Featured Blogs

IPv6 Riding the LTE Coattails

In June 2009 we mused in these columns about Long Term Evolution standing for Short Term Evolution as wireless networks started to drown in a data deluge. It is January 2012 and we keep our heads above the mobile data deluge, even if barely, thanks to a gathering avalanche of LTE networks. Even the wildest prognoses proved conservative as the GSMA was betting on a more 'managed' progression... more

Moving DNSSEC Forward: Help for Registries, Registrars, ISPs/Hosting, Enterprises, and Name Owners

DNSSEC adoption has been slow, but is now picking up speed, thanks to organizations leading the way. ... While some registries have already signed, some have announced plans to sign and others are still trying to figure out their plan. Either way, DNSSEC is here. How can we make DNSSEC adoption quicker and easier not only for the registry but for individual name owners? more

Congress and Peer-to-Peer Filesharing

Some members of Congress have gotten extremely upset about peer-to-peer filesharing. Even the New York Times has editorialized about the issue. The problem of files leaking out is a real one, but the bills are misguided. Fundamentally, the real issue is that files are being shared without the user intending that result... more

Nationalizing the Imaginary 5G Network?

To put it bluntly, the proposal cited in Axios story on "Trump team considers nationalizing 5G network" doesn't make sense on a number of levels. The real danger comes if this indeed represents the NSC's failure to understand Internet style connectivity. The proposal may just be the work of an NSC staffer who accepted all the 5G hype as if it were real. I credit the Axios article for having some skepticism... more

Cybersecurity for Schools

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel recently asked the other FCC Commissioners to support a proposal to spend $200 million over three years to bolster school cybersecurity. Rosenworcel plans to issue a Notice for Proposed Rulemaking (NRPM) soon for her proposal. The NPRM will set off a round of public comments and then a ruling if a majority of the Commissioners agree with the final set of rule changes. more

Who Pays When .Org Prices Rise?

When .org prices rise, who suffers – nonprofits or speculators? Will Ethos Capital raise prices more aggressively than ISOC would? Vint Cerf attributed concerns about higher prices to speculators: "Of course, companies that hold domain names in the tens of thousands for speculative purposes might find such increases more troubling, but I don't have much sympathy for that business model in the context of the organizations the .org brand is intended to serve." 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

WCIT Prep Dénoument?

I'm sitting in the Popov Room of the ITU Tower in Geneva, the room is quiet, the atmosphere placid, chairs are empty. The final meeting of the CWG WCIT prep WG has just concluded its work and the chair will be reporting to the Council the results of our work. I find myself strangely calm and looking forward to my next week, to be spent in Prague... Should you choose to read through the documents, and they are lengthy at approximately 375 pages, you might think that a number of the proposals were directed at the Internet. more

EI, EI - NO!

For those closely following the ICANN Meeting in Nairobi this week, the EOI (Expression of Interest) model seemed like a foregone conclusion. In fact, ICANN had scheduled a webinar on March 18th to explain the process despite the complaints of the community and large-scale disagreement amongst proponents of the EOI. more

Antony Van Couvering Interviews Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows (Video)

Antony Van Couvering, CEO of Minds + Machines, continues his series of in-depth talks with leading figures from the domain name industry with this video interview of Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows, filmed recently at ICANN 49 in Singapore. more

Preventing DNS Strain When You Deploy DNSSEC

The barriers to DNSSEC adoption are quickly disappearing. There are nearly 20 top-level domains that have already deployed DNSSEC including generic TLDs like .org and .gov. This July, the DNS root will also be signed, and will begin validating. At this point, the decision for remaining TLDs to deploy DNSSEC is really no longer a question. more

Verisign Outreach Program Remediates Billions of Name Collision Queries

A name collision occurs when a user attempts to resolve a domain in one namespace, but it unexpectedly resolves in a different namespace. Name collision issues in the public global Domain Name System (DNS) cause billions of unnecessary and potentially unsafe DNS queries every day. A targeted outreach program that Verisign started in March 2020 has remediated one billion queries per day to the A and J root name servers, via 46 collision strings. more

Record $89B in China Means 2020 +4% Sales, $10B Profit

The US war on Huawei brought down sales internationally, but China's 700,000 5G cells and explosive cloud growth meant Huawei had an up year. The chip blockade did hurt in Q4 and will continue to hold down sales in 2021. Huawei has sufficient reserves to outlast the United States until China catches up in chip production. Perhaps the most important figure in the financial report was the $55 billion cash. Another $10 billion will come in from the sale of Honor/Glory. more

Notes from the DNS Privacy Workshop at NDSS 2021

For many years the consuming topic in DNS circles was that of the names themselves. If you wind the clock back twenty years or so, you will find much discussion about the nature of the Internet's namespace. Why were there both generic top-level labels and two-letter country codes? If we were going to persist with these extra-territorial generic country codes in the namespace, then how many should there be? Who could or should manage them? And so on. more

Security Psychology

I just came across a post telling of the Security and Human Behavior workshop. As some of you may be aware, I've been researching this subject for about two years now, and I am very excited that a conference has now happened! It means I did not waste the last two years of my life after all! more