Featured Blogs

DDoS Attacks: Don’t Be In Denial of the Risks

Unlike traditional attacks by hackers which breach a business's security systems, resulting in defaced websites, intellectual property theft and/or customer data theft, a DDoS attack focuses on making a business's Internet connected infrastructure (e.g. web servers, email servers, database servers, FTP servers, APIs, etc.) unavailable to legitimate users. A business's brand reputation, which can take years to establish, can be swept away in just a few hours from a single DDoS attack in the same way a natural disaster like a flood or earthquake can impact a traditional brick and mortar business. more

Prepare for the Worst, But Hope for the Best

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the importance of the timeline leading up to the September 2015 deadline for the IANA oversight transition proposal. In that post, I explored the nature of U.S. politics and how it can affect the transition if we, as a community, are not diligent in our efforts to meet that deadline. Since then, the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) has held its first meeting and a conference call, resulting in some new information that necessitates an update to that post. more

Internet Records Retention Bill

A lot of pixels have been spilled lately over an Internet records retention bill recently introduced in both the House and the Senate. The goal is to fight child pornography. That's a worthwhile goal; however, I think these bills will do little to further it. Worse yet, I think that at least two of the provisions of the bill are likely to have bad side effects... more

ICANN’s New gTLD Double Standard?

Over the last two days I have sat in a room and watched a rather interesting dynamic unfold between the ICANN Board and its Government Advisory Committee (GAC). While I remain optimistic of there being a responsible closure to the new gTLD implementation process within the next six months, an apparent double standard being used by the ICANN Board could be a potential stumbling block. more

Could Net Neutrality be to Investments in the Internet What AT&T’s Regulation was to Bell Labs?

As the FCC moves forward with its plans to regulate the internet in the U.S., it's worth taking a look at what's happened when the government has regulated other innovative industries. As a facilitator of innovation, I've always been fascinated with the history of Bell Labs. Bell Labs was once thought of as the source of most modern innovations... The work done at Bell Labs built the foundation for modern invention leading to phones, space exploration, the internet, music distribution, cell phones, radio and television and more. more

The 5G Race in Reno

The past week in the 5G world was notable because of some major events in Reno in the 5G race to roll out the full 5G specifications known as Release 16. A set of seven major concurrent industry standards meetings were hosted there over five days last week. The metrics are indicative of who really participates in and shapes the rapidly emerging 5G platforms. more

New gTLD Expressions of Interest: Proceed with Caution

The ICANN Board, at its October 2009 annual meeting in Seoul, passed a resolution directing staff to prepare an analysis regarding the feasibility of ICANN soliciting Expressions of Interests (EOIs) from prospective applicants for new Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs)... While this latest initiative should not distract ICANN from the remaining four overarching issues, if well executed, this EOI initiative could provide valuable insights into two of the four overarching issues: economics and root scaling. more

An IPv6 Update for 2020

The Australian Domain Name Administration, AUDA, recently published its quarterly report for the last quarter of 2020. The report contained the interesting snippet: "The rapid digitization of our lives and economy -- necessitated by COVID-19 -- continued to underpin strong growth in .au registrations. New .au domains created in December 2020 were up 23 percent from December 2019, while total domains under management were up more than 2.1 percent over the same period." more

The Rising Technical Challenges of Networking at Home

For me, one of the more interesting sessions at the recent IETF 81 meeting in July was the first meeting of the recently established Homenet Working Group. What's so interesting about networking the home? Well, if you regard challenges as "interesting", then just about everything is interesting when you look at networking in the home! more

A Closer Look at Apple and Location-Tracking

There's been a lot of media attention to a report that iPhones track your movements. It's even reached the U.S. Senate. I'm underwhelmed. I think that the threat is overhyped. What is happening is that these devices create a hidden file with your location... more

How a Security Specialist Fell Victim to Attack

Our systems are protected by state of the art security systems. Our SPAM filter is a hardware device that is nearly 100% effective. It also helps in protecting against Spyware and other malicious code. Our Firewall is similar to those you would find in large corporations. Our Anti-Virus system has served us well and we've not had problems with virus for years. ...Two weeks ago, I received approximately twenty e-mails requesting the review and approval of Defending The Net articles published on other sites. I thoroughly review the e-mails to make sure they seem legitimate... more

Dictionary Words Alone or Combined Functioning as Trademarks Are No Less Dictionary Words

By definition "any word" or "any combination of words" can function as trademarks, but whether alone or combined for that purpose no use can overrule their ordinary meanings, support their removal from the public domain, or prevent speculation or use of identical or confusingly similar words by businesses other than rights holders. The fact is, all words that are not coined found in dictionaries, word lists, and circulating in world cultures are generic. more

Commercial Incentives Behind IPv6 Deployment

The Best Practice Forum (BPF) on IPv6 at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) explored what economic and commercial incentives drive providers, companies and organizations to deploy IPv6 on their networks and for their services. The BPF collected case studies, held open discussions online and at the 2016 IGF meeting, and produced a comprehensive output report. This article gives a high-level overview. more

DNS Amplification Attacks: Out of Sight, Out of Mind? (Part 1)

Geoff Huston's recent post about the rise of DNS amplification attacks offers excellent perspective on the issue. Major incidents like the Spamhaus attack Geoff mentions at the beginning of his post make headlines, but even small attacks create noticeable floods of traffic. These attacks are easy to launch and effective even with relatively modest resources and we see evidence they're occurring regularly. Although DNS servers are not usually the target of these attacks the increase in traffic and larger response sizes typically stress DNS infrastructure and require attention from operation teams. more

LeoSat Satellite Internet Project

I've been tracking Greg Wyler and Elon Musk's plans to launch low-Earth orbit satellites to provide Internet connectivity. Musk's SpaceX and Wyler's OneWeb have been joined by a would-be low-Earth connectivity provider, Leosat. Leosat will not be marketing to individual end users but will target government and business - maritime applications, oil and gas exploration and productions, telecom back-haul and trunking, enterprise VSAT, etc. more