Featured Blogs

ECFiber: Building a Fiber-to-Premises Network in the Rural United States

Nestled in the northeastern part of the United States is the small state of Vermont, the 14th State to join the United States in 1789. Its name comes from the French, in which 'vert montagne' means 'green mountain.' and it is known as the Green Mountain state. With only about 625,000 inhabitants, it is the 45th state out of 50 in size, and 49th of 50 in number of people, even less populated than Alaska. more

DCA Open Letter to Congress in Defense of the Status Quo on Global Internet Governance Model

As spearhead of the Yes2DotAfrica Campaign, I recently wrote a letter on behalf of DCA, to the Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, Senator Jay Rockefeller which was also copied to other U.S. leaders and officials to express support for the present status quo on Global Internet Goverenance and a Reaffirmation of the Mult-stakeholder model. The full text of the letter is published in this post. more

Geely’s LEO Constellation for Mobile Vehicle Connectivity

The Geely Holding Group (GHG) is a private Chinese conglomerate that is highly diversified but best known as an auto manufacturer that envisions itself as a "global mobile technology group." GHG announced this week that it has begun construction of an intelligent satellite production and testing facility that will include modular satellite manufacturing, satellite testing, satellite R&D, and cloud computing centers.

Update Mar 2, 2024:

Geely launched eleven satellites in the same 50-degree inclination plane as the first nine, but there was a considerable delay between the two launches. The first nine were launched in June 2022 and the second 11 were launched in February 2024. The delay may have been caused by a satellite re-design -- The mass of these satellites is 130 kg whereas the first nine satellites had masses of 100 kg.

The launch cadence will have to speed up if they are to reach their goal of beginning service with 72 t satellites next year. more

ICA Questions ICANN on RegisterFly

The Internet Commerce Association sent this letter to ICANN yesterday in regard to the RegisterFly situation: "I am writing to you in my capacity as Counsel to the Internet Commerce Association (ICA), a non-profit trade association dedicated to promoting and protecting the rights of domain name (DN) owners... It has come to our attention that an ICANN-accredited registrar is in the midst of what appears to be a near-complete operational breakdown, and that its ongoing failure to carry out its responsibilities is causing substantial economic loss to tens of thousands of DN registrants in both the United States and multiple foreign jurisdictions." more

DNS Wars

The North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG) is now quite an institution for the Internet, particularly in the North American Internet community. It was an offshoot of the Regional Techs meetings, which were part of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) framework of the late 80s and early 90s. NANOG has thrived since then and is certainly one of the major network operational forums in today's Internet – if not the preeminent forum for network operators for the entire Internet. more

Declaring IPv4 “Historic”

At the IETF 95 meeting at the start of April, I was in a meeting of the IPv4 Sunset Working Group, and heard Lee Howard, Director of Network Technology at Time Warner Cable, present on a proposal that recommended that IP version 4, or to be specific, that the technical protocol specification documented in RFC 791, be declared "Historic"... The rationale for this proposed re-designation of IPv4 was that this protocol has indeed been superseded by a more recent specification, namely IP version 6. more

Domain Name Case Under ACPA Failed Because Trademark Was Not Distinctive

The federal Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) [15 U.S.C. 1125(d)] is a provision in U.S. law that gives trademark owners a cause of action against one who has wrongfully registered a domain name. In general, the ACPA gives rights to owners of trademarks that are either distinctive or famous at the time the defendant registered the offending domain name. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed the decision of a lower court that dismissed an ACPA claim... more

Open Ends: Civil Society and Internet Governance - Part III

This is the final part of a three-part series interview by Geert Lovink with Jeanette Hofmann, policy expert from Germany, where she talks about her experiences as a member of the ICANN's Nominating Committee and her current involvement as a civil society member of the German delegation for the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS). "You have been visiting WSIS as a member of the German delegation. Could you share some of your personal impressions with us? Did you primarily look at WSIS as an ICT circus for governmental officials and development experts or was there something, no matter how futile, at stake there?..." more

I Am Not an IP Address, I Am a Free Man… and a Potential Customer

When I heard that full episodes of The Prisoner TV series were available online I immediately headed over to the AMC website to wallow in nostalgic enjoyment and remind myself just how cool Patrick McGoohan was as he stumbled around Portmeirion trying to avoid a big plastic ball... I would happily have watched online and let AMC advertise to me in return, but sadly it was not to be. When I got to The Prisoner page on its site I saw only an unfriendly message, shouting at me... more

The Design of the Domain Name System, Part V - Large Data

In the previous four installments, we've been looking at aspects of the design of the DNS. Today we look at the amount of data one can ask the DNS to store and to serve to clients. Most DNS queries are made via UDP, a single packet for query and a single packet for the response, with the packet size traditionally limited to 512 bytes. This limits the payload of the returned records in a response packet to about 400 bytes... more

Dot-Biz Saga

Two sides can oppose each other strenuously and still be wrong in exactly the same way. For or against, too much of the debate about the new ICANN top-level domains (TLDs) ignores TLD signaling and uses inappropriate TLD success measures. Here I spotlight the key mistakes by concentrating on ".biz" registrations, and I put forward some possible remedies. more

Toward a Balanced ICANN Accreditation Program for Privacy and Proxy Service Providers

For the past two years a diverse group of stakeholders from the ICANN community, including myself, has been working hard to come to a consensus on a set of recommendations related to development and implementation of an ICANN accreditation program for privacy & proxy service providers. The result of this effort will replace the interim specification defined in the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) that is due to expire at the end of 2016. more

Parallels Between Our Oceans and Internet Governance #WorldOceanDay

Today is June 8th and World Ocean Day. As I ponder on the threats and challenges to the world's ocean with the enormous stresses such as overfishing, pollution, ocean acidification that threatens all global standards of living, I cannot help but think about the startling similarities that global internet governance faces with its respective stresses of increasing cyber security vulnerabilities, threats, breaches of trust, growing cyber crime, breaches of privacy and data protection, identity thefts, pedophilia and many other things that threaten global public interest and our safety within an internet ecosystem. more

Why Don’t GAC Representatives Follow Their Own National Law?

A few weeks ago ICANN's domain name policy making organ (the GNSO) decided that the purpose of Whois was domain name coordination and not compulsory surveillance of domain name registrants. The US and Australian governments expressed their opposition. The US government's lack of concern for privacy is well known. But what about Australia? The Australian ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) representative, Ashley Cross, tried to use his authority as "a government" to intimidate the GNSO, sending it a message announcing that "Australia" supports a broader definition of Whois purpose that gives ICANN a blank check... What does "Australia" really support, however? more

Where to Search UDRP Decisions

Searching decisions under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) is important - for evaluating the merits of a potential case and also, of course, for citing precedent when drafting documents (such as a complaint and a response) in an actual case. But, searching UDRP decisions is not always an easy task. It's important to know both where to search and how to search. Unfortunately, there is no longer an official, central repository of all UDRP decisions that is freely available online. more