Featured Blogs

Global IPv6 Summit to Be Held on September 7th 2015

September 7th 2015 will see the Global IPv6 Next Generation Internet Summit 2015 (hereinafter referred to as IPv6 Summit) held in the Presidential Hotel Beijing. The conference will be co-hosted by the IPv6 Forum and BII Group, under the theme of "IPv6 approaching, are you ready?," which will be well attended by top-notch industrial experts both at home and abroad, hundreds of representatives from carriers across the globe, representatives of well-known vendors in the industry, experts from academic agencies, enterprise users, and many influential news outlets, who will discuss the mainstream plans and technical foci of large-scale IPv6 deployment, influence and challenges brought by IPv6 development on network security, Global Internet of Things boosted by IPv6, and other burning issues. more

It’s About Whois Display And Access

The need for an access model for non-public Whois data has been apparent since GDPR became a major issue before the community well over a year ago. Now is the time to address it seriously, and not with half measures. We urgently need a temporary model for access to non-public Whois data for legitimate uses, while the community undertakes longer-term policy development efforts. more

M-Commerce Market in China and Globally

M-commerce (mobile e-commerce) incorporates a range of mobile-driven applications, including payments for parking and theatre tickets (m-payments) to mobile banking (m-banking). M-commerce is a broad field incorporating a large variety of services and business models. In 2011, according to Gartner Group, over 15 billion apps are expected to be downloaded worldwide via app stores. They also estimated app store revenues alone reached over $5 billion in 2010 (incorporating revenue generated from both apps purchases and advertising). more

GDPR and WHOIS - We’ve Heard from the Article 29 Working Party, Now What?

Well, here we are on Friday the 13th and I couldn't think of a better way to spend the day than providing an update on GDPR, WHOIS and ICANN. There's lots to cover, so let's dive right in. As we have been talking about for a number of months now, the EU's new General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) will become enforceable on May 25th. The ICANN community has been struggling with how GDPR will impact the WHOIS system. more

“Can IP Be Protected in the Internet Age?” Panel Recap from Russian Economic Development Conference

In June, I attended the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum ("SPIEF"), organized by the Russian government's Ministry of Economic Development. This was a major event drawing thousands of participants to St. Petersburg... I participated on a panel entitled "Can IP Be Protected in the Internet Age?" Right away, I trust many of you find the titling odd... more

On Why and How the Internet Needs to Be Governed

The World is not inventing Internet Governance. Internet is already being governed. There is governance, but without a formal structure -- the structure is undefined like a round table... The opponents of the concept of Internet Governance perhaps believe that the essential character of the Internet is preserved best by challenging the very concept of Governance. The words "Governance", "Control", "Regulation" or even "Coordination" are mistaken to be invasive to the essential character of a free, open and user-centric internet. more

Cryptographic Tools for Non-Existence in the Domain Name System: NSEC and NSEC3

In my previous post, I described the first broad scale deployment of cryptography in the DNS, known as the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). I described how a name server can enable a requester to validate the correctness of a "positive" response to a query -- when a queried domain name exists -- by adding a digital signature to the DNS response returned. more

What Is the World Community Grid?

Innovation is one of those words that is a bit hard to internalize. Merriam-Webster says innovation is the introduction of something new or a new idea, method, or device. That would be a narrow definition, perhaps even obsolete. Innovation is much more than invention or introducing new technology. Some would say that innovation is more of a state of mind, an attitude. One thing is for sure: innovation is happening more quickly; it is more open and more collaborative. more

Sharing ICANN Can Be Win-Win for the United States

With the Internet's global reach and importance showing exponential growth, pressure on the United States to share control of ICANN is mounting. A number of experts believe that the question is simply how much the United States should give up and how soon. This essay argues that "giving up" can be a win-win solution; i.e., control sharing is not a zero-sum game. more

Computing Clouds in Orbit – A Possible Roadmap

Last week, I predicted that much of the Internet and most cloud datacenters would launch into space in the next ten years. Today the only part of the Internet in space is a very small amount of "bent-pipe" access: signals which go from a user to a satellite and bounce back down to a ground station which feeds them into the terrestrial internet where all processing is done and all queries answered by internet-connected servers, many of them in cloud data centers. more

The FCC is Taking the Right Step

Today's announcement from the Commission that it intends to roll back the exercise of Title II utility-style regulation over "any person engaged in the provision of broadband internet access service" at its 14 December meeting is the right step. As a veteran of 40 years of internet related regulatory wars in the FCC and numerous other venues, the Commission's decision and the actual Rules promulgated in the February 2015 Report & Order stand among the most ill-considered application of authority and regulatory gerrymandering ever witnessed. more

ICANN and Iraq: Suffering Along

I thought of ICANN yesterday when reading about the devolution of the Iraqi Governing Council, which managed to unite for just a moment to approve a constitution with about the half-life of lutetium. ICANN and the IGC: two institutions put in charge of ill-behaved constituencies and stuck in chronic failure mode. Could anything be learned by examining them at arm's length? Indeed, different as they are, their histories contain several common elements... more

Comcast and e360 Settle Lawsuit

e360 initially filed suit against Comcast early in 2008. They asserted a number of things, including that Comcast was fraudulently returning "user unknown" notices and that they were certified by ReturnPath. Comcast filed a countersuit alleging violations of CAN SPAM, violations of the computer fraud and abuse act, as well as a number of other things including abuse of process. In April of 2008 the judge ruled in favor of Comcast and dismissed e360's case, while allowing the countersuit to proceed. more

Authorities Take Down the Mariposa Botnet

There are a number of sources talking about the takedown of the Mariposa botnet... Spanish authorities, working with researchers from Panda Labs, Defence Intelligence and a couple of other educational institutions, took down the Mariposa botnet (Mariposa is the Spanish word for "butterfly"). The Mariposa botnet is an absolutely enormous with around 12 million (!) nodes doing its bidding. It was involved in things like credit card phishing and identity fraud. more

DNS Amplification Attacks: Out of Sight, Out of Mind? (Part 2)

This post follows an earlier post about DNS amplification attacks being observed around the world. DNS Amplification Attacks are occurring regularly and even though they aren't generating headlines targets have to deal with floods of traffic and ISP infrastructure is needlessly stressed -- load balancers fail, network links get saturated, and servers get overloaded. And far more intense attacks can be launched at any time. more