The 7th meeting of the UN Broadband Commission in Mexico City was again a good combination of announcements about new plans, results of previously undertaken activities, and views on the future of broadband. Very noticeable was the enthusiasm and acknowledgement of the impact of ICT, and of broadband in particular. In September 2012 the Commission launched its working group on gender equality. Research undertaken by the various members of the workgroup provided somewhat similar results. more
There is an interesting battle going on to be the technology that monetizes the control of Internet of Things devices. Like a lot of tech hype, IoT has developed a lot slower than initially predicted -- but it's now finally becoming a big business. I think back to a decade ago when tech prognosticators said we'd soon be living in a virtual cloud of small monitors that would monitor everything in our life. According to those early predictions, our farm fields should already be fully automated, and we should all be living in the smart home envisioned by the Jetsons. more
Mr. Arif Ali, a lawyer with Dechert who is very familiar with ICANN governance and has represented numerous parties in ICANN related matters, wrote an extraordinarily detailed and comprehensive critique of the LOI and of Amendment 3. Mr. Ali noted that two of ICANN's most important obligations are to operate for the benefit of the Internet community as a whole and to enable competition and open entry in Internet-related markets, and that the proposed price hikes do not support these obligations... more
Two of the hottest trends in networking today are network dis-aggregation and SDN. This is great for many reasons. It's also confusing. The marketing hype makes it hard to understand either topic. SDN has become so vague that if you ask 10 experts what it means, you are likely to get 12 different answers. Network dis-aggregation seems straightforward enough until it gets confused with SDN. We need to take a step back. In a recent Packet Pushers blog post; I start with a simple explanation of each of these trends and then map how they interact. more
On June 9 CircleID published an insightful article by Thomas Rickert entitled "Demystifying Art 28 NIS2." In that piece Thomas set forth two alternative interpretations of Article 28(6) of NIS2, and argued that TLD registries should not be required to maintain a separate database of the registrant data under NIS2. In my view, Thomas' approach is inconsistent with the remainder of Article 28, and would not achieve the goals of NIS2 to improve cybersecurity across the EU member states. more
The beginning of every year is a time for introspection, an appraisal of the year that was, and planning for the year to come. It is also a time to follow tradition and to recap the biggest news of the year. But by now, I am guessing that we have all read our fair share about the people and events who have impacted the last 12 months... if we take a larger vantage point (than our own relatively small domain name industry), these lessons from 2009 -- in my view -- could teach us all and most importantly, really shape the year ahead. more
Digital governance, like all governance, needs to be founded in guiding principles from which all policy making is derived. There are no more fundamental principles to guide our policy making than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (UDHR). This article is Part 2 of a series of articles exploring the application of the UDHR to rights issues in the cyberspaces of the Internet ecosystem. The previous article in the series explores the foundations of the UDHR. more
The first 12 domain registries have been scheduled for the first special Sunrise Period mandated by ICANN for trademarks on the blocked collision lists. A total of 328 new domain extensions have launched so far in 2014. Each one of these has its own unique collision list of names that were found to be already in use on private computer networks. Some of these lists have over 100,000 names. All of these registries were required to block these names from being allocated until a policy for their allocation could be developed by ICANN. more
In keeping with the discussion that I have been involved in over the last decade, 'structural changes' should be today's key phrase - not just for the telecoms sector but for every sector in our economies. It has been clear for a long time that structural change is well overdue. It doesn't really matter which sector you pick, you will see that some of these reform debates go back at least a decade - and often longer -- in healthcare, education, environment, energy, finance and banking and media. more
For small businesses, effectively managing technology comes with a question: Is it better to outsource or stay in-house? Most small and midsize companies can't afford to employ teams of full-time IT staffers. This creates a desire for outsourced solutions. However, opting for a third party means giving up a measure of control. What is best for your business? In this post, we offer a quick rundown of the top five tasks any small business should consider outsourcing. more
Imagine that Ford was held responsible every time one of its Mustangs broke the speed limit. Imagine that the company responded by limiting the speed of its vehicles to 65 MPH, or that the company was required by the government to report every speeding car to highway patrol. It sounds far-fetched, but is actually a good metaphor for the way that many want technology companies to respond to infractions. more
In an earlier essay, I outlined a focused, cooperative marketing strategy that would be a first step for marketing new gTLDs. After that first initiative, gTLD registries' marketing strategy must focus on the complementarities between .com, and new neutral (such as .global and .web) and branding and labeling gTLDs. The legacy domains and the newcomers can work together nicely. If we don't realize this, all Internet users will lose out. more
On April 20, 2017, an 8-person delegation led by Göran Marby, President & CEO of ICANN, visited China Academy of Information and Communication Technology (CAICT). Madam Liu Duo, President of CAICT met with Mr. Göran Marby and the delegation. After the meeting, Mr. Marby attended the Chinese Internet Community Seminar held jointly by CAICT and ICANN Beijing Engagement Center. more
Previous posts (Part 1 and Part 2) offer background on DNS amplification attacks being observed around the world. These attacks continue to evolve. Early attacks focused on authoritative servers using "ANY" queries for domains that were well known to offer good amplification. Response Rate Limiting (RRL) was developed to respond to these early attacks. RRL, as the name suggests, is deployed on authoritative servers to rate limit responses to target names. more
The first part of this series explained how Amendment 35 to the NTIA-Verisign cooperative agreement is highly offensive to the public interest. But the reasons for saving the Internet are more fundamental to Western interests than a bad deal made under highly questionable circumstances. One of the world's foremost experts on conducting censorship at scale, the Chinese Communist Party's experience with the Great Firewall... more
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