Featured Blogs

Closing the Gaps: The Quest for a Secure Internet

Over the last year the world has been virtually buried under news items describing hacks, insecure websites, servers and scada systems, etc. Each and every time people seem to be amazed and exclaim "How is this possible?" Politicians ask questions, there is a short lived uproar and soon after the world continues its business as usual. Till the next incident. In this blog post I take a step back and try to look at the cyber security issue from this angle... more

Masking Identity with Proxy/Privacy Services

No censure attaches to having domain names registered by proxy/privacy services. However, while the practice has become routine for protecting privacy and sensitive information, registering in the name of a proxy is still taken into account in assessing intention, and even circumstantial evidence without contradiction or explanation can tip the scale in complainant's favor. more

Is the Internet Fragmenting? Join the Discussion Live - Tuesday, May 10, at 3:30pm US EDT

Is the global, open Internet moving away from a network of networks that is universally accessible to a series of networks fragmented along policy, technical or economic lines? As some governments pass laws related to data localization and restriction of cross-border data flows, what will the impact be? What about the increasing use of DNS and content filtering? What other factors have the potential for causing fragmentation? more

Deceptive Assurances of Privacy?

Earlier this week, Facebook expanded the roll-out of its facial recognition software to tag people in photos uploaded to the social networking site. Many observers and regulators responded with privacy concerns; EFF offered a video showing users how to opt-out. Tim O'Reilly, however, takes a different tack... O'Reilly's point - and face-recognition technology - is bigger than Facebook. more

IP Address Location Data

The last few years have shown us how the Internet shrinks distances between distributed teams, organizations and families. This poses a challenge for some organizations. Many business relationships and contractual agreements involving the Internet have geographical implications and restrictions. This matters to anyone operating a network. It is most important for networks that get new address space. more

Cuban Satellite Connectivity - Today and (Maybe?) Tomorrow

Last January, Doug Madory of Dyn Research reported on Cuban traffic, noting that C&W's share had increased. And this week Madory reported that ETECSA had activated a new internet transit provider, medium-Earth orbit (MEO) satellite-connectivity provider O3b Networks (Other 3 billion), replacing geostationary satellite provider Intelsat... the time for a data packet to travel from earth to an O3b satellite and back to Earth is significantly less than to an Intelsat satellite. more

Net Neutrality? Give Me a Break

As my learned friend John Levine has noted, rightly, any policy that anyone has come up with thus far regarding net neutrality is based upon a Telco model. Now, think about that for a second. A telephone call costs pretty much the same if you whisper or shout. It costs the same if you make a quick phone-call or you yack for hours. These days, even long distance is trivially inexpensive, because the capacity to carry the world's phone-calls is well beyond any foreseeable demand. There is huge headroom. more

Securing a Cloud Infrastructure

George Reese (author of the new book Cloud Application Architectures: Building Applications and Infrastructure in the Cloud) is talking at Gluecon about securing cloud infrastructures. Two recent surveys found "security" was the number one concern of companies considering a move to the cloud. George says the key to making customers comfortable with cloud security is transparency... more

Connecting the Next Billion. Is It Possible? (An African Perspective)

This year, the IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group which provide assistance in the preparations for Global IGF meetings called for Intersessional work (activities that are pursued in the months between annual IGFs with the aim of helping the IGF produce more tangible outputs that can become robust resources). Previously, the IGF has used best Practice Forums and Dynamic coalitions to bring out key issues that affect the world as it relates to the Internet. This year's Intersessional activity is centred on "Policy Option for connecting the Next Billion". more

FCC Requests Comments on Definition of “Broadband”  - Comments Due Aug 31; Replies Due Sept 8

The FCC is engaged in researching and preparing a National Broadband Plan which is due to Congress in February 2010. The FCC has released a Notice of Inquiry soliciting comments for the plan and is currently actively holding a lengthy series of workshops exploring the different aspects of what might go into the plan. more

Telecom in China: After the Dust Settles

The long rumored reorganization of the telecommunications sector in China has begun. Now China will have three major companies, each with both mobile and fixed networks. The focus for fixed network growth is broadband Internet access. The focus for mobile will be continued growth in mobile subscribers and the launch of 3G services, with the three companies using three different 3G technologies. more

ICANN 48 in Buenos Aires: What Happened and What’s Next?

Last month, some of my colleagues at MarkMonitor and I traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina for ICANN 48. With the recent delegation and launch of the first new gTLDs, the atmosphere had an air of both excitement and anxiety. In my opinion, there is much to be done before brand owners should begin to feel comfortable in the post-new gTLD Internet environment, which brings a host of new challenges, as companies attempt to scale monitoring and enforcement to the new (huge) domain name space. more

Demystifying ISP Oversubscription

I think the concept that I have to explain the most as a consultant is oversubscription, which is how ISPs share bandwidth between customers in a network. Most broadband technologies distribute bandwidth to customers in nodes. ISPs using passive optical networks, cable DOCSIS systems, fixed wireless technology, and DSL all distribute bandwidth to a neighborhood device of some sort that then distributes the bandwidth to all of the customers in that neighborhood node. more

Getting On Board With DNSSEC - A Personal Recount

I first became familiar with DNSSEC around 2002 when it was a feature of the Bind9 server, which I was using to setup a new authoritative DNS platform for customers of the ISP I was working for. I looked at it briefly, decided it was too complex and not worth investigating. A couple of years later a domain of a customer got poisoned in another ISPs network. And while the DNS service we provided was working properly, the customers impression was we hadn't protected them. more

DotEco Bids Heat Up - Catfight Anyone?

The new Top-Level Domain (TLD) process is occupying a lot of people in the domain name industry at present. While some people are obviously very much against the entire concept of new TLDs, there are plenty of people and organisations who support the project. But what happens when you have more than one organisation vying for the same namespace? ...Seemingly the competition between two rival bids for .eco (doteco) has been getting more than a little dirty in the past few weeks. more