Featured Blogs

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

Managing (in)Security Through Regulation: A Key Phase for Nation States

Not so long ago, the notion of introducing laws and other regulatory responses to address cyber security issues was regarded with significant hesitation by governments and policy makers. To some extent, this hesitation may well have stemmed from a general perception by those who do not work directly in the field that the world of cyber security is somewhat of a 'dark art'. More recently, however, there has been a substantial shift in this attitude, with proposals to regulate a range of cyber security related matters becoming increasingly numerous. more

More Than Half Top-Level Domains Not Really on Top of IPv6

At the recent ISOC Asia conference in Kuala Lumpur a rather innocuous coffee break question was raised: could any one around the table name some of the major Top-Level Domains (TLDs) still delinquent in their IPv6 support? Nobody could answer on the spot but the question intrigued me. A logical place to start looking for an answer was ICANN. more

Internet Governance and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Part 3: Article 6-12

Internet Governance like all governance needs to be founded in guiding principles from which all policy making is derived. There are no better fundamental principles to guide our policy making than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (UDHR). This article is Part 3 of a series exploring the UDHR as a guide and template for the digital governance and digital citizenship. We discuss UDHR Articles 6 through 12 and address topics such as fundamental digital values, cyberlaw, policymaking and the role of tribunals in digital governance. more

Walks Like a Telco, Yalks Like a Telco… Must be a Telco

Vonage's latest woes are written up by Om Malik in Vonage: How Low Can You Go. More interesting than Om's reportage (Sprint wins case, Vonage ordered to pay damages, stock drops to $1.30) is the commentary afterward, in which one reader takes Om to task for the "gleeful" way in which he reports the demise of the VoIP companies... Boosters made the argument that VoIP was fundamentally cheaper than the TDM systems that phone companies deploy, and so therefore they enjoyed a price advantage in the market place. Anyone in the business of supplying telecom equipment, however, will tell you that the argument is flawed... more

The Network Management Excuse

Telco front-man Scott Cleland, in a recent blog post, thumbs his nose at the Four Internet Freedoms and says that the FCC should too. Under current leadership, it probably will. Referring to the recent submissions to the FCC by Free Press and Public Knowledge and Vuze complaining about Comcast's use of reset packets to block applications that compete with Comcast's own proprietary video entertainment offering, Cleland says "Network management trumps net neutrality." There are lots of reasons for, ahem, managing. Cleland neglects to observe that controlling congestion the way Comcast does it is like scattering nails in the road for traffic control. more

Parsing Domain Names Composed of Random Letters for Proof of Cybersquatting

The Respondent's cry of pain in AXA SA v. Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc. / Ugurcan Bulut, axathemes, D2016-1483 (WIPO December 12, 2016) "[w]hat do you want from me people? I already removed all the files from that domain and it's empty. What else do you want me to do???" raises some interesting questions. "A," "x," and "a" is an unusual string of letters but unlike other iconic strings such as "u," "b" and "s" and "i", "b" and "m" for example that started their lives as the first letters of three-word brands AXA is not an acronym. more

Registering for the Registrar Rodeo: A Note to the New gTLDs

Thank goodness for Monday's new gTLD draw!!! To date the process has been more of an intellectual exercise in marketing, technology, and strategic game thinking - it was getting a little boring. A business needs to see regular 'wins' to keep momentum and stay motivated. The presumptive lineup of new gTLDs has now been established which has given most applicants (save those poor souls looking at 2015 as their launch year) a clear view of the starting gate. more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 4: Locality and Interdependence

The Internet was not originally designed as a single network that serviced much of the world's digital communications requirements. Its design was sufficiently flexible that it could be used in many contexts, including that of small network domains that were not connected to any other domain, through to large diverse systems with many tens of thousands of individual network elements. If that is indeed the case, then why is it that when networks wish to isolate themselves from the Internet, or when a natural calamity effectively isolates a network, the result is that the isolated network is often non-functional. more

IPv6: Circling the IPv4 Wagons for a Last Stand

The last remaining stocks disappear from the shelves more quickly than ever before . . . IPv4 addresses that is. As the ARIN met in Toronto in April, an inordinate amount of time was spent yet again debating proposals on how to handle the dwindling stock of IPv4 addresses. I get the distinct impression that some people will still be tabling proposals and discuss the issue long after the last IPv4 block has been allocated by IANA and even the RIR's themselves. more

Cybersquatting and Reverse Domain Name Hijacking: UDRP to ACPA

Trademark owners in the U.S. have a choice in suing for alleged cybersquatting: either the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) or the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). Of the two, the UDRP is far and away the forum of choice for a very good reason: it is speedy, efficient, and inexpensive. Complaint to award can be concluded in less than 45 days. more

ICANN’s Auction Piggy Bank Just Got Twice As Big

Kieren McCarthy reports in The Register that an obscure Panamanian company paid $30 million for .BLOG in the January 21 domain auction. ICANN's web site confirms that the domain did go to the Panamanian company. It doesn't report the amount, but Kieren's sources are usually correct. If so, the auction proceeds piggy bank just doubled from $30M to $60M dollars, and ICANN still has no idea what to do with it. more

Greylisting Still Works - Part II

In my last post I blogged about greylisting, a well-known anti-spam technique for rejecting spam sent by botnets. When a mail server receives a an attempt to deliver mail from an IP address that's never sent mail before, it rejects the message with a "soft fail" error which tells the sender to try again later. Real mail senders always retry, badly written spamware often doesn't. I found that even though everyone knows about greylisting, about 2/3 of IPs don't successfully retry. more

Cable’s Move Into Mobile: Calculated and Deliberate

If you believe Cable Operators are not thinking about Mobile Networks and what kind of synergies could bring them increased cash-flow in the future, then you've probably missed the obvious signs laid out since 2008. ... Starting with their investment in Clearwire in 2008, companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House have upped their anti in wireless and mobile strategies. more

AWS Sets the ROI Benchmark for IP Addresses

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, the value of IP addresses has surged to the forefront of discussions. Over a month ago, Amazon Web Services (AWS) made a pivotal announcement, reshaping the IP address pricing landscape. Citing the escalating costs of acquiring IP addresses on secondary markets, AWS declared a fundamental shift in its pricing strategy, set to take effect on February 1, 2024. more