Featured Blogs

Anti-Consumer ICANN Can Not be Trusted To Protect Domain Registrants’ Property Interests

Domain name registrants who purchase a name in any of the present or pending generic (gTLD) top level domains should think twice before entrusting a domain name property interest to ICANN, even though ICANN levies a money tariff on each domain registration. ICANN has no policy language that indemnifies domain name registrants. ICANN language does not even contemplate the possibility of domain theft by an ICANN registrar. more

Upcoming Domain Pulse 2008 Within Central Europe

Domain Pulse, the yearly get-together of the German-speaking registries of nic.at (Austria), Denic (Germany) and SWITCH (Switzerland) is happening on February 21 and 22 in Vienna. The conference alternates between the countries -- last year it was Switzerland, this year Austria and next year Germany... Domain Pulse covers everything in the domain name arena from management of the DNS, what's happening in each of the ccTLDs, after market and domaining, security threats to the DNS and internet as well as wider issues affecting the internet's development such as internet governance. more

Three Kinds of UDRP Disputes and Their Outcomes

There are three kinds of UDRP disputes, those that are out-and-out cybersquatting, those that are truly contested, and those that are flat-out overreaching by trademark owners. In the first group are the plain vanilla disputes; sometimes identical with new tlds extensions (mckinsey.careers> and <legogames.online>); sometimes typosquatting (<joneslang lassale.com> and <wiikipedia.org>); and other times registering dominant terms of trademarks plus a qualifier (<pleinphilipp-shop.com> and <legostarwars2015.com>). more

IPv6: Less Talk and More Walk

The sixth month of the year is both symbolic and historic for IPv6 and a good time to take stock and see how we've progressed. But instead of looking at the usual suspects of number of networks, number of users, number of websites, etc... on IPv6, let's look at some new trends to see what's happening. At gogo6 we've been measuring the "Buzz" of the IPv6 market every week over the last two and a half years. more

Are There any Cable Companies Left?

Are there any companies left that we can still call cable companies? Everything in the business press still refers to Comcast and Charter as cable companies and AT&T and Verizon as telephone companies. It's getting harder to justify using these traditional labels, and maybe the time is finally here to just start calling them all ISPs. After all, these four companies collectively have 80 million broadband customers... more

ICANN: Termination of Registrar EstDomains to Go Ahead

The termination of ICANN-accredited registrar EstDomains is to go ahead, effective 24 November 2008. On 28 October 2008, ICANN sent a notice of termination to EstDomains, Inc. based on an Estonian Court record reflecting the conviction of EstDomains' then president, Vladimir Tsastsin, of credit card fraud, money laundering and document forgery. Pursuant to Section 5.3 of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), ICANN may terminate the RAA before its expiration when, "Any officer or director of [a] Registrar is convicted of a felony or of a misdemeanor related to financial activities..." more

From Telegraph (1914) to Twitter (2014) - Are There Lessons to Be Learned?

Could the Great War have been avoided if leaders had gotten together and negotiated in person instead of exchanging telegrams? In the voluminous historiography of the origins of WWI, there is a very little on the role of the telegraph. Today, as Twitter takes its place conference rooms, we can learn a lot from the failure of telegraph diplomacy one century ago... The telegraph introduced the notion of 'virtual presence'; for the first time in human history, communication was detached from transportation. more

Developing Countries Moving Towards Broadband

There has been considerable discussion over the last few years about the spectacular growth in mobile communications. Within a rather short period of time around five billion people have been connected, and growth continues unabated... The 2G and 3G networks and other telecommunications infrastructure such as satellites, fixed wireless technologies and fixed networks, linked to smart phones and other smart devices, can be used to provide basic internet services. However, it is important to acknowledge the affordability of these services. more

Does WiMAX Still Stand a Chance?

Ever since WiMAX was introduced several years ago, there has been controversy over whether or not this technology is going to make a breakthrough in wireless broadband industry. The controversy could be partly due to the fact that the chip giant Intel has been behind the technology, and invested enormous resources to make it happen. It could also be because WiMAX had been hyped for so long before it was actually deployed, and by the time it began to roll out LTE emerged and the debate turned into WiMAX vs. LTE. more

ISOC-Bulgaria Asks Worldwide Internet Community to Bring Top Priorities During the Coming IGF

The IGF has a tendency of slowly shifting from a place of a discussion about the way the world accesses information resources, into a place where only topics that make the headlines are being highlighted, with many of the same players being among the loudest speakers. We believe that due to cross-cultural reasons, these people are mainly coming from North America and Western Europe. We urge the IGF to allocate equal time for people from regions outside of those two. more

Will Starlink Harm the Ozone Layer?

There was a paper published in June in the peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters titled Potential Ozone Depletion from Satellite Demise During Atmospheric Reentry in the Era of Mega-Constellations. As can be deduced by the lengthy title, scientists have uncovered a new risk coming from the reentry of low-orbit satellites through the atmosphere. more

Applicant Auction for Top-Level-Domains:? Resolving Contention Fairly, Efficiently & Transparently

The quest for new top-level domains took an important step last spring with 1,930 applications to ICANN. 755 of these applications, from 145 different parties, are under contention. ICANN has encouraged these applicants to resolve the contention among them, and has established a last-resort auction in the event agreements among applicants cannot be reached. Here I describe a private auction model, the Applicant Auction, which is an efficient, fair and transparent approach to resolve contentions. more

Europe to Deploy Commercial Clouds to Support Big Science

It is good to see Europe take an important leadership role in recognizing the critical contribution that commercial cloud providers can play in providing solutions for big science through their recent Helix Nebula -- the Science Cloud announcement. It is estimated that 1/3 of the science applications running on expensive HPC facilities could easily run on commercial clouds, freeing up these facilities to focus on true high computational problems. more

Saving the ITU-T in Three Steps

In yet another committee meeting among the many over the past thirty years, the ITU-T is holding a Review Committee session in Geneva in two weeks in an attempt to save the organization. There aren't many people left these days interested in these noble efforts - largely from the only two remaining entities who participate significantly - Korea's government ETRI institute, and entities clustered around China's MIIT ministry. As someone who has participated in and written about the organization over the past forty years in many different capacities, I have some suggestions - in the spirit of recognizing that there is still something worth saving. more

Centralizing DNS Data for Security, Compliance, and Performance

Private DNS data lakes consolidate fragmented logs into a centralised platform, improving visibility, security, and compliance. They enable advanced analytics, strengthen threat detection, and help organisations optimise network performance in increasingly complex IT environments. more