Featured Blogs

Solving the .US Registrant Data Directory Services (RDDS) Conundrum

Recently ten Democratic Members of Congress wrote a letter to Alan Davidson, head of the NTIA, requesting that the "NTIA immediately cease the public disclosure of personal information about users of .US" country code top-level domain (ccTLD). This communication highlights a significant concern regarding domain registration data: the need to protect the privacy rights of Registrants. However, an equally significant concern regarding registration data was raised... more

The End of Broadband Networks as We Know Them

A group of major telecommunications companies -- Vodafone, BT, Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom -- recently announced something a bit unexpected. In the Open BNG Operator Position Paper, they call for a fundamental, industry-wide change to the way broadband networks are built. Specifically, they advocate for collaboration throughout the telco world, with a convergence around open broadband network gateways (BNGs). more

.APP gTLD Signs of Life Web Usage Survey

When a new TLD goes into General Availability or Land Rush, the first few days are filled with registrations that reflect how the market perceives the TLD. Registrants may register domain names to develop or for speculative purposes. Others register to protect their brand. The first major web usage survey for a new TLD is generally a Signs of Life survey where the early stages of development can be detected. These surveys were based on the May 19th, 2018 .APP zone file. more

Accountability and Redress

In ICANN circles these days, accountability is the buzz word. Nearly everybody is talking about it. Generally everybody is in favor of it, but that's where the agreement ends. This paper urges action by ICANN to provide a means for redress of grievances as an essential element of accountability. I would like to review the ICM case (the delegation of the .xxx domain), and the role of ICANN's Independent Review Panel (the IRP). As you will recall, the ICANN Board had originally awarded .xxx to ICM, but in a subsequent reconsideration had reversed the award. more

The Day The Routers Died

I hear this has been all over the network operator lists, so here it is for the rest of us. With apologies to Don McLean... more

Back from RightsCon Manila: Trading Freedoms for Security?

In Asia -- a region that at various points in its recent history has been a hotbed for civil unrest, secessionist movements and political instability -- the line between national security and public interest can be difficult to draw. A session organised by the Internet Society at the recently held RightsCon Southeast Asia in Manila shed some light on the perceived trade-offs between national security objectives and digital rights, in particular freedom of expression and privacy. more

Reputation and “The Cloud”

As Reddit recently learned it's not a great idea to use the Amazon EC2 cloud to host mailservers. There are a number of reasons for this, most of them related to the reputation of mail coming from EC2 servers. When you're using machines in the cloud, changing IP addresses is as simple as initializing a new server. Spammers discovered this almost as soon as the EC2 cloud became public. more

Real. Or. Phish?

After Epsilon lost a bunch of customer lists, I've been keeping an eye open to see if any of the vendors I work with had any of my email addresses stolen -- not least because it'll be interesting to see where this data ends up. Recently I got mail from Marriott, telling me that "unauthorized third party gained access to a number of Epsilon's accounts including Marriott's email list."... more

Watch the 2014 Internet Governance Forum (#IGF2014) Live All This Week from Istanbul

The Ninth Annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Meeting is taking place all this week, September 2-5, 2014, in Istanbul, Turkey and live video streams are available for all the sessions... I watched the opening session live stream today from my home office in New Hampshire, USA, and the quality was excellent. There was also a live text transcription. more

Software Defined Networks and Integration of Wifi with 3G/4G for R&E Networks

A number of R&E networks such as SURFnet, JANET, AARnet, etc. are actively promoting mobile services and looking at integration of campus Wifi with 3G/4G networks using Eduroam. Mobile wireless services promises to be major service offering for R&E networks as the Internet of Things and Machine to Machine (M2M) becomes increasingly critical for research. Applications such as personal medical devices on (or in) the body, environmental sensors, traffic monitors and even garbage truck tracking will need such networks. more

China Passes 900 Million Cell Phone Users!

Fascinating stats out of an article at TheNextWeb this week: China has become the first country to reach the 900 million mobile phone user milestone after amassing about 11 million mobile phone users in April alone, according to a report by the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. more

Broadband Access: What Should We Regulate?

Network Neutrality is a hot topic in the US. The FCC held hearings in my neighborhood recently (while I was in Asia). Now I see Professor Susan Crawford will be testifying next Tuesday at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on "Net Neutrality and the First Amendment." I look forward to her remarks, but I worry that the whole discussion will be focused on "IP Pipes," that is connectivity at network layer 3. This distracts us from the fundamental problem... more

Google Fiber in Havana - Wishful Thinking?

This post is conjecture, but it is informed conjecture... Consider the following: When Google Fiber started in Kansas City, most people assumed that it was a demonstration project, intended to spur investment by the incumbent US Internet service providers (ISPs). Few thought that Google wanted to become a retail ISP. Google Fiber garnered a lot of publicity and Google, began speaking of it as a real, profit-making business. They announced other cities and started laying fiber in some of them. more

New Book: Managing Mission Critical Domains & DNS

The idea behind my recent book "Managing Mission Critical Domains & DNS" is to provide a unifying overview around the area of domains and naming where I think there exists an artificial divide, and that divide exists between domain policy, and managing ones' domain portfolio; and the DNS ops side of things: running your nameservers or outsourcing to a vendor, or both. I've been doing this for over 20 years, I've seen almost every failure condition that can happen to your domain or DNS... more

Will We See IPv6-Enabled Consumer Devices at CES This Week?

What kind of IPv6 support will we see in consumer devices at the massive Consumer Electronics Show (CES) happening in Las Vegas this week? The show is already underway and much of the tech media is already writing in breathless prose about the latest tablets, notebooks and zillions of other consumer devices making their debut at CES. While the bright-shiny-object-chasing side of me definitely notices those articles, my own interest is on a deeper and far more technical level. more