Featured Blogs

What Will 6G Look Like in a Geopolitical Divided World

A recent session of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and the Australian Smart Communities Association (ASCA) masterclass on 5G, featured Dr. Ian Oppenheimer, the NSW Government's Chief Data Scientist and one of the country's most respected experts in radio technology. Ian is also the Chair of the scientific advisory board of the 6G Flagship organization, a global research organization based in Finland. This organization has just published a range of fascinating research papers on 6G. more

Is WCIT Failure the Start of a Digital Cold War?

This was never part of the plan. Going into the Dubai World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) two weeks ago, there was optimism aplenty. After weeks of online and media campaigning, proponents of a free Internet had managed to scare everyone into thinking that WCIT was tantamount to digital Armageddon. This had the effect of defusing the conference before it even started, or so it seemed... more

A Third, More Interesting Round in E360 vs. Comcast

In the past week, Comcast filed an answer, denying all of E360's charges, and attached to it a motion to file a most impressive counterclaim. The court granted the motion on Monday so the counterclaim has been filed. At about the same time, E360 filed its response to Comcast's previous motion to dismiss the suit due to its utter lack of legal merit. more

Radical Shift of Power Proposed at ICANN Putting Govts in Primary Decision Making Role

ICANN has proposed a major change to its bylaws that would require the organization to adopt all policy "advice" issued by the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) unless 2/3 of ICANN's non-conflicted board members vote to oppose the adoption of that governmental rule. This draconian proposal to change ICANN's bylaws would fundamentally transform ICANN away from being a "bottom-up" and "private-sector-led" organization and into a governmental regulatory agency... more

Happy Birthday .CAT and ICANN

Today, four years after the launch of the Catalan linguistic and cultural registry, Google reports that there are 90 million pages of Catalan content under the some 36 thousand .CAT domains. As imperfect as Google's tools are as a metric, the correct observation is that the use of .CAT by Catalans vastly exceeds the expectations of its initial proponents... more

Digital Rights Management or Digital Restrictive Management?

We are all accustomed to purchasing and/or using copyrighted material in one fashion or another. From music, movies-(BluRay), e-books-(Kindle), computers-(software), mobile phones-(iPhone) and games; the umbrella of companies wanting to restrict access to its products continues to grow and become increasingly restrictive. more

Georgians Use Spam to Explain Their Situation

Call it outreach, call it propaganda or call it brilliance or even desperate measures, spammers (people) who favour the Georgian side in the recent conflict have been spamming using email, to get their point across. Depending on where in the world you are from, your ideological standpoint on Russia and your beliefs, when it comes to what email should be like, can be different and you may judge the action as you will. I call it spam. An Estonian colleague Viktor Larionov was quoted saying that whether there is a cyber war in Georgia or not, we know there is in fact a media war in play... more

Zoom Security: The Good, the Bad, and the Business Model

Zoom - one of the hottest companies on the planet right now, as businesses, schools, and individuals switch to various forms of teleconferencing due to the pandemic - has come in for much criticism due to assorted security and privacy flaws. Some of the problems are real but easily fixable, some are due to a mismatch between what Zoom was intended for and how it's being used now - and some are worrisome. more

Authenticated Resolution and Adaptive Resolution: Security and Navigational Enhancements to the DNS

The Domain Name System (DNS) has become the fundamental building block for navigating from names to resources on the internet. DNS has been employed continuously ever since its introduction in 1983, by essentially every internet-connected application and device that wants to interact online. Emerging from an era where interconnection rather than information security was the primary motivation, DNS has gradually improved its security features. more

I, the Domain Name Tasting Victim

I have recently been a "victim" of the domain name tasting "scam". A domain name (.COM) which is related to me personally (and which was owned by someone else previously) expired and as I knew from Whois (which is another debate on its own) that the expiry date was coming up, I kept a watch on when it would become available so I could register it. To cut a long story short, it took me nearly 6 weeks to get the domain. Each time the domain dropped off the 5 day grace period (it is not really something that would generate ad revenue), it would be picked up by a different registrant... more

Thinking Carefully About New gTLD Objections: Community (3 of 4)

My third installment regarding gTLD objections - and understanding exactly what's required for an objector to prevail - moves to the more complex community-based objections. For those getting their first exposure to this unwieldy beast, pull up a chair and get comfortable. The community objection involves multifaceted elements, each having its own set of defining factors and often using similar terminology in different contexts. As such, it can be very confusing and one can easily lose track of the bigger picture. more

China’s QUESS and Quantum Communications

In mid-August China launched "QUESS" (Quantum Experiments at Space Scale), a new type of satellite that it hopes will be capable of "quantum communications" which is supposed to be hack-proof, through the use of "quantum entanglement". This allows the operator to ensure that no one else is listening to your communications by reliably distributing keys that are then used for encryption in order to be absolutely sure that there is no one in the middle intercepting that information. more

When Businesses Go Dark: A DDoS Survey

In February 2012, Neustar surveyed IT professionals across North America to better understand their DDoS experiences. Most were network services managers, senior systems engineers, systems administrators and directors of IT operations. In all, 1,000 people from 26 different industries shared responses about attacks, defenses, ongoing concerns, risks and financial losses. more

Is Comcast Impairing Vonage?

On the one hand, the big telcos are chanting the mantram, "We shall not block, impair or degrade any content, service or application." On the other hand, they're saying, "There's no problem. We don't need a law until there's a problem." Well, now. Mitch Shapiro over at IP & Democracy, points to Russell Shaw's post that says: "I have been noticing a growing number of posts in which many Vonage users and Vonage Forum Members have been complaining about the quality of Vonage calls over Comcast broadband connections..." more

Internet Society Releases Internet of Things (IoT) Overview: Understanding the Issues and Challenges

Near the end of the first decade of this century, the world reached an Internet milestone. The number of Internet-connected devices surpassed the number of people alive on planet Earth. At the time, seven billion devices had already been connected to the Internet, and this went completely unnoticed by most people. This moment represented an important sign of the rapid pace in which we are adopting technology and embracing Internet connectivity. more