Featured Blogs

Why More Registries Should Be Talking About DNS Security

I've been incredibly lucky in my time at Neustar to lead both the exceptional Registry and Security teams. While these divisions handle their own unique product and service offerings, it's clear that they have some obvious crossovers in their risks, opportunities and challenges. Having been closely involved in the strategy of both these teams, it strikes me that there is more we as Registry Operators and service providers can and should be doing to align the world of cybersecurity with that of domain names. more

Latin American and Caribbean TLD Association Politely Smacks ICANN Over Meeting Relocation

Earlier this week the Latin American and Caribbean TLD Association (LACTLD) put out a statement about ICANN meetings. The statement, which is available in both Spanish and English, while very polite and diplomatic, expresses the organisation's concerns with ICANN moving meetings out of Latin America due to health concerns. So far this year the meeting scheduled for Panama (ICANN 56) has been relocated to Helsinki. more

Reverse Domain Hijacking Where Complainant Knew but Did Not Disclose Geographic Significance of Mark

In the case of Oy Vallila Interior Ab v. Linkz Internet Services, a 3-member WIPO Panel denied the Complainant's efforts to have the disputed domain name vallila.com transferred because the Complainant did not prove that the Respondent registered and used the disputed domain name in bad faith. The Complainant is in the business of providing fabrics and interior design services and claimed trademark rights in its registered mark VALLILA in the European Union. more

A Closer Look at the AIP Internet Draft Proposal

Just in time for ICANN's 44th meeting next week, a new Internet Draft has turned up, purporting to fix the centralization of the DNS. The draft has received some attention, including an article in PC World. It isn't entirely clear what the real purpose of the draft is, but it is hard to credit the notion that it is solving any technical problem. Without examining the reasons why the draft exists, I want to debunk a claim in it. more

Combating Counterfeit and Substandard ICT Devices

Counterfeiting is a negative activity that is affecting almost all areas of economies, incidentally it has become a menace in the Internet world. Apart from selling of fake products online, the production and sale of imitated or counterfeit products create huge market for products that hurt the producers of the genuine goods and also create a menancing health risk to the users. more

Telecom Heroics in Somalia

Internet service in and around Mogadishu, Somalia suffered a crippling blow recently as the East African Submarine System (EASSy) cable, which provides service to the area, was cut by the anchor of a passing ship. The government of Somalia estimated that the impact of the submarine cable cut was US$10 million per day and detained the MSC Alice, the cargo vessel that reportedly caused the damage. more

.Org: ICANN’s Betrayals and its Opportunity to Act Now in the Public Interest

ICANN's repeated betrayals of the public interest have created the conditions for Ethos Capital's proposed purchase of .Org. The growing outrage directed at ICANN is raising questions about ICANN's legitimacy and the wisdom of having entrusted ICANN with oversight over the domain name system ("DNS"). ICANN has shown itself to be out of touch with and unresponsive to the public interest. ICANN now has an opportunity to remember its mission... more

The Early History of Usenet, Part VI: The Public Announcement

Our goal was to announce Usenet at the January, 1980 Usenix meeting. In those days, Usenix met at universities; it was a small, comaparatively informal organization, and didn't require hotel meeting rooms and the like. (I don't know just when Usenix started being a formal academic-style conference; I do know that it was no later than 1984, since I was on the program committee that year for what would later be called the Annual Technical Conference.) more

The Future of Satellite Broadband

People ask me a lot about what Starlink means for somebody building a rural broadband network. That set me to contemplate the long-term prospects for LEO satellite broadband. Today, the broadband provided by Starlink is a boon to rural subscribers who have had no alternatives. Hundreds of thousands of prospective customers have gotten onto the Starlink waiting list. It's not hard to understand why when the rural broadband alternatives are extraordinarily slow rural DSL, high orbit satellite broadband, or cellular hotspots. more

The Introduction of New Domain Name Services: “Due Process” and Innovation

For those interested in encouraging innovation in the domain name space -- which presumably includes the ICANN community currently convening in Dakar -- the recent episode in which VeriSign proposed, and then quickly withdrew, a bundle of new services (the VeriSign anti-abuse domain use policy) raises important issues that will be revisited as new gTLDs are introduced. Some of those issues are referenced in a recent blog post by Milton Mueller, but his emphasis on "due process" suggests a regulatory framework that is not friendly to innovation. more

Google Puts Its Weight Behind FttH

The blogs are flying all around the world -- some seem to get it right but most do not. My analysis of Google's announcement to become involved in building FttH networks is actually the same as the one as I made when that company announced its plans to build wireless city networks, and when it announced its intention to invest in submarine cable networks. more

Comcast Streaming of NBC Broadcast Content

NBC soon will join the ranks of content providers offering a streaming option to cord cutters and mobile consumers. This future service warrants special attention, because two corporate affiliates within the Comcast family will participate in many parts of the United States: Comcast as the last mile, "retail" ISP and Comcast the parent of NBC-Universal. Operating as an ISP, Comcast has at least three pricing/interconnection options, each of which raise questions relating to network neutrality... more

Three Reasons Why CISOs Need to Know How Their Company Is Managing Their Domains

Companies today manage hundreds or even thousands of domain names that support their organization, their visitors from different countries, and their brands and trademarks. They register misspelling of their names as a defensive strategy to protect their brand from online fraud, or from losing traffic to simple user typos. more

Data Tsunami and the Looming Broadband Capacity Crisis

There is such a huge volume of genomics (DNA related data) and bio-informatics data being produced that it cannot be transferred over commercial Internet networks, and instead organizations are using FedX and other sneaker nets to ship the data. The same crisis in data volumes is also occurring in the climate modelling and other fields as well. Research and Education (R&E) networks for many years have been warning about this coming data tsunami. more

Policy Beyond the Potholes

I cringe whenever I hear the arguments that we can't have community owned infrastructure for connectivity because local governments can't fix potholes. I wouldn't mind it so much if that argument wasn't used to shut off further discussion. We should be asking why we are denied the "dumb-pipes" that provide vital infrastructure and why we allow phone (and TV) companies to horde vital infrastructure. Instead we accept the "pothole" argument as a reason we can't be trusted to communicate on our own. more