Featured Blogs

TMCH Review Recommends Status Quo

On July 25th ICANN announced the publication of the Draft Report of the Independent Review of the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). This study was coordinated for ICANN by the Analysis Group, in conjunction with researchers from the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford as well the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School... while public comments on the draft report will be accepted through September 3rd, this Report was triggered by GAC concerns expressed before the Applicant Guidebook for the new gTLD program was even completed, and is not the work product of a GNSO-created working group and therefore will not directly result in the establishment of any new ICANN policy. more

Essential Cyber Security Steps for Your Business

Layered security is a concept that's important for anyone who wants to create a strong, successful defense strategy to understand. This is a strategy that relies on the use of multiple lines of defense in an attempt to repel any potential attacks. For this reason, it's based on the principle that says "no single form of protection is enough to stop a determined cybercriminal. more

Communicating Emotion and Presence: From a Hole in Space to Cuba’s Public-Access Hotspots

Cuba, one of the least connected nations in the world, recently created 35 public-access, WiFi hotspots around the island. While 35 hotspots is a drop in the bucket, this opening is a start and it has been noted in many articles and blog posts. Most of the coverage of the new hotspots has been lackluster and redundant, but an article last month in Miami Herald stands out because it stresses the human and emotional impact of these access points. more

Using Facebook for Verisimilitude? For real?

I recently became aware of the new pay-by-mobile phone service Venmo.com. "Pay friends with your phone, skip the ATM, Settle up on meals, rent, bills and drinks" ... Venmo are using Facebook connect as a way of verifying user identities, at least that is what they claim. more

Encryption, Our Last Line of Defense

Encryption is fundamental to our daily life. Practically everything we do online makes use of encryption is some form. Access to our financial transactions, health records, government services, and exchanged private messages are all protected by strong encryption. Encryption is the process of changing the information in such a way as to make it unreadable by anyone except for those possessing special knowledge (usually referred to as a "key"), which allows them to change the information back to its original, readable form. more

Outages Never Sleep!

Not matter how much robustness and redundancy you build around your multi-tiered infrastructure you are bound to suffer outage(s). I'm not implying the failure of a single server, but a complex outage that's usually external to the operation of the infrastructure. What matters is how you communicate outage notification when things do go awry. I think the words that I'm searching for are transparency and openness. more

Web Application Delivery: The Challenge of Managing Thousands of Web Applications in the Cloud

Cloud Computing is a hot topic. Some say it is already here, most agree that it will be much bigger in the coming years. It is pushed forward by the economic benefits of virtualization and consolidation. Take a heterogeneous data center, full of many kinds of servers, running a myriad of applications and consolidate it into a uniform farm of virtual machines, where each application is services by one or more VMs and you have a cloud, what is called a private cloud. more

Advantages of gTLD Portfolio Ownership

The essay outlines the advantages to owners of managing a portfolio of gTLDs. The advantages can lead to concentrations of ownership in a few hands, which is unavoidable but not necessarily harmful to consumers. Moreover, some of the advantages can lead to profitable complementary business models. Beyond the obvious advantage of economies of scale that lead to reductions in operating costs, there are a number of other sources of advantage. more

Community Networks Could Help Strengthen the Caribbean Internet

By some estimates, only half of the world's population has internet access, leaving the other half at a sizeable competitive disadvantage. This profound connectivity gap is especially significant in the unserved and underserved areas of developing and least-developed countries. For people who live in these places, Internet connectivity is not just about the Internet. It is a lifeline that gives access to electronic commerce and telehealth services, distance learning, social and political engagement, government services... more

Is Teleworking Here to Stay?

Broadband networks are stretched thin today due to the large numbers of adults and students working from home. There are many stories on the web that indicate that a lot of employees are not going to be going back to the office when the pandemic is over. Here are two stories about a trend towards more teleworking from the dozens that a Google search uncovered. more

Domaining Europe Becomes NamesCon Europe

After 10 years as one of the top-level European Domaining Conferences, it is our pleasure to announce the transition of Domaining Europe into NamesCon Europe! This is an exciting new chapter for the NamesCon brand that expands into the European domaining market. The agreement between Domaining Europe and NamesCon was confirmed at the beginning of 2018. The rebranding of Domaining Europe to NamesCon Europe is in effect for the upcoming June 2018 event in Valencia. more

Reducing the Risks of BYOD with DNS-Based Security Intelligence; Part 1: Understanding the Risks

Ah, BYOD. How I love thee. BYOD, or "Bring Your Own Device", gives me choices. I can use a device at work I actually like and am most effective with. (How did I ever get by without my iPad?) But BYOD comes with challenges. Personal devices can be infected with malware. Once they're connected to an enterprise's network, they can be controlled by a bot master to hijack enterprise resources and wreak havoc as part of a botnet. more

ICANN New gTLD Auctions - Apparently No Antitrust Concerns?

There has been much discussion in ICANN circles concerning auctions to resolve new gTLD contention sets. This article summarizes the discussion and events to date, and suggests there should be little worry for applicants seeking to resolve their contention sets via private auction, rather than ICANN's "last resort" auction. more

Reflections on the 20th Anniversary of the Dot-Com

Twenty years ago (Monday) on June 8th, 1989, I did the public launch of ClariNet.com, my electronic newspaper business, which would be delivered using USENET protocols (there was no HTTP yet) over the internet. ClariNet was the first company created to use the internet as its platform for business, and as such this event has a claim at being the birth of the "dot-com" concept which so affected the world in the two intervening decades. There are other definitions and other contenders which I discuss... more

Internet Service Quality Measured from Thousands of Locations

RIPE Atlas, the new active measurements network maintained by the RIPE NCC, gives you a way to easily measure the quality of your Internet services. RIPE Atlas is designed in such a way that it can collect data for analysis from a great number of locations on the Internet. The actual measurement devices, or "probes", are so small that they can be easily deployed in a home environment. more