Featured Blogs

Meet Peter Harrison, the Only Caribbean Candidate for ARIN Board of Trustees Elections

Peter Harrison has been named among four finalists to contest elections for two seats on the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) board of trustees in October 2018. ARIN is one of five Internet registries worldwide that coordinate the distribution and administration of number resources. The registry serves the United States, Canada and several territories in the Caribbean. more

Freedom to Connect

Over the last ten years, Andrew Odlyzko has been writing about a pricing algorithm that would assure reasonable service levels at reasonable prices. If you're going to F2C, you might want to read that brief article or this slightly more complex one to learn (or refresh your sense of) PMP -- Paris Metro Pricing models to deal with network congestion. You'll also get a sense of why throwing bandwidth at the network will not be sufficient. Here's a great article from 1995... more

Why Don’t We Have Peak and Off-Peak Pricing for Broadband?

I saw a poster on the London Underground yesterday, and as is often the case it got me thinking about the parallels with telecoms. The poster explains the peak and off-peak fare structure for tube travel. The purpose of this pricing system is to manage the relationship between supply and demand in a system that is capacity constrained. Over short and medium timescales the supply is essentially fixed, and demand can oversaturate that supply. more

Toward an ITU Renaissance

For nearly fifty years now, a significant portion of my professional engineering and lawyering life has been threaded through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It has included all of its multiple sectors, working on the inside for two Secretary-Generals and running its Relations between Members and Regulations Division, writing two books including "The ITU in a Changing World" with the late George Codding, representing the U.S. at several conferences... more

Rural Home Connectivity in Cuba

Cuba's government monopoly ISP ETECSA in October announced special home connectivity rates for some of the poorest towns in rural Cuba. The monthly charge for 30 hours of 512/256 Kbps DSL access in those towns will be 5 CUC. In other areas where home connectivity is available, the minimum monthly charge is 15 CUC for 30 hours of 1,024/256 kbps service and faster, more expensive, plans are available. more

Kyiv Independent Reports on Starlink in Ukraine

"Saint Elon" is a bit much but ... It started with a tweet from Ukraine's Minister of Digital Transformation. The quoted text below is excerpts from How Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet keeps Ukraine online in The Kyiv Independent. "Among the Ukrainian military, Elon Musk, the richest tech entrepreneur in the U.S., is often half-jokingly referred to as 'Saint Elon.'. The reason is Starlink, Musk's satellite communication system that keeps many Ukrainians, most importantly the military... more

Submarine Cable Resiliency in the Face of Disruptions

I have on my desk a rather small tube. It's a little under 2cm in diameter, 6 cm long, and looks like it's made from a dull white polycarbonate material. At the end, I can see a copper inner tube, and inside that, another polycarbonate layer, and then a smaller steel tube that holds a thin steel thread and some fibre optic cables. There are no layers of steel jacketing, nor any other additional wrapping at all. more

The IPv4 Price Inversion

A curious price inversion has occurred in IPv4 markets. The long-term trend that discounted large blocks has reversed. The graph identifies /15 and /16 (large) block pricing per IP address throughout the period in the form of dark spots. It is evident that, for most of the timeframe here (2014 to the first half of 2021), large blocks sold at a significant discount. One might guess that the administrative chores related to large-network needs were most efficiently and cheaply satisfied with large blocks. more

How Can You Make More Accurate Capacity Planning Decisions?

Cable operators face a big challenge today as data utilization continues to increase on their networks. Keeping up with the demand for high quality services while upgrading network infrastructure seems to be a never-ending task. Many times, network upgrades are done without much help from tools and systems, leaving it mostly based on experience and performance indicators defined by the operator. Unfortunately, this is the reality for far too many service providers today. more

Negotiating the WSIS+10 and the Future of the Internet

After two and a half years of technical analysis and discussions, six months of deliberations among all stakeholders, and intense negotiations at the United Nations, at three o'clock in the morning on December 12, 2015, the talented co-facilitators from the United Arab Emirates and Latvia dropped the gavel on the outcome document for the ten-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). That consensus document presents international principles that will guide the UN's work on Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-related issues. more

IGF Hyderabad: Interview of Participants

I am uploading short video interviews of Internet Governance Forum (IGF) participants during the 3 - 6 December 2008 conference in Hyderabad, India. The participants are asked a standard set of questions... Some 10 interviews are now online. My aim, if possible, is to interview at least 100 participants. more

May 13 Deadline to Nominate People for 2022 Jonathan B. Postel Service Award

Do you know someone who has made outstanding contributions in service to the Internet community? Someone who has made the Internet better in some way who deserves more recognition? Maybe someone who has helped extend Internet access to a large region? Or wrote widely-used programs that make the Internet more secure? Or served in some capacity behind the scenes in Internet services? more

Starlink’s zoomready Rating Is Going Down

zoomready is open-source shareware I wrote to measure the suitability of an internet connection for teleconferencing. As you can see above, Starlink had an average zoomready rating of 2.66 out of a possible 3.0 over the four measured days. The problem is NOT bandwidth, which has fluctuated but stayed above the minimums needed for good teleconferencing. The problems are failures (most of them short), latency, and jitter. more

Almost All 5G Estimates for 2019-2020 Need to Be Doubled

The remarkable take rate in Korea and China is invalidating almost all projections of 5G subscriptions. The 5G promotion has consumers wanting to buy, buy, buy. Huawei Mate 20 5G is selling for only US$30 more than the 4G model. At that price, who would want to buy a 4G phone that could be obsolete in a year or two? In the first two weeks of sale, over a million Chinese bought Huawei's 5G phone. more

5 Questions to Ask To Choose the Right Website Monitoring Solution

In these competitive times and with the holiday's looming, your Website experience needs to give customers a "warm and fuzzy" feeling. That is, it should be available and fast, with no major hiccups. Website monitoring is essential in delivering just that. How do you find a monitoring tool? Just set the monitoring budget, find a vendor, call the sales department and buy yourself some monitoring, right? Whoa, not so fast. more