Featured Blogs

“Africa & Latin America, It’s All Huawei” – End-To-End Manufacturing Drives the Cost Down

A rival tells me how hard it is to compete with Huawei because they manufacture so many products. “We had a good opportunity at one customer. Our software is just right for them. “They wanted to buy a complete system. We bundled our software with $4 million of equipment and bid aggressively at $7 million. Huawei came in with a bid of $4 million for hardware and software combined. They manufacture their own servers at a much lower cost than he could buy servers. more

The Countdown Has Started – Here Come One-Year Digital Certificate Life Cycles

Apple announced its decision to trust only one-year digital certificates on its Safari browser in February 2020. This decision created a domino effect, with Mozilla and Google following suit; certificate providers announced they would not issue two-year certificates after Aug. 19, 2020. We wrote an article in March to help brands to prepare for this change. more

8 Domains, $9.65M: Second Applicant Auction a Success

We at Innovative Auctions were happy to see the successful completion of the second Applicant Auction earlier today. Winners will pay a total of $9,651,000 to resolve contention for eight new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). The winners for the eight contention sets included in this week's auction were... more

DNSSEC Maintenance - Just Like Mowing the Lawn

DNSSEC is a hot topic. It's a technology newly unleashed on popular networking, which has led to countless articles and posts on the subject, including right here on CircleID. The way a lot of articles try to get your attention is to talk about a technology, like DNSSEC, in a way that makes the technology either seem really significant or really complicated. That is why a lot of articles about DNSSEC make it sound like something huge, complicated, and scary. But it's not. more

Telco Stimulus Package: Australian Case Study

Most developed nations are now revisiting their telecoms policies with a view to using telecoms infrastructure as a tool to revive the economy. And when exploring this it quickly becomes clear that open networks are necessary if we are to achieve the economic benefits that the digital economy has to offer. The multiplier effect of open infrastructure is obvious. It stimulates developments in healthcare, education, energy, media and Internet -- this in stark contrast to the closed (vertically-integrated) networks that are currently operated by most incumbent telcos around the world. more

Starlink Update: Expansion, Performance Gains and Network Developments

Starlink expanded to 42 new countries in 2025, added 2.7 million customers, improved network speeds and latency, and continued satellite launches as it nears its first-phase constellation goal of 12,000 satellites. more

From Concept to Reality: A Roadmap to Acquire Your gTLD in 2026

In today's rapidly evolving internet landscape, staying up-to-date with the latest developments and trends is crucial for businesses looking to strengthen their online presence. One highly anticipated development that organizations have eagerly awaited is the next round of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). more

Is Booking.com a Generic Term?

A fundamental rule of trademarks is that they have to be distinctive, and that nobody can register a trademark on a generic term like "wine" or "plastic." In a case decided today by the U.S. Supreme Court, the court decided 8-1 that online travel agent Booking.com could register its domain name as a trademark. In this case, I think the majority got it wrong, and Justice Breyer's lone dissent is correct. more

Nuking Silicon Valley

The new head of the U.S. Executive Branch took several actions this week that have profound collateral consequences for Silicon Valley as well as its scientific and technical communities. Presumably, he thought it was payback time for not supporting him. Perhaps he thought that producing automobiles domestically for non-Muslim U.S. citizens to drive around a walled nation is the way to future economic success. No matter, the effects of actions taken this week are the equivalent of nuking Silicon Valley. more

IP Address Space Covered by Certificates

Since the RIPE NCC launched its Resource Certification service, there is a steady increase in the number of prefixes covered by certificates. The Resource Certification (RPKI) service was launched at the beginning of 2011. The system enables network operators to perform Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) origin validation, which means that they can securely verify if a BGP route announcement has been authorised by the legitimate holder of the address block. more

Providers Eye OTT Content at The Independent Show 2013

The future of broadband was the main focus of The Independent Show 2013. In particular, the event highlighted how the convergence of video, phone, Internet, and wireless broadband is shaping the industry. As with previous years, the show focused strongly on the programming community and there was no shortage of new, emerging programming to keep attendees interested. One of the breakout sessions focused on the growth of high-quality over-the-top (OTT) content distribution and how NCTC members could take advantage of this trend to target subscribers drifting away from traditional cable. more

Might Satellite Constellations Learn to Avoid Debris?

The European Space Agency (ESA) reported that as of January 2019 there were about 5,000 satellites in space and 1,950 of them are still functioning. Hopefully, those functioning satellites have fuel and thrusters that will enable them to de-orbit and (mostly) burn up in the atmosphere when their useful life is finished. The remaining 3,050 are slowly drifting, along with a lot of debris. The ESA estimates that there have been over 500 break-ups, explosions, collisions, or anomalous events... more

Most of the Time Common Sense Eventually Prevails

I have learned that lesson many times over. In many of the issues that we are facing, as a society or in our industry, I am reasonably confident that common sense will eventually prevail. Sometimes the road twists and turns, but in the end water flows around rocks. In our industry I can refer to developments we have been advocating for (structural separation, utilities-based telecoms infrastructure, broadband for social and economic benefits, ICT-based industry and sector transformation, FttH, internet as a tool for more direct democracies, etc). more

More Denial of Service Attacks

There are quite a lot of NTP-amplified denial of service attacks going around at the moment targeting tech and ecommerce companies, including some in the email space. What does NTP-amplifed mean? NTP is "Network Time Protocol" - it allows computers to set their clocks based on an accurate source, and keep them accurate. It's very widely used - OS X and Windows desktops typically use it by default, and most servers should have it running. more

Why Integrating IPAM Matters and How to Achieve It

IPAM solutions are the source of truth for IP resources on the network, but when performing IPAM functions such as assignments, reconciliations, DNS updates, network plans, or Regional Internet Registry (RIR) requests, IPAM is often limited by its integration with an OSS. Operational teams can find it challenging to complete routine tasks without an integrated IPAM solution due to siloed data pools and swivel-chair environments. more