Featured Blogs

AT&T Says Google Voice Not Neutral

AT&T has turned up the volume on Google Voice in a filing with the FCC. At issue is Google's decision to block calls that are routed to certain rural areas with higher than average termination costs. Google questions regulating its service - a web application - the same as traditional phone services, but AT&T's letter claims that at the end of the day, Google Voice is routing PSTN to PSTN calls. more

USA: Court Leaves FCC With Discretion to Regulate Special Access Circuits

On Friday, the decision to deregulate "special access" circuits was upheld. The case had been brought by the Ad Hoc Committee, a long standing body of large business users, one of the main categories of buyers of high capacity leased lines to interconnect business premises. more

International Pandemic Contact Tracing Standards Group Formed

The formation of an international pandemic contact tracing standards group was announced yesterday. Designated E4P, it is being established as an open public-private initiative under ETSI to "develop a framework and consistent set of specifications for proximity tracing systems, to enable the development of applications and platforms, and to facilitate international interoperability" that also provide for privacy protection. more

Email Service Providers and the Coming Changes

Yesterday I talked about how I'm hearing warnings of a coming paradigm shift in the email industry. While these changes will affect all senders, Email Service Providers (ESPs) in particular are going to need to change how they interact with both ISPs and their customers. Currently, ESPs are able to act as "routine conveyers." The traffic going across their network is generated by their customers and the ESP only handles technical issues. more

Content is Everything: How to Regulate the USA

As countries begin to fully understand the implications of universal broadband, a mind-shift is taking place in the minds of the people involved in the decision-making processes, and the split between infrastructure and content is becoming more apparent. Futile regulations from the past are making this crystal clear. more

The Lean and Antifragile Data Centre

Cloud is a new technology domain, and data centre engineering is still a developing discipline. I have interviewed a top expert in cloud infrastructure, Pete Cladingbowl. He has a vision of the 'lean' data centre and a better kind of Internet for users to reach it. He also has a roadmap for how these can be practically realised. The key is to apply established theories of value flow from more mature industries. more

Expressions of Interest Move Ahead: New TLDs Get Closer

It looks as if new top-level domains are getting ever closer to the opening bell. Preliminary minutes from the December 9 2009 ICANN Board of Directors meeting suggest that the Board may authorize Expressions of Interest (EOI) at their February 10th meeting. The vote was unanimous. more

The Christmas Goat and IPv6 (Year 11)

This is the fourth year now with almost no snow during the Christmas Goat event here in Sweden, and so once again, you get a photo without any snow. Because of Covid-19 and 99.99% people working for home, I have not even seen the Goat live this year... What a crazy year it has been! more

A New U.S. National Broadband Plan?

United States Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) introduced a bill that would require that the FCC create a new National Broadband Plan by July 2021. This plan would lay out the national goals needed for broadband going forward and also provide an update on how the COVID-19 crisis has impacted Internet access. I am not a big fan of the concept of a national plan for many reasons. more

U.S. Cyber Security: Blurred Vision

It has been beaten, butted, and batted around quite a bit in the past few weeks -- let's look at a rough timeline of political issues which bring me to this point. Let's look at the power struggle (I prefer to call it confusion) in the U.S. Government with regards to "Cyber Security" -- in a nutshell. In the latter part of 2008, the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee determined that DHS was not capable of providing proper critical infrastructure protection (and other Cyber protection capabilities) due to a number of issues. This may well be a political maneuver, or it may well actually have merit. more

Time for Auction?

Today, Innovative Auctions announced the resolution of eight Top Level Domains in the second private auction commencing on August 13th for a total of $9,651,000. With the first and second auctions successfully completed and the third auction scheduled for September 10th is now a good time to resolve your contention set and jump on the next auction bus? more

Over 100 gTLD Applications Committed in Aug. 13 Applicant Auction

In early June, the first Applicant Auction resolved contention for 6 contested gTLDs. The successful outcome of that auction has generated a great deal of interest from other applicants, and Innovative Auctions is expecting a big turnout in our next auction, to be held on August 13th. For more than half of the contested applications, at least one applicant is ready to resolve contention via our auction. 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

Aircell vs. VoIP

Last week American Airlines launched their Aircell wireless Internet access on a limited number of flights. It didn't take long before a few folks tried to make voice and video calls (in violation of Aircell's terms-of-service according to their PR folks), and it didn't take long before someone figured a way around their voice/video blocking efforts. more

IPv6 RIPEness: More Smaller and Younger Organizations Deploying IPv6

The number of RIPE NCC members [also referred to as Local Internet Registries (LIRs)] that have an IPv6 allocation continues to grow -- in absolute terms as well as in percentages. 46% of all RIPE NCC members have one or more IPv6 RIPEness stars. ... Do new members pick up IPv6? Are older members with more experience, well-established businesses and customer base dominating IPv6 RIPEness scores? And what about the size of a member? Are small and large members adopting IPv6 in equal proportions? In this article we look into answering these questions. more