Featured Blogs

Poor Rural Connectivity Costs Lives

The Washington Post wrote an article recently that talked about how poor rural connectivity cost lives during a tornado in Louisiana. Around the country, there are now elaborate alert systems in areas subject to tornados and other dangerous weather events. These alerts have been shown to save lives since they give folks enough time to seek shelter or get out of the path of a storm. more

What to Make of the Inaugural NetThing 2019

The last Australian Internet Governance Forum (auIGF) was held in October 2016 before the annual event was cancelled as part of an auDA review. Three years on and the auIGF replacement – NetThing – was held in Sydney on 28 October 2019, though I was surprised to see that this Australian Internet event no longer had an associated .au domain name, instead choosing to go with NetThing.info. more

ICANN Org’s Multifaceted Response to DNS Abuse

While the March report from ICANN's Domain Abuse Activity Reporting system show a general reduction in second-level gTLD domain names identified as being used in phishing, malware distribution, and botnet command and control, it has been widely reported that criminals are taking advantage of the global COVID-19 pandemic by launching malicious online campaigns. There have also been numerous reports of spikes in the use of COVID-19-related domain names for DNS Abuse. more

Overcoming DNSSEC Challenges: A Guide for TLDs

Despite offering robust protection for the Domain Name System, DNSSEC suffers from poor adoption due to its complexity, cost, and operational risks. Automation and algorithmic improvements now offer practical solutions for broader deployment. more

IGF 2015 Takes Action, Developing Best Practices to Address Internet Issues

After many months of hard work and preparation, the IGF community has published draft Best Practices on a range of key issues, complementing other intersessional efforts such as Policy Options for Connecting the Next Billion, and Dynamic Coalitions. Best Practices Forums (BPFs) offer the Internet governance community tangible ways to address Internet issues. more

WHOIS Disclosure Questions

In 2020, the ICANN Generic Name Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council approved a plan to revamp the WHOIS system as per the recommendations given by the ICANN Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP). This plan directed ICANN to develop a centralized System for Standardized Access/Disclosure (SSAD) for WHOIS records. After much debate regarding the suitability and cost of such a system, ICANN brought together a group... more

Traditional Big ISPs Stagnate

In the first quarter of this year, the big cable companies added 482,000 customers, while telcos added over 50,000 customers. In what is a surprise to the industry, that growth has disappeared, and all of the big ISPs collectively lost almost 150,000 customers. That's a loss of 60,000 customers for the cable companies and 88,000 for the big telcos. The following statistics have been compiled by the Leichtman Research Group, which tracks the broadband performance of the largest ISPs in the country. more

Is There a Business Case for Fast Cellular?

We've gotten a glimpse of the challenges of marketing faster cellular usage since the two major cellular providers in South Korea made a big push in offering ultrafast cellular broadband. South Korea has two primary cellular carriers – SK Telecom and KT – and both have implemented cellular products using millimeter wave spectrum in Seoul and other dense urban areas. more

Crypto Back Doors Are Still a Bad Idea

In the always interesting Lawfare blog, former FBI counsel Jim Baker in a piece called Rethinking Encryption reiterates his take on the encryption debates. There's a certain amount that makes me want to bang my head against the wall... But it's worth reading to remind us of what the other side is thinking, even with a lot of motivated reasoning that makes him conclude that Congress can pass some laws and the going dark problem will be solved. more

Blocking Amplification Attacks: Sometimes the Incentives Work Against You

Since the end of last year, amplification attacks have been increasingly used by attackers and received heavy media coverage. Everyday protocols not given much thought before, like Network Time Protocol (NTP), can be asked in a very short remote command to send a very large response (list of 600 clients last connected to the NTP server) to a spoofed IP address (the target) by the requestor/attacker. more

Farm Access to Broadband

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been measuring computer usage on farms and publishes the results every two years in its Farm Computer Usage and Ownership report. The most recently released report for 2019 was compiled by asking questions to 20,000 farmers. This is a large sample from the more than 2 million farms in the country. more

The Huawei Issue in the Broader Context of Global Politics

It is very sad to see that Huawei has become a victim of US-China trade war politics and it will be very interesting to see how their court case against the US Government will pan out, the company claims that the ban of its products is "unconstitutional." There is no indication that Huawei has been involved in any spying activity; nor does it appear to have any intention of doing so. more

NTAG Chair Blog: Odds and Endings

Imagine if the US Bureau of Labor Statistics delayed one of its reports for say, two months. No explanation. Just didn't release the employment numbers when it said it would. What if the Federal Reserve decided to say it was going to raise interest rates, but then just didn't? The global economy would be thrown into chaos. These organizations know that when you run critical infrastructure your word is part of that infrastructure. more

ICANN at 20: Looking Back Forward

This year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), marks its 20th anniversary since inception. ICANN was birthed as a result of the infamous DNS Wars - in 1994, the U.S National Science Foundation, the then overseer of the Internet infrastructure decided to sub-contract the management of the Domain Name System (DNS) to a private U.S company called Network Solutions INC (NSI). This move was not well received by the Internet community, culminating in the so-called "DNS Wars" more

Do Not Track: Not as Simple as it Sounds

Over the past few weeks, regulators have rekindled their interest in an online Do Not Track proposal in hopes of better protecting consumer privacy. ... There are a variety of possible technical and regulatory approaches to the problem, each with its own difficulties and limitations, which I'll discuss in this post. more