Featured Blogs

Pinpointing Urban Broadband Gaps

The City of Chicago asked some researchers at the University of Chicago for help to identify the neighborhoods and the number of households that are not connected to broadband. It's been well known that large numbers of people in cities don't have broadband, but there have been no easy ways to pinpoint where solutions are needed. more

Global Satellite Surge Intensifies Competition for Low-Orbit Broadband

The City of Shanghai entered the low-orbit broadband satellite market. Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST) launched 18 satellites in August and a second batch of 18 satellites in October. The satellites are being branded as Qianfan, or 'Thousand Sails.' SSST satellites are being launched by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) using the Long March 6A rocket. more

How COVID-19 is Affecting the Smartphone Industry

At first glance, the COVID-19 pandemic would seem to be great news for tech companies. Depending on which set of statistics you look at, internet usage has spiked by up to seventy percent over the past month as people around the globe are forced to work, socialize, and entertain themselves at home. However, it's not all good news for tech companies. more

Transparency Comes to Load Testing via the Cloud

The importance of online presence continues to grow exponentially. More and more of our personal and professional endeavors are conducted online. Because of this, the ability to ensure a good experience for our online friends and customers also is increasing rapidly. At its core, load testing is nothing more than ensuring your online presence is ready for the number of visitors you expect. It's simple to explain, but historically it's been anything but simple, or easy to afford. more

Troubling Efforts to Distort and Undermine the Multistakeholder Process

ICANN's request for comment on amending the .com registry agreement to restore Verisign's pre-2012 pricing flexibility ended last Friday and, with 8,998 responses submitted by stakeholders, may have been a multistakeholder version of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Public interest in .com pricing is understandably high but the sheer volume of responses – nearly three times the number of comments submitted this summer on deregulating .org pricing – also suggests a show of force... 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

Justice Department Recommends That the FCC Deny the Proposed ARCOS Cable Segment Connecting Florida and Cuba

In September 2020, I wrote a post on a proposed 56-kilometer link between the ARCOS undersea cable and the north coast of Cuba, near Havana. The Trump-appointed Justice Department Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Services Sector was to conduct a 120-day security review of the proposal. more

Where Do You Start to Mitigate the Latest Destruction-Motivated Cyber Threats?

With traditional cyber strategies failing businesses and governments daily, and the rise of a new breed of destruction-motivated Poli-Cyber terrorism threatening "Survivability", what are top decision makers to do next? There is a global paradigm change in the cyber and non-cyber threat landscape, and to address it the industry has to offer innovative solutions. more

The Growth of DNS-OARC Highlights Great Strides in DNS Research

This past weekend several of my Dyn colleagues and I attended the DNS-OARC annual meeting and fall workshop in Montreal. "OARC" in the organization's title stands for "Operations, Analysis and Research Center". DNS-OARC was founded by the Internet Systems Consortium (best known as the maintainers of the BIND DNS software) in 2004 to address a gap in the DNS community. Engineers working to extend the DNS protocol itself have always had a home in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), but there was no corresponding community for those who operated DNS infrastructure and did research using data gleaned from DNS operations. more

The US-China Cold War in Cyberspace

In 2019 and 2020, the economic conflict between the US and China reached a peak. There was a months-long tariff battle that is still not fully resolved. After blocking Chinese-centered equipment manufacturer Huawei from its own markets, the US pushed hard to get the Five Eyes and all of its allies to block Huawei from foreign markets, too. Then the US started blocking its own companies... more

IANA Transition is Just the Beginning

The transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions is finally in the history books. After almost two years of working groups and multiple rounds of meetings, most of us want to take a long vacation and never hear the acronym "IANA" again. However, the transition is just the beginning. Now is the time for the multistakeholder community to exercise its new authorities and responsibilities to ensure ICANN remains accountable to every internet user. more

The Growth Rate of Broadband Speeds

Cisco has changed the name of its periodic predictions of broadband usage from the Visual Networking Index to the Annual Broadband Report, and recently issued a report that covers the period from 2018 to predictions made through 2023. Cisco is one of the few industry players that projects future broadband usage. Their past reports have been spot on in terms of predicting future broadband usage. more

The Perpetual Peril of Open Platforms

Over at Techdirt, Mike Masnick did a great post a few weeks back on a theme I've written about before: peoples' tendency to underestimate the robustness of open platforms. "Once people have a taste for what that openness allows, stuffing it back into a box is very difficult. Yes, it's important to remain vigilant, and yes, people will always attempt to shut off that openness, citing all sorts of "dangers" and "bad things" that the openness allows..." more

... and still we are left wanting: Malta’s White Paper on Digital Rights

Last month, the Government of Malta published a White Paper for public consultation, proposing the introduction of four so-called "digital rights" in the Constitution of Malta. The proposal is indeed a step in the right direction but lacks punch where it matters most. While the government's efforts are commendable, the White Paper is riddled with misconceptions and does not go far enough. more

IGF 2015 Tackling the Next Billion Online Challenge

Just two weeks ago, the United Nations hosted the Sustainable Development Summit (SDS) where the international community embraced a new global agenda. I was very pleased that ICTs were recognized as a crucial platform for the implementation of this agenda, which sets an ambitious goal to "significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020" (paragraph 9c of the text for the new Sustainable Development Goals). more