Featured Blogs

Phishing Registrar Accounts: eNom is First Target

Criminals are now looking to use established domain names, via phishing targeted at domain registrars. This is possibly related to ICANN finally moving to stop the black hat registrars of the world. According to the first report on the matter sent yesterday to Registrar Operations (reg-ops) mailing list, the attacks seem to be run by gang of child pornography spammers. more

Steering Website Traffic with Managed DNS vs. IP Anycast

I recently read an interesting post on LinkedIn Engineering's blog entitled "TCP over IP Anycast -- Pipe dream or Reality?" The authors describe a project to optimize the performance of www.linkedin.com. The web site is served from multiple web server instances located in LinkedIn's POPs all over the world. Previously LinkedIn used DNS geomapping exclusively to route its users to the best web server instance, but the post describes how they tried using BGP routing instead. more

ICANN Chairman’s Durban Roundup

Respected ICANN Chairman of the Board Steve Crocker has wrapped up his organisation's 47th International Meeting, held in Durban last week, with a message to the community. This message, reproduced here in its entirety, provides both a useful and concise summary of the Durban meeting and insights into the Chairman's view of where ICANN stands at the moment, the successes it has notched up and the challenges it faces. more

What Stopped the Cuban Internet in 1996 and What Is Stopping It Today?

The problem today is bureaucracy and its companions - fear of competition, change and stepping out of line. Cuba connected to the Internet in 1996, but three factors stifled the Cuban Net: the US embargo, economic depression during what the Cubans call the "special period" after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Cuban government's fear of free information, which was also fed in part by the Soviet collapse. more

The Path Towards Centralization of Internet Governance Under UN: Part 2

This essay is the second of a three-part series, written by Anonymous, and published by the Publius Project of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. It focuses on the steps of a possible roadmap for centralizing Internet governance under the United Nations. more

PRISM and the Administration State Strikes Back

It is a safe assumption that if you are reading this post, you like technology. If that is the case, then you understand the tremendous economic, cultural, and human rights benefits an open, universal, and free Internet provides. That freedom is under attack. And it is our responsibilities, as stakeholders in a successful Internet, to balance governments and have an open dialog on the topic. more

Examining Stuart Lynn’s Domain Name Plans - Part I

Last month ICANN began soliciting comments on Stuart Lynn's A Plan for Action Regarding New gTLDs, which will be one of the Internet governance organization's primary discussion topics at its December meeting in Amsterdam. more

Verizon and Skype: Who’s the Winner?

Until only recently, has it been remotely plausible to consider such different companies joining forces. I've written about Skype often, and for the most part, they've been a threat for incumbents of all stripes. To hear about this from Verizon during such a public event makes it very clear that the sands are shifting once more, and yet again, VoIP is the culprit. more

ITU Staff Gone Wild

In virtually all governmental legislative bodies, the staff is there to provide secretariat services for the government representatives. The staff role does not include telling the representatives what decisions they should be making. The stricture is supposed to be the same at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for its treaty making activities. It is with some amazement that last week, the ITU secretariat staff showed up at a seminar in Bangkok they helped schedule... more

Deadline of April 21 To Make Your Website “Mobile-Friendly” Or Drop In Google Search Results

Is your website "mobile-friendly"? If your site is NOT and you care about how your site ranks in Google search results (and let's face it, we pretty much all do!)... well... you need to get busy! As Google very clearly indicated: "Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results." more

An Anti-Competitive .com Fait Accompli?

In a recent article, Is ICANN Staff Misleading the Board Into Violating Obligations to the U.S. Government, I wrote: The referenced Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is the vehicle by which the U.S. government delegates to ICANN the responsibilities for overseeing the technical management of the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS)... This is important for many reasons, and much remains to be analyzed for additional context that can help expose the rot at the Internet's root. more

What Will Be the Magic Number for New gTLD Applications?

With the application launch period scheduled to begin in less than three months, everyone wants to know just how many new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) applications will be submitted. In terms of the number of applications to be submitted, I've seen estimates putting the figure as low as 500. But just last week, an industry insider told me that he thought the number could go as high as 3,500. more

Is Your Company on the Sidelines for Getting Its Own TLD? Here are 6 Questions Worth Considering

By now, I've probably spoken with close to a hundred brand owners who are all trying to make some very important decisions about whether or not to apply for a new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD). Everyone wants to know what "the other guy" is doing. But for the most part (with the exceptions of Canon and Hitachi), brand owners have been tight-lipped about their intentions. Even in a recent New gTLD webinar hosted by MarkMonitor (primarily attended by brand owners), when asked in an anonymous poll whether they intended to apply... more

Will Harding’s Mistakes in International Telecommunication Cooperation be Repeated?

The International Telecommunication Union recently began a well-deserved celebration of one of the real success stories in international cooperation -- the 110th anniversary of the Radio Regulations as a treaty instrument. An ITU publication describes the historical highlights. Global cooperation among governments in managing radio spectrum via the Radio Regulations has been generally regarded as essential from the outset in the early years of the 20th Century and remains so today. more

The Growing Risk of Space Debris: How Satellite Proliferation Is Polluting Low-Earth Orbit

Low-orbit space is growing increasingly crowded. Starlink has over 7,100 satellites in orbit and has plans to grow to 30,000. Project Kuiper has plans for a constellation of 3,232 satellites. One Web's first-generation constellation has 648 satellites, with plans to grow to over 6,300 satellites. The Thousand Sails (Qianfan) constellation is planning for up to 15,000 satellites. Numerous countries and businesses are launching or planning for smaller constellations for a wide variety of purposes.
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