Featured Blogs

Can a CDN Help Website and Application Performance?

Before we answer the question, "Can a CDN help your website and application performance," let's take a moment for a short CDN 101. A CDN (content delivery or content distribution network) is a system of computers placed at different network nodes to provide the same content from the shortest distance possible. In other words, a CDN attempts to take pieces of content from your website and pass it to various nodes around the Internet. more

Making Sure March Madness Doesn’t Live Up to Its Name

Last month, I talked about keeping the Winter Olympics from clogging up your networks as employees raced to stream live events during the workday. Well, in the U.S., we are in the middle of NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, the annual "madness" repeats itself all over again. And let's be honest, most of us want to sneak a peek at the scores and witness some of the thrilling upsets that happen every year. more

ICANN Is Violating Its Legal Agreements with the U.S. Government – Who’s Next?

In April, I published an article, The Multistakeholder Moment of Truth: Will Stakeholders Hold ICANN Accountable?, alerting stakeholders that ICANN is violating its legal agreements with the U.S. Government -- namely the InterNIC licensing agreement and merged Memorandum of Understanding. At that time, I warned that it is essential for stakeholders not to remain silent in the face of this transgression, "hoping that such behavior left unchecked will end of its own accord." more

The Role of Cloud Resource Provisioning in Web App CICD Pipelines

Thanks to wide adoption of the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach, programmatic provisioning of cloud resources is slowly transforming almost every aspect of computing, with administration of web apps having emerged as a key use case. With IaC, it's possible to streamline resource management tasks, shorten time-to-market, control costs, and scale at will. The adoption of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CICD) pipelines is already making a huge difference in web app deployment and cloud resource management. more

Undersea Cables as a Layer of the AI Tech Stack

As AI shifts from experimentation to real-world deployment, its unseen foundation - undersea cables - emerges as a strategic frontier. Their resilience may shape not only infrastructure policy but the outcome of US-China AI competition. more

Why DNS-Level Piracy Enforcement Is a Trap

Efforts to combat online piracy are pushing courts to weaponise the Internet's naming system. Turning DNS operators into enforcement agents may deliver quick takedowns, but risks collateral damage, jurisdictional conflict and long-term fragmentation of the Internet. more

The End of Rural Landlines?

Recent coverage by CBS News on Channel 13 in Sacramento, California documented how AT&T had cut off landline telephone from 80-year-old Patricia Pereira in Camp Seco. She called at the beginning of 2023 to ask if landline service could be transferred from a neighboring home to hers. Instead of transferring the service, AT&T cut the copper lines dead on both properties. more

Unleashing the Potential of Internet Governance Professionals

Internet Governance is a complex and constantly evolving field that touches upon many aspects of the global digital landscape. It encompasses everything from technical standards and protocols, to policy and regulatory issues, to the social, economic, and cultural impacts of the internet. With such a wide range of stakeholders and interests at play, it's no wonder that the community of Internet Governance professionals is so diverse. more

Smartphones and Digital Literacy

As smartphones become the primary gateway to the internet for billions, a critical question emerges: does app-based digital fluency prepare users for the demands of computer-based work in a modern economy? more

Coronavirus Online Threats Going Viral, Part 2: Marketplaces

In the midst of the coronavirus crisis and the partial or total quarantines happening around the world, more people are turning to eCommerce for their purchases. This, combined with the increased demand for healthcare and healthcare-related products, is causing surges of activity on online marketplaces. Perhaps least surprising is the growth in the number of listings for cleaning and hygiene products (e.g., hand sanitizer), as well as facemasks... more

The .nyc High-Bid Auctions

There were highs and lows in city hall's rollout of the .nyc TLD last month. Early on we were cheered when we received notification that our application for the JacksonHeights.nyc domain name had been approved. And with the de Blasio Administration committed to putting the city's 350+ neighborhood domain names under the control of local residents, we began to imagine that our decade-old vision of an "intuitive" city Internet might materialize... more

Whither Cyber-Insurance?

When you go to the doctor for a yearly checkup, do you think about health or insurance? You probably think about health, but the practice of going to the doctor for regular checkups began because of large life insurance companies in the United States. These companies began using statistical methods to make risk or to build actuarial tables they could use to set the premiums properly. Originally, life insurance companies relied on the "hunches" of their salesmen, combined with... more

Can Legislatures Safely Vote by Internet?

It is a well understood scientific fact that Internet voting in public elections is not securable: "the Internet should not be used for the return of marked ballots. ... [N]o known technology guarantees the secrecy, security, and verifiability of a marked ballot transmitted over the Internet." But can legislatures (city councils, county boards, or the U.S. Congress) safely vote by Internet? Perhaps they can. To understand why, let's examine two important differences between legislature votes and public elections. more

Adding ZONEMD Protections to the Root Zone

The Domain Name System (DNS) root zone will soon be getting a new record type, called ZONEMD, to further ensure the security, stability, and resiliency of the global DNS in the face of emerging new approaches to DNS operation. While this change will be unnoticeable for the vast majority of DNS operators (such as registrars, internet service providers, and organizations), it provides a valuable additional layer of cryptographic security to ensure the reliability of root zone data. more

Remote Learning and Preschoolers

A recent article in the MIT Technology Review described the benefits that remote learning can bring to preschoolers. The article described a study by the MacArthur Foundation that has not yet been peer-reviewed. The research described the results of bringing preschool to Syrian refugees. more