Featured Blogs

The ICANN Accountability and Transparency Review Team Recommendations: To Implementation, And Beyond

Buzz Lightyear, the astronaut character from the movie Toy Story, is known for his tagline, "To infinity, and beyond!" ICANN can take a lesson from the ebullient Buzz with respect to accountability and transparency. Just as Buzz believed he could fly beyond infinity, ICANN should view full implementation of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT) recommendations not as the last stop, but as the next stop on its important journey of accountability and transparency. more

How Should I Present .Brand Domains in Advertising? (Part 1)

Do consumers still get confused when they see a URL without a .com (or other traditional extension)? Probably -- but I don't think anyone really knows the answer to that from a global perspective. What I do know, however, is that it's important for those of us in the new TLD industry to help our brand customers ensure that we're providing audiences with the best possible chance to identify new domains as legitimate web addresses. more

Cruz and Co Send ICANN Another Letter

Republican Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz (and others) has sent yet another letter to ICANN. This time round, the letter is addressed both to the Chairman of the ICANN Board, Dr Steve Crocker, as well as to former CEO Fadi Chehadé. The letter repeats some of the questions previously put to ICANN, though the wording is much blunter this time round. Cruz' office issued a press release with details of the letter under the title of "ICANN Is Stonewalling the U.S. Congress". more

Recognizing Lessons Learned From the First DNSSEC Key Rollover, a Year Later

A year ago, under the leadership of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the internet naming community completed the first-ever rollover of the cryptographic key that plays a critical role in securing internet traffic worldwide. The ultimate success of that endeavor was due in large part to outreach efforts by ICANN and Verisign which, when coupled with the tireless efforts of the global internet measurement community, ensured that this significant event did not disrupt internet name resolution functions for billions of end users. more

First Four TLDs Pass Pre-Delegation Testing

The first four new Top Level Domains (TLDs) have passed pre-delegation testing. Historically, it has taken most companies about 9 months after the Registry Agreement is signed before domain names go on sale to the general public. The four TLDs signed Registry agreements in April 2013. These TLDs may begin to sell domain names to the public as early as December 2013 or January 2014. more

Why Platform Regulation Concerns ICANN

With the publication of the Australian Governmental report on Digital Platforms1and in the light of the ongoing work on the EU's Digital Services Act, the spotlight of policymaking is on platforms such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. It is natural that members of the ICANN community want to discuss the role of platforms within the ICANN framework, but sadly and predictably, the usual bylaws jockeys and keepers of the true ICANN faith were quick to stifle the conversation. more

Success Factors for New gTLDs Program

The success of the new gTLDs program depends on the actions of the winning registries and on ICANN's allocation policies for the second round of applications. A successful landscape would be dominated by only a few registries but would be less confusing for users. The major players: businesses and Internet users who drive the demand for the gTLDs; the registries who own and run the gTLDs; and ICANN, which sets the rules for determining a winner for each new gTLD. more

Cuban Satellite Connectivity - Today and (Maybe) Tomorrow

In January of 2017, Doug Madory of Dyn Research reported on Cuban traffic, noting that C&W's share had increased. Later in December Madory reported that ETECSA had activated a new internet transit provider, medium-Earth orbit (MEO) satellite-connectivity provider O3b Networks (Other 3 billion), replacing geostationary satellite provider Intelsat. (They have also added Telecom Italia, which, until 2011, owned 11% of ETECSA, but I will save that for another post). more

Amazon’s AWS Ground Station Service Is Now Available

Amazon announced that they would be providing satellite ground station service last year and Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web services, announced its availability in the video at the end of this post. AWS Ground Station is a fully managed, ready-to-go ground station service... This sounds like a compelling case, especially for a small operator or startup, but I don't know how the prices compare to existing services or building proprietary ground stations. more

Will Microsoft Be Able to Make the Jump?

In marketing terminology this is called 'jumping the S-curve'. Microsoft, however, has left its jump rather late. One could argue that we are well and truly at the top of the S at the moment, so it will be interesting to see if Microsoft can still take the leap towards the enormous growth that is currently taking place in the group of digital media companies such as Google and Apple. more

Cyberspace Solarium Commission Report

The Cyberspace Solarium Report released today is another, in an endless string of reports, that disgorge from Washington committees dealing with the eternal mantra of "defending American interests and values in cyberspace." The challenges (and many reports) here trace back 170 years when transnational telecommunication internets emerged. The dialogue and reports scaled in the 1920s with the emergence of radio internets and cyber threats, then again in the early 1980s... more

NIST Cancels FISMA Continuous Monitoring Document’s 2nd Public Draft

NIST has released a revised FIMSA Implementation Schedule that omits a previously planned Second Public Draft of SP 800-137: Information Security Continuous Monitoring for Federal Information Systems and Organizations. Instead, NIST plans to proceed directly to a Final Public Draft, now expected in May 2011. more

India - The Internet’s Next Billion

Everyone seems to be talking about how the big boom is set to happen in India for domain names, and there are significant factors to ensure that this growth happens. The internet spends and E-commerce usage is fast becoming the face of modern India, a part of everyday lifestyle. Although awareness is still the biggest barrier domain name Registrars face with consumers, there are signs of significant improvement in trust, usability and the adoption of web services. more

Looking Back at 20 Years of ICANN

I became interested in the global management of the Domain Name System (DNS) in 1991, soon after helping to create commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Sweden. We moved the Internet Exchange Point (IX) from Academia to the private sector and similarly the management of the SE country code top-level domain. The exercise was fascinating and it really tweaked my interest in the DNS and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. more

New Standard for Reverse Domain Name Hijacking

Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) Rule 1 defines Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) as "using the Policy in bad faith to attempt to deprive a registered domain name holder of a domain name"... There has been a mixed history in granting and denying this remedy for overreaching rights. Some Panels consider RDNH regardless whether it has been requested (even if respondent defaults in responding to the complaint); others will only consider the issue if requested. more