Featured Blogs

What’s Holding Back NFV Deployments?

Back in early 2012, the media was all over stack wars that reportedly were taking place between Cisco and VMware. This culminated in VMware's Nicira acquisition in July 2012, paving the way for the coming of software-based networking. Four years later, the market still remains in development mode. Many service providers and enterprises are trying to come to grips with Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN). more

ICANN 55 Next Week In Marrakech - What to Expect

As you may know, ICANN holds three public meetings every year. The most recent one, ICANN 54, was held in Dublin... So the next ICANN meeting is being held in Marrakech, Morocco starting Saturday, March 5th through March the 10th. Up until now all three meetings were the same length and had the same basic structure. However, from this year onwards, that'll change. How that will play out in reality, however, is anyone's best guess. more

Similarity of gTLD Applications: Required Reading for Evaluators

ICANN's evaluators should look at data published on "gTLD application similarity analysis". This sort of data helps dramatically reduce time and expense for the evaluation of new gTLD applications while increasing quality. The principle is simple: find the similarities between the 1930 applications. It is a proof-of-concept project by Arnoldo Mueller-Molina, a young Costa Rican researcher with a doctorate in computational analytics. more

Is Laser Going to Be the Next Telecoms Frontier?

When I became involved in the telecoms industry back in the late 1970s, we were just seeing fiber optic cables being commercially developed by Corning. Over the following decades, I have been asked many, many times -- do we need fiber cables or wireless technologies, and what is next? During all that time, my answer has been that there was no other communication technology available in any commercial sense that would make either fiber optical or mobile technologies obsolete. more

Video: IETF Chair Jari Arkko on “Pervasive Monitoring and the Internet”

Today at the RIPE 67 event in Athens, Greece, IETF Chair Jari Arkko gave a presentation on "Pervasive Monitoring and the Internet" where he spoke about the ongoing surveillance issues and: What do we know? What are the implications? What can we do? Similar to his earlier article on the topic, Jari looked at the overall issues and spoke about how Internet technology should better support security and privacy. more

Global DNS SSR Recap

This past February, around 100 DNS industry experts met in Atlanta, GA for the "The Global DNS Security, Stability, & Resiliency Symposium." Organized by ICANN and hosted by Georgia Tech, this event was to strengthen personal relationships between operators and review what we know about the DNS infrastructure... The content included three breakout groups over two days: Enterprise Use of DNS, DNS in Resource Constrained Environments, and Combating Malicious Use of DNS... more

Cuba Censors SMS Messages ... for Now

What could the Cuban government do with Russia-style access to Facebook data? What sorts of fake news could they create and circulate on YouTube and Pinterest? What can be done to control the dark side of the Cuban Internet? Cuba is about to hold a referendum on a proposed constitution that the government supports and Eduardo Sanchez posted a test showing that SMS messages with anti-referendum terms. more

On the Internet Everyone is Connected to Everyone Else - Right?

We tend to make a number of assumptions about the Internet, and sometimes these assumptions don't always stand up to critical analysis. We were perhaps 'trained' by the claims of the telephone service to believe that these communications networks supported a model of universal connectivity. Any telephone handset could establish a call with any other telephone handset was the underlying model of a ubiquitous telephone service, and we've carried that assumption into our perception of the Internet. On the Internet anyone can communicate with anyone else - right? more

Resources for Cleaning Your Network

The first step (but certainly not the last) towards saving the internet from spam, malware, and other abuse is to keep your own network clean. A friend of CAUCE, who wishes to remain anonymous, offers these tips and resources to help you identify problem traffic emanating from your network, and clean it up. Though primarily written for ISPs, many of the items below should apply equally well to any network owner. more

The Governance of the Internet

Among the hottest topics at the Broadband Leadership Summit, which was held during the ITU Telecom World 2011 in Geneva, were the issues in relation to the security of the various aspects of the digital economy. The key issue in relation to the governance of the internet relates to the many political, social and cultural differences between countries. This is one of the most contentious issues. more

It’s Time for Privacy Progress in ICANN

Privacy issues have been important to parts of the ICANN community for many years. I can attest to that fact as a long time veteran of Whois debates as far back as 1998 when I was with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. However, they have started to receive the general ICANN community visibility only relatively recently. These efforts must continue in order to protect rights, to avoid increasing potential conflicts between ICANN rules and applicable laws, and to generally maintain trust in the Internet as a place to be. more

WikiLeaks and Stuxnet - Smart Grid Wakeup Calls

The past couple of weeks have been pretty seminal for anyone concerned about the state of Internet security and the bigger picture as to how much we could - do - and should - trust the Web. These two strange words - WikiLeaks and Stuxnet - have suddenly entered our lexicon and there is a lot to be concerned about in the world of smart grid. more

A Q&A on Google’s New gTLD Solution, Nomulus

Nomulus is the code for the backend domain name registry solution offered by Google which requires the use of Google Cloud. This solution is the one used for all of Google's new gTLDs and the solution works. An announcement for this solution can look like a potentially "simple" solution for future .BRAND new gTLD applicants, but is it truly the case? more

Dealing With DMARC

DMARC is an anti-phishing scheme that was repurposed in April to try to deal with the fallout from security breaches at AOL and Yahoo. A side effect of AOL and Yahoo's actions is that a variety of bad things happen to mail that has 'From:' addresses at aol.com or yahoo.com, but wasn't sent from AOL or Yahoo's own mail systems. If the mail is phish or spam, that's good, but when it's mailing lists or a newspaper's mail-an-article, it's no so good. more

Post JPA: Tempered Happiness

The Affirmation gladdens me. The Affirmation worries me. The Affirmation makes me wonder what is next. I am of course referring to the Affirmation of Commitments between the United States Department of Commerce (DoC) and ICANN. In the respect that the US is loosening its grip on ICANN a little, this is a good thing. Symbolically, of course it is gigantic... more