spam Conference Starts Tomorrow…

In January we presented the glorious history of the MIT spam conference, today we present the schedule for the first day. Opening session will be from this author, Garth Buren with a topic entitled The Internet Doomsday Book, with details be released the same day as the presentation. Followed by Dr. Robert Bruen with a review of activities since the last MIT spam conference... more

Who is Keeping TAS Down?

Today, Friday April 27, ICANN had promised an update on the problems that led to its TLD Registration System (TAS) being taken offline on April 12. As the working day ends in Europe, that update has yet to come. Even if it does, I would not expect anything more concrete than the "we are still working on the issue, thanks for your patience" message of recent days. So what's really going on here? Does anyone at ICANN seriously expect us to believe that the tech team is "still reviewing the TAS data and checking the integrity of each and every application"? more

Internet: Government Dominance or Governance?

In an age where the world has gone global in many forms and guises, the political attention is more and more focussed on national, populist issues, that arise from fear for the unknown. I can't deny it: the future undoubtedly contains many uncertainties. This usually comes with a general public that's afraid and in fear of things they cannot oversee. Thus it is easily aroused by a populist leader who feeds on this fear and throws flammable material on the already smouldering fire. In a time where leadership is called for, it seems lacking. The Internet governance discussion demands visionary leadership on a cross border level and it needs it soon. more

Does ICANN Need to Evolve Its Code of Conduct?

If you follow the Internet governance world like I do, you've no doubt had time to ponder the news of former ICANN Board Chair Peter Dengate Thrush's appointment as Executive Chairman of Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (TLDH). This was a seemingly fast jump from the body that coordinates the Internet (whose most recent milestone was to approve the creation of new gTLDs) to one of the key companies that stands to actively benefit from this burgeoning part of the domain name industry. Further, he's taken up a position that, according to reports, will allow him to benefit substantially as well. more

Operational Challenges When Implementing DNSSEC

As a reader of this article, you are probably familiar with the DNS cache poisoning techniques discovered a few years ago. And you have most likely heard that DNSSEC is the long term cure. But you might not know exactly what challenges are involved with DNSSEC and what experience the early adopters have gathered and documented. Perhaps you waited with our own rollout until you could gather more documentation over the operational experience when rolling out DNSSEC. This article summarizes authors' experiences and learnings from implementing the technology in production environments as well as discusses associated operational issues. more