Featured Blogs

Telesat, a Fourth Satellite Internet Competitor

I've been following SpaceX, OneWeb and Boeing satellite Internet projects, but have not mentioned Telesat's project. Telesat is a Canadian company that has provided satellite communication service since 1972. (They claim their "predecessors" worked on Telstar, which relayed the first intercontinental transmission, in 1962). Earlier this month, the FCC approved Telesat's petition to provide Internet service in the US using a proposed constellation of 117 low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. more

IPv4 Exhaustion, 5 Implications for Africa Running out Last

I spend most of my time teaching engineers in different countries how to plan and deploy IPv6 networks. Over the last two years, I have been speaking more and more to non-engineers. These are either technology executives who sense that they need to do something about this "IPv6" thing, or government IT leaders who want to understand what the problem is and more importantly, what they could do. The most impactful part of these these exchanges is when I get these managers to understand the implications of IPv4 address exhaustion to their organisations. more

Sender-ID Back from the Dead

With the closure of IETF's MARID group a month ago, many of us have left Microsoft's Sender-ID standard for the dead. After being rejected by the Apache Foundation and the Debian Project over licensing issues, and causing the closure of MARID for some of the same issues (in addition to already long running technical ones), some thought that Microsoft may have just buried it and gone on to better things like IETF's new MAILSIG group (in formation). But just like the ghost of Hamlet's father it just refuses to die and now it looks like it is coming back to life in a new reincarnation... more

EFF on Goodmail: Further Confusing an Already Confused Issue

Cindy's piece on the EFF website seems to be a bit of a pastiche, with elements taken out of various articles (some outright wrong, some merely misinformed) that have been doing the rounds of the media for quite a while now about Goodmail. She started off comparing AOL and Goodmail with the old email hoax about congress taxing email. That same line was used in a CircleID post by Matt Blumberg, CEO & Chairman of Returnpath... Various other quotes from different places - Richard Cox from Spamhaus on CNN for example. However a lot of the quotes in those articles are being based on wrong or out of context assumptions, starting with one that goes "AOL is going to remove all its existing whitelists and force people to use Goodmail". more

Not So Private Thoughts at IETF 105

At IETF 105, held in Montreal at the end of July, the Technical Plenary part of the meeting had two speakers on the topic of privacy in today's Internet, Associate Professor Arvind Narayanan of Princeton University and Professor Stephen Bellovin of Colombia University. They were both quite disturbing talks in their distinct ways, and I'd like to share my impressions of these two presentations and then consider what privacy means for me in today's Internet. more

Will ENUM Deliver?

ENUM (E.164 NUmber Mapping) is a technology that has been around for a little while that has promised much and, so far, delivered little to the average user. As Nominet has recently been awarded the contract to administer the UK 4.4.e164.arpa delegation, I thought it was time that I put my thoughts on this subject down in writing. I'm going to cover the potential of ENUM in the telecoms industry and what it could mean to you, along with how it is currently being used and what potential security issues surround ENUM. more

Spirit of .Pro, Where Art Thou?

On March 2, EnCirca launched its ProForwarding leasing service for .pro domains. When we launched the service, we were sure that the ProForwarding service would appeal to a segment of the internet community not being served well by other extensions: self-employed professionals and other small businesses. Based on the response we've received, it appears we were right. It also caught the attention of ICANN and others, who accused us of "violating the spirit of .pro". Does .pro even have a spirit? And if it does, who gets to decide what it is? more

JET Open Letter to Microsoft

We, members of the JET (Joint Engineering Team), send this open letter to request Microsoft Corporation to implement IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) standards[1] in the next version of Internet Explorer. ...IDN is a critical enabling technology that will make the Internet more useable and attractive to the majority of the Chinese, Japanese and Korean population who do not use English in their daily life. In fact, IDN is mentioned as one of the Declaration of Action of the World Summit of Information Society (WSIS). To date, IDN registration has been launched in .cn, .jp, .kr, .tw and many other European country code top level domain as well as other generic top level domain names. More than 1 million IDNs have been registered since 2000. Most of the web browsers, such as Safari, Firefox and Opera have implemented IDN standards. This means that users can use IDN in these web browsers without additional applications or plug-ins... more

Should Domain Names be Considered ‘Contracts for Service’ or ‘Property Rights’?

The legal status of domain names is one of the most hotly debated topics with regards to evolving property rights and how they should be applied to technological and intellectual property 'innovations' in cyberspace. At present, there are two opposing factions on this topic: On one hand, there are those who maintain that domain names should be considered as contracts for services, which originate from the contractual agreement between the registrant and the registrar. more

700 MHz Update: Will VZ Comply with the Rules?

Last Friday (HT: IPDemocracy), Google filed a petition [PDF] asking that the Commission ensure that Verizon understands what those "open platform" requirements for the C Block really mean. Verizon has taken the position in the past that its own devices won't be subject to the "open applications" and "open handsets" requirements of the C Block rules, and Google says it is concerned that Verizon doesn't plan to follow those requirements in the future. This is big. Here's the background... more

The Criminals Behind WannaCry

359,000 computers infected, dozens of nations affected world-wide! A worm exploiting a Windows OS vulnerability that looks to the network for more computers to infect! This is the most pernicious, evil, dangerous attack, ever... Queue the gnashing of teeth and hand-wringing! Wait, what? WannaCry isn't unprecedented! Why would any professional in the field think so? I'm talking about Code Red, and it happened in July, 2001. more

Who Controls Spectrum in the USA?

In the wake of the unprecedented boom in mobile broadband, pressure is building around the world for governments and regulators to act quickly and decisively to the frantic demand for more spectrum. The telcos are leading the charge, but the broadcasters are lobbying for their case equally vigorously. The broadcasters do not necessarily need all the spectrum they currently have, but they view mobile broadband and telcos as competitors to their monopoly on video entertainment, so they will do everything to keep them out of that market for as long as possible. more

Google Loses Another Domain Name Dispute

For the benefit of trademark owners, ICANN has something called the UDRP (Uniform Dispute Resolution Process) that allows the owner to file a complaint against an allegedly infringing domain name, to be resolved by one of a small set of arbitrators. About 90% of UDRP cases that proceed to a decision are decided in favor of the complainant; opinions differ as to whether that's because of the merit of the complaints or the institutional bias of the arbitrators. more

Why the Dot Com Kingdom Will Continue to Rule Post New gTLDs

Today, with the launch of new and exciting 1600 proposed gTLDs, the choices will simply unleash a slew of unlimited new ideas for the global end-users. The influx will create amazing times for the right names and the right parties. The global public will get the taste of owning multiple domain names for multi-layers of communication to enhance richer and selective experiences. No need to be in pool with 800 million folks but rather interacting with '117 winemaker, left-handed and collectors of toy trains'. 'Divorce lawyers, only handling 3.7 million dollar pre nuptials, only serving Jersey wives'. more

Some Thoughts on DNS4EU – the European Commission’s Intention to Support the Development of a New European DNS Resolver

The last few decades have not been a story of unqualified success for European technology enterprises. The European industrial giants of the old telephone world, such as the former stalwarts Alcatel, Siemens, Philips, Ericsson and Nokia, have found it extraordinarily difficult to translate their former dominant positions in the telco world into the Internet world. To be brutally frank, none of the current generations of major players in the digital environment are European. more