Featured Blogs

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

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

Split UDRP Decisions on (Almost) Identical Domain Names

A company called Rocketgate PR LLC, which owns a U.S. registration for the trademark ROCKETPAY, filed two UDRP complaints on the same date against two different domain name registrants - for the domain names and . (The only difference is that the latter domain name is plural.) In both cases, the disputed domain names were associated with inactive websites. The UDRP cases were assigned to two different panelists, who issued their decisions one day apart. 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

Designing Secure Networks with Cisco Technology, Part 3

In this multipart series I will be presenting some of the leading industry-standard best practices for enterprise network security using Cisco technologies. Each article in the series will cover a different aspect of security technologies and designs and how each can be deployed in the enterprise to provide the best security posture at the lowest possible budgetary and administrative cost. In Part 2 of this series I discussed security risks and vulnerability. In this article we begin to focus on the role Cisco network and security technologies play in ensuring the safety and security of network data. more

Averting the Internet Meltdown

A call to action went out: a small, California-based organization called People for Internet Responsibility (PFIR) posted an announcement for an urgent conference - "Preventing the Internet Meltdown." The meltdown that PFIR envisioned was not an impending technical malfunction or enemy attack. Instead, conference organizers foresaw "risks of imminent disruption" to the Internet that would come from an unlikely sector: government officials and bureaucrats working on the unglamorous-sounding problems of Internet Governance. 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

How to Manage Internet Abundance

The Internet has two billion global users, and the developing world is just hitting its growth phase. Mobile data traffic is doubling every year, and soon all four billion mobile phones will access the Net. In 2008, according to a new UC-San Diego study, Americans consumed over 3,600 exabytes of information, or an average of 34 gigabytes per person per day. Microsoft researchers argue in a new book, "The Fourth Paradigm," that an "exaflood" of real-world and experimental data is changing the very nature of science itself. We need completely new strategies, they write, to "capture, curate, and analyze" these unimaginably large waves of information. more

DNS-Based DDoS: Diverse Options for Attackers

Denial of service attacks have been around since the Internet was commercialized and some of the largest attacks ever launched relied on DNS, making headlines. But every day a barrage of smaller DNS-based attacks take down targets and severely stress the DNS ecosystem. Although DNS servers are not usually the target of attacks they are often disrupted so attention from operation teams is required. There is no indication the problem is going away and attackers continue to innovate. more

Are We Ready to Switch Off IPv4?

At the RIPE 67 meeting in Athens, Greece, the RIPE IPv6 Working Group ran a little experiment to test the feasibility of an IPv6-only network and to identify challenges in user experience. While the results were highly encouraging, they indicated that there is still work to be done before IPv4 can be switched off once and for all. As IPv6 is slowly but surely deployed around the world, we've entered a phase where it's necessary for your devices to be able to communicate using either of the two IP protocols currently in use. more

North American Broadband Trends

The broadband sector, like the wireless sector, is one of the strongest growth areas of telecommunications. Unlike most OECD countries, where DSL tends to dominate, the majority of subscribers in the US fixed broadband market are cable subscribers. During 2010 the gap continued to widen as the cable companies accounted for 70% of new broadband subscribers compared to the telcos' 30%. Although new broadband networks such as FttH and WiMAX are being widely deployed, broadband competition in each region is still generally limited to one DSL and one cable operator. more

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

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

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

IBM Predicts the Future for 2016 and It Includes No Spam

IBM published a video where it predicts what the world will look like in 2016 (see bottom of this post for the link). It includes the following five predictions. I want to start with the last one -- that junk mail (i.e., spam) will disappear. You'll need to watch the video to get the nuances of the prediction, but IBM says that in five years, Junk Mail will become a thing of the past. more