Featured Blogs

The 2024 IPv4 Market in North America

Between 2021 and 2023, the IPv4 market was a roller coaster ride - prices shot up in 2021, peaked in 2022, and plummeted in 2023. Those who expected a recovery in 2024 were sadly disappointed. Prices for IP addresses continued to decline, leveling out during the second half of the year. And yet, market activity remained remarkably unaffected - a sign, perhaps, that the market is settling into a new normal. more

Is There Really a Mobile Malware Pandemic?

Much of the discussion regarding mobile security revolves around the growing "pandemic" of mobile malware. It's not uncommon to see headlines reporting the discovery of large numbers of new malware samples. However, as Google recently pointed out, with quite a bit of data to support them, there's little discussion of real world impact of these discoveries. This raises a number of relevant questions. Is the average user likely to be infected? Where does this malware come from? These are questions that deserve analysis and thoughtful responses. more

A History of Disruptors: Or How the U.S. Government Saved the Internet from the Telcos

Kenji Kushida is a scholar at Stanford University, who has written a most explanatory overview of how America came to dominate cyberspace, through computer companies. He traces the evolution of the Internet to a series of actions taken by the US government to limit the power of the telephone companies. Kushida looks at the USA, Europe and Japan from the perspective of what happened when telephone monopolies were broken up and competition introduced in the 1990s. more

Multi-Layer Security Architecture - Importance of DNS Firewalls

In today's world with botnets, viruses and other nefarious applications that use DNS to further their harmful activities, outbound DNS security has been largely overlooked. As a part of multi-layer security architecture, a DNS Firewall should not be ignored. After serving as a consultant for multiple organizations, I have encountered many companies that allow all internal devices to send outbound DNS queries to external DNS servers - a practice that can lead to myriad problems. more

Implications of Satellite Being Broadband

We've had a quiet policy change in the United States over the last year, where satellite broadband is starting to be considered broadband by the federal government. Any rural household that subscribes to and loves Starlink would wonder why this is news, but from a policy perspective, it is a big deal. I've been considering what this shift might mean in the future. The FCC decided that Starlink wasn't broadband when it rejected Starlink's long-form filing in August 2022, where Starlink wanted to claim the funding it had won in the RDOF reverse auction.  more

The EPDP Passed an Important Milestone… Now What?

This isn't the blog post I had hoped to write. When I signed up to participate in ICANN's Expedited Policy Development Process for gTLD Registration Data, I knew we had a lot of work ahead of us, but I was cautiously optimistic that we would, eventually, reach a successful outcome. Today, I find myself looking at things differently. After hundreds of hours and countless meetings and emails, Phase 2 of the EPDP's work has wrapped up with the delivery of our final report to the GNSO Council. more

Supreme Court Delivers One-Two Punch to Agency Power

At the end of its 2024 term, the Supreme Court made two landmark rulings that limit federal agencies' regulatory powers. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo curtails their ability to create new regulations, while SEC v. Jarkesy reduces their capacity to enforce existing laws. These decisions significantly weaken agencies like the FCC in regulating sectors of the national economy, marking a substantial shift in administrative authority. more

Feared by the Bad, Loved by the Good: Robin Hood

The eccentricities of California-based ICANN, the allocator of domain names, know few bounds. Based on the best of legal advice, though perhaps not the best of PR advice, it's Board has announced the system for allocating priority in the processing of around 1000 weighty applications for new top-level domain names. It has described the system, with all seriousness, as Digital Archery. A description that just begs for comparison with the English folk hero, Robin Hood. more

Software Has Already Eaten Telecoms (It Just Has Indigestion)

The unconscious and near-universal belief is that packet networks are a telecoms service, and one that constructs an 'additive' resource called 'bandwidth'. This is demonstrably technically false. They deliver distributed computing services, as they calculate how to divide up an underlying telecoms transmission resource. The ubiquitous error is a failure to recognise that the hardware platform has already been devoured by the software industry. more

Connecting the Next 46 Percent: Time to Pick the Good From the Bad and the Ugly

On the 5th of November 2019, the release of the first of ITU's Measuring Digital Development series coincided with Freedom House's unveiling of its Freedom on Net 2019 report. This serendipity prompted me to write this blog note after carefully examining both reports. On one hand, ITU's analytical publication, with its new friendly format, emphasizes that Internet use continues to spread, warning however that the digital gender gap is widening. more

Starlink and the Seven Dwarfs

Starlink dominates the satellite internet race, echoing IBM's past supremacy in computing. But geopolitical divides, advancing rivals, and Elon Musk's controversies suggest its lead will narrow as competitors gain ground in a fragmented global market. more

Brand Control: The Next Stage for Digital

Social and Digital Marketing are two of the fastest growing, and arguably the most important, pieces of branding today. According to eMarketer, 2017 digital marketing expenditures will account for 38.4% of total ad spending and are projected to be almost 45% by 2020. This is double what they were just a few years ago and growth doesn't seem to be slowing down. more

Digital in 2021 – Five Predictions for Brand Protection

While smartphones were an integral part of our lives before 2020, now, as a result of the changes associated with COVID, our mobile devices are virtually "super-glued" to our hands. The worldwide pandemic has heavily influenced our lives. Based on our past experiences with digital brand protection and the trends we're currently seeing, we've made five predictions regarding the future of internet usage in 2021. more

Terahertz WiFi

While labs across the world are busy figuring out how to implement the 5G standards, there are scientists already working in the higher frequency spectrum looking to achieve even faster speeds. The frequencies that are just now being explored are labeled as the terahertz range and are at 300 GHz and higher spectrum. This spectrum is the upper ranges of radio spectrum and lies just below ultraviolet light. more

DotGreen Debrief: How the Applicant Auction Helps Mission-Driven Applicants

DotGreen announced on Friday that it has withdrawn its application for .green from ICANN's new gTLD program. We were surprised to hear the news, particularly after all of the effort that DotGreen has put into building a community and a movement around its application. While we at Innovative Auctions agree with Annalisa that the ICANN Last Resort auction would have been a poor choice for the DotGreen Community, we believe that the Applicant Auction is a great tool for single-string applicants who want to see their TLD used for a community purpose. more