Featured Blogs

Preparing DNSSEC for the Post-Quantum Era

To prepare DNS security for a post-quantum future, Verisign and partners are testing new cryptographic strategies that balance security, performance, and feasibility, especially through the novel Merkle Tree Ladder mode for managing large signatures. more

ICANN vs. the Federal Reserve

The Internet is about to go independent. After years of support and supervision, the U.S. Government is about to irrevocably relinquish its control over the Internet by transferring its authority to an independent corporation named ICANN. As part of this push, the current chairman of ICANN posted this article to the Wall Street Journal... What's truly amazing about this piece, is how well it's done... It was only after digesting this piece, that I remembered we are talking about ICANN here. more

Lessons from Sandy: Building Networks and Cyber-Infrastructure to Survive Climate Change

Hurricane Sandy has been a badly needed wake up call for the Internet community as to the threat of climate change. Although most people have forgotten, Sandy is the second hurricane to hit New York in as many years with Irene last August and a third tropical depression headed to New York at the time of this writing. Two, supposedly once in a hundred year storms, within such a short time frame should even make the most die-hard denialist that something's afoot. more

Rebalancing Telco Infrastructure Investments

One of the reasons telecommunications has been so successful for more than 160 years is that it adopted a strategy that resulted in a seamless network all around the world. You can pick up a phone anywhere in the world and, with little or no instruction, make a call to anybody else in the world without worrying what phones and technology they are using on the other end of the line... But during that process the nature of the network operators changed. more

Domain Name Registries and Registrars: The New Digital Trust and Safety Wardens in Bluesky

Just recently, Bluesky -- the decentralized social network running on an open protocol called AT Protocol -- announced that as a mechanism for supporting its business financially, it will directly sell domain names as handles for its users. The sales will be processed through an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) accredited registrar, called Namecheap. Currently, the handles on social media platforms are internal handles and not independent domain names. more

Extending the JPA is the Right Thing to Do

Internet governance is getting a thorough look under the hood, thanks to the National Telecommunication and Information Administration. NTIA recently concluded its public comment period under a Notice of Inquiry (NOI), which asked for public comments regarding the future of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between the Department of Commerce and ICANN. At its core, the NOI asks whether the White Paper's original vision of privatizing the technical coordination and management of the Internet is working. For reasons I will explain, it would be deeply unwise for NTIA to terminate the JPA just yet. more

Contention Is Best Settled by Those Who Know the Players & Industry

Several posts have been made on the topic of contention resolution and private auctions around the new gTLD program over the last few weeks on CircleID. Many of the Applicants we spoke to thought it was appropriate to weigh in from the RightoftheDot.com perspective. We want you to know that the RightOfTheDot auction offering for contention resolution for new gTLD's, unlike other offerings, remains unchanged from when it was first announced to the Domain Industry. more

A Root Server With a View…

Running a DNS server that serves the root gives an interesting view into the world of the DNS. With the ongoing improvements to the ICANN operated L-ROOT, we've been fortunate enough to be able to make use of the "DNS Statistics Collector" (DSC) tool. "DSC" allows us to generate different views of the DNS queries we have been seeing at the L-ROOT systems. more

The TLD Operator Webinar Transitions to the DNA University

Readers of my posts will have noticed that we've been working over the last two months to launch the TLD Operator Webinar which was held recently. Its purpose was to unite all new TLD applicants and collectively share our experiences in order to build momentum in the industry and support each other in our pursuits. With more than 300 registrations and 40 percent of all new TLDs attending, we were humbled and overjoyed with the success -- validating our 'educated guess' that there was a global appetite for information to assist new TLD applicants. more

US Court Upholds Repeal of Net Neutrality

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the last day of September that the FCC had the authority to kill Title II regulation and to repeal net neutrality. However, the ruling wasn't entirely in the FCC's favor. The agency was ordered to look again at how the repeal of Title II regulation affects public safety. In a more important ruling, the courts said that the FCC didn't have the authority to stop states and municipalities from establishing their own rules for net neutrality. more

Video: Interview with Jari Arkko at IETF 96 in Berlin

Would you like to understand the major highlights of the 96th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) last month in Berlin? What were some of the main topics and accomplishments? How many people were there? What else went on? If so, you can watch a short video interview I did below with IETF Chair Jari Arkko. more

ICANN, .nyc, and Multistakeholder Innovation (Video)

On Monday November 24 2014 ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehadé met with NYC community at the office of Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer. Present were representatives of ISOC-NY, Connecting .nyc, New York Tech Meetup, Meetup, NameSpace, Access, and Google. The discussions were partly about NYC's own new TLD and partly about general ICANN issues. more

Achieving Multi-Stakeholder Progress on DNS Abuse

DNS Abuse and how to address it has been the topic of intense, often conflictual, and rarely conclusive discussions for many years, starting with the very definition of the term and the degree of responsibility bestowed upon DNS operators. In 2018, after several months of intersessional work, the Internet & Jurisdiction Global Conference brought together in Ottawa more than 200 key stakeholders to define a roadmap to address certain jurisdictional challenges on the Internet, including DNS abuse. more

Want to Share Info with the DNSSEC Community? ICANN57 DNSSEC Workshop Seeking Proposals by Sept 15

Do you have information or an idea you would like to share with members of the broader DNS / DNSSEC community? Have you developed a new tool that makes DNSSEC or DANE deployment easier? Have you performed new measurements? Would you like feedback about a new idea you have? Would you like to demonstrate a new service you have? If so, we're seeking proposals for the DNSSEC Workshop to be held at ICANN57 in Hyderabad, India, in early November 2016. more

Quantifying the Benefits of Fiber

Dr. Bento J. Lobo, an economist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga undertook a study to quantify the benefits of the municipally-owned fiber network in Chattanooga. Any citywide fiber network brings economic development to a community, but a municipally-owned system brings additional benefits because of the way that the business is more deeply integrated into the community. more