Featured Blogs

DNS Resolution, Browsers & Hope For The Future

DNS is not something that most people think about when using the Internet. Neither should they have to: the DNS is just part of the infrastructure in the same way that IP addresses are. The only time a user ought to notice the DNS is when it breaks (and it should never break). If that's true, then we ought to expect any Internet client - including web browsers - to use the very same infrastructure as everything else and for the DNS resolution mechanisms to be the ones offered by the operating system. What makes browsers different? more

DNS Abuse Definition: Attributes of Mitigation

A substantial amount of DNS community discussion on the topic of DNS Abuse is focused on defining what is or is not DNS Abuse. The definition adopted by ICANN contracted parties, as well as the DNS Abuse Institute, is straightforward: DNS Abuse is malware, botnets, pharming, phishing, and spam where it's a vehicle for the preceding harms. There is, of course, some fuzziness on the margins, where technical harms are also using content. more

WCIT-12 Disappoints, More Work to Be Done

In the end it was a disappointment that the treaty on International Telecommunications regulations (ITRs) that had been under negotiation for two weeks at WCIT-12 was not acceptable to 55 countries, and that, as a consequence, these countries did not sign the final version of the international treaty (89 did sign). After two weeks of sometimes fractious negotiation - 1,275 proposals were discussed in all - the contentious issues were significantly watered down. However the dissenting countries felt that the key issue - anything in relation to the internet - should not be included at all and, quite correctly, did not compromise on that. more

Celebrating 167 Years of Public International Law for Cyber Security

On 30 September 1850 at Dresden, the first international treaty was issued among the first sovereign nations to internet their national electronic communication networks. It was known as the Dresden Convention, and culminated several weeks hammering out basic requirements and techniques to implement an internet spanning the Austro-German European continent at the time, and established a continuing "Union" of signatories to evolve the provisions of the treaty. more

Native Web Applications (NWA) vs. Rich Internet Applications (RIA)

A rewrite of the Rich Internet Application (RIA) article is my latest contribution to Wikipedia following last year's full rewrite of the Cloud Computing article (which is now finally fairly stable and one of the main authoritative sources on the topic; according to the article statistics I've just done my 500th edit, or one every eight hours on average so it's about as up-to-date as you'll find). Needless to say I agree wholeheartedly with Mozilla's Mark Finkle in saying RIA is Dead! Long Live Web Applications... more

4 Key Dates on the gTLD Timeline

The new "dot-anything" domain extensions or "gTLDs" have been a major point of debate in the domain community for years now -- ever since they were just a glimmer in ICANN's eye -- and it's all come down to a few very important dates over the next six to nine months. more

OneWeb and Intelsat Sign the First Multi-Orbit Broadband Agreement – More to Come

Last October, I reviewed multi-orbit tests and plans of several low Earth orbit (LEO), medium Earth orbit (MEO), and Geostationary (GEO) broadband satellite companies and quoted Neil Masterson, CEO of LEO operator OneWeb as saying, "Interoperability with GEO satellites must happen - it's common sense ... Customers don't care whether it's a LEO satellite or a GEO satellite - all they want is connectivity." more

IPv6 and Formula One Racing

The Telecom World converged in greater numbers than ever before on Barcelona last week for the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC). This years' motto: Redefining Mobile. To see one of the worlds' leading automotive industry executives, Ford Motor's Bill Ford Jr. delivering a keynote was yet another illustration of the growing osmosis between Telecommunications and other industry verticals. more

IP Addresses and Traceback

This is an informal description the evolution of a particular area of network forensic activity, namely that of traceback. This activity typically involves using data recorded at one end of a network transaction, and using various logs and registration records to identify the other party to the transaction. Here we'll look at the impact that IPv4 address exhaustion and IPv6 transition has had on this activity, and also note, as we explore this space, the changing role of IP addresses within the IP protocol architecture. more

Wireless Technology and Vehicle Safety

Five years ago, any discussion of 5G included a vision that we'd end up with smart cars that were all connected with a ubiquitous 5G network that was going to be built everywhere. We're still waiting to see a real 5G network anywhere instead of the 4G LTE networks that are still being touted by every cellular company as 5G. The idea of a ubiquitous network capable of supporting smart cars died, but there is still an effort underway to use wireless technology to make car travel safer. more

Court Says gTLDs Aren’t ‘Domain Names’ for Cybersquatting Purposes, Declines LRO Review of .delmonte

A Swiss Del Monte entity that had a license to use the "DEL MONTE" mark applies to operate the .delmonte generic top level domain (gTLD). Another Del Monte entity, based in Delaware, filed a "legal rights objection" (LRO) - under WIPO-established procedures - to the Swiss Del Monte's application. A three member panel sustained the Delaware company's LRO... The Swiss entity sued in federal court seeking a declaration that it had sufficient rights in the "DEL MONTE" mark to operate the TLD... more

DENIC (.DE) Now Has Over 17 Million Domain Names Registered

DENIC (the registry of .DE and the top-level domain name extension of Germany) has just recently announced that it has cracked the mark of 17 million domain names registered. As one of the most successful ccTLD's (country-code top-level domain names), the press release of DENIC is providing some additional interesting statistics. Such as that there are now 30k new registrations on average every month and that DENIC has over 300 members (mostly domain name registrars) to register domain names on behalf of their customers. more

A Transport Protocol’s Perspective on Optimizing Starlink Performance

Digital communications systems always represent a collection of design trade-offs. Maximizing one characteristic of a system may impair others, and various communications services may choose to optimize different performance parameters based on the intersection of these design decisions with the physical characteristics of the communications medium. more

Interview With Michael Froomkin: Watching ICANN Through IETF ? Part II

In the first part of our interview with Michael Froomkin, a Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law and one of the founding members of ICANNWatch, several issues were discussed regarding his recent article in the Harvard Law Review called, "[email protected]: Toward a Critical Theory of Cyberspace".

Michael Froomkin, who has underlined several striking lessons to be learned from IETF/ICANN contrast, continues with us in the second part of this interview, addressing even deeper matters such as ICANN's institutional design. more

From Loon to Taara: Google’s Moonshot Delivering Wireless Backhaul

You may recall a number of years ago when Google experimented with delivering broadband from balloons in an effort labeled Project Loon. The project was eventually dropped, but a remnant of the project has now resurfaced as Taara - broadband delivered terrestrially by lasers. more