Featured Blogs

The Why and How of DNS Data Analysis

A network traffic analyzer can tell you what's happening in your network, while a Domain Name System (DNS) analyzer can provide context on the "why" and "how." This was the theme of the recent Verisign Labs Distinguished Speaker Series discussion led by Paul Vixie and Robert Edmonds, titled Passive DNS Collection and Analysis -- The "dnstap" Approach. more

Civil Society Cautions Against ICANN Giving Governments Veto Over Geographic Domain Names

A group of twenty-four civil society organizations and individuals today submitted a joint statement regarding a proposal from an ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) sub-group on the use of "geographic names" in top-level domains. The joint civil society statement cautioned against the adoption of the GAC proposal that would give governments veto power on domains that use "geographic names." more

Why Has ICANN Cut Subsequent TLD Round Preparations From Its Budget?

As we approach another ICANN meeting and another opportunity for our community to come together to discuss, collaborate and work, there is naturally a flurry of activity as stakeholders push for a spot on the agenda for their key areas of interest. And in the midst of current discussions, particularly around important topics like GDPR, it's easy for other vital conversations to be missed. more

Big Cable Co’s Touting 10G – Really?

Earlier this year, at the CES show in January, the big cable companies discussed their vision for the future. They introduced the concept that cable networks would be able to deliver 10-gigabit broadband in the future. They labeled the promotion at the show as 10G. I didn't write about it at the time because I assumed this was a gimmick to give some buzz to this show in the middle of the pandemic. But lately, I've seen that they are still talking about the 10G initiative. more

Realizing There’s More to Life Than .COM, Europe and Asia Already Do

It's getting so hard to find a decent .COM domain name that a big weed patch of businesses has grown up hawking really terrible names for enormous prices -- and they're finding buyers. They're catering to people who are just trying to find something -- anything! -- that will work for their new web site. The problem is especially acute for those who are trying to start a business. more

When a UDRP Panel Infers Bad Faith from An Asking Price

In the Converse.co dispute, a three-member UDRP panel unanimously ordered the transfer of the disputed domain name to the Complainants, All Star C.V. and Converse, Inc., owners of the well-known brand CONVERSE for shoes and apparel. The panel drew the inference that the Respondent, by setting of an asking price of around $300,000 after having acquired the domain name for $306, was primarily motivated by a bad faith intent to target the Complaint. more

UDRP and Article 92(b) of EUROPEAN COUNCIL REGULATION (EC) No 40/94

It has been over a year since I posted "The Non-Parity of the UDRP", how little did I know then compared to now! Since that posting, the corporations and their lawyers have given me a crash course in the law and I have learned much. There are many tricks that corporations will play on a domain name registrant in order to silence criticism of the corporation and to violate the registrants right of freedom of expression without frontiers. The UDRP Administrative Proceedings is one such trick... more

SPIT is in Everyone’s Mouth, Though Not Yet in Everyone’s Ears

Spam over Internet Telephony (SPIT) is viewed by many as a daunting threat. SPIT is much more fatal than email spam, for the annoyance and disturbance factor is much higher. Various academic groups and the industry have made some efforts to find ways to mitigate SPIT. Most ideas in that field are leaning on classical IT security concepts such as intrusion detection systems, black-/white-/greylists, Turing tests/computational puzzles, reputation systems, gatekeeper solutions, etc... We identified the lack of a benchmark testbed for SPIT as a serious gap in the current research on the matter, and this motivated us at the to start working on a first tool for that. more

How Spam Has Damaged Mail Forwarding - And Ways to Get Around It

Courtesy forwards have been a standard feature of e-mail systems about as long as there have been e-mail systems. A user moves or changes jobs or something, and rather than just closing the account, the mail system forwards all the mail to the user's new address. Or a user with multiple addresses forwards them all to one place to be able to read all the mail together. Since forwarding is very cheap, it's quite common for forwards to persist for many years. Unfortunately, forwarding is yet another thing that spam has screwed up. more

ICANN Maps Whois Models for GDPR

Earlier today ICANN held a webinar to provide an update on their data privacy activities in relation to whois and GDPR. Rather than simply talking about the various "models" they produced both a visual mapping as well as a matrix. While some attendees may not agree with how all the models are classified it is still a helpful way of showing the deviations from the current fully public whois model for gTLD domain name registrations. more

Old Cloud vs. New Cloud

Images of clouds have been used when discussing networks for quite some time. When traditional telecoms companies were selling point-to-point circuits a drawing of a cloud was sometimes used. The cloud symbol helped indicate the provider?s domain of responsibility, effectively hid the internal complexity of the network and focused on the end user. This was all fine when the product offered was an end-to-end circuit. more

Nortel… The Good News: Web.Alive

Ok, ok - it's pretty hard to ignore the bombshell news that's on front pages everywhere today in Canada. It looks like Nortel is going to seek bankruptcy protection, perhaps as early as today. This may be a minor story in the U.S. business press, but it's a big story in tech/telecom, and a HUGE story here in Canada. You don't need me to tell you what Nortel means to Canada in terms of pride and joy, although that's more of a distant memory these days... more

A Look at the Current State of DNSSEC in the Wild

The DNS system is, unfortunately, rife with holes like Swiss Cheese; man-in-the-middle attacks can easily negate the operation of TLS and website security. To resolve these problems, the IETF and the DNS community standardized a set of cryptographic extensions to cryptographically sign all DNS records... Now that these standards are in place, how heavily is DNSSEC being used in the wild? How much safer are we from man-in-the-middle attacks against TLS and other transport encryption mechanisms? more

Name Collision Mitigation Requires Qualitative Analysis (Part 3 of 4)

As discussed in the several studies on name collisions published to date, determining which queries are at risk, and thus how to mitigate the risk, requires qualitative analysis. Blocking a second level domain (SLD) simply on the basis that it was queried for in a past sample set runs a significant risk of false positives. SLDs that could have been delegated safely may be excluded on quantitative evidence alone, limiting the value of the new gTLD until the status of the SLD can be proven otherwise. more

Google Energy - Are You Surprised?

Just when you thought Nexus One was the biggest thing coming out of Google this week, we now get word about Google Energy. Well, Nexus One is a big deal, but I say that wearing my telecom analyst hat. Switching to my smart grid hat, Google Energy is something else altogether... As big as that is -- and will be -- Google Energy has all kinds of implications for smart grid. For starters, more