Featured Blogs

More on the Soloway Case

I've now read Soloway's plea agreement. Despite some claims from his lawyers that it's some kind of victory that he only pleaded to three of the 40 charges, with the rest being dismissed, it's clear from the agreement that he indeed did just about everything that the government charged. The government as is usual had several similar charges in each category. more

Disappearing Telephony

I'm just stepping back a minute to think about what Emerging Telephony actually is. You might have seen my earlier musings on the different philosophical underpinnings of "Western" telephony and "Eastern" thought. In an oversimplified nutshell, the Western approach puts the individual in the centre of the universe. The Eastern idea is to put the group in the middle. more

Five Inconvenient Facts about the Migration to 5G Wireless

An unprecedented disinformation campaign purposefully distorts what consumers and governments understand about the upcoming fifth generation of wireless broadband technology. A variety of company executives and their sponsored advocates want us to believe that the United States already has lost the race to 5G global market supremacy and that it can regain it only with the assistance of a compliant government and a gullible public. more

The Infrastructure Guessing Game

As U.S. Congress inches closer to an infrastructure bill, the industry is feverously speculating how a broadband infrastructure plan might work. There is still a lot of compromise and wheeling and dealing to be done, so nobody knows how a final broadband program might work, or even definitively if there will be one. But since this is the billion-dollar question for the industry, it's worth a review of the possibilities. more

The Globe on Terror Goes Digital

The Globe and Mail published an embarrassing feature story on the weekend focusing on terror groups' use of the Internet and a "Canadian connection." A story on terror group use of the Internet would have made for an interesting (albeit unoriginal) story, so it appears that the Globe tried to generate greater interest in the story by adding a Canadian connection. The article begins with "Welcome to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia - pivotal battleground in the global jihad."... more

Authenticated Resolution and Adaptive Resolution: Security and Navigational Enhancements to the DNS

The Domain Name System (DNS) has become the fundamental building block for navigating from names to resources on the internet. DNS has been employed continuously ever since its introduction in 1983, by essentially every internet-connected application and device that wants to interact online. Emerging from an era where interconnection rather than information security was the primary motivation, DNS has gradually improved its security features. more

Thinking of Applying for a Truly Generic TLD, but Restricting Ownership to a Single Registrant?

As it's coming down to brass tacks and companies are now seriously considering applying for their own .Brand Top-Level Domain (TLD), questions about whether to also apply for a truly generic TLD keep popping up. Many large corporations want to know whether it's even possible to apply for something like .Shoes AND to restrict registrations so that only a single specified registrant is allowed. After all, for the right company it seems that something like .Shoes could be a valuable namespace -- short, easy to remember, and easy to spell. more

Is the Defense Innovation Unit’s Hybrid Space Architecture the “ARPANET” of Space and Will It Run on Aalyria Spacetime?

The goal of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) of the Department of Defense is to strengthen our national security by accelerating the adoption of commercial technology throughout the military and strengthening our allied and national security innovation bases. Space is one of its areas of focus and two of the space "lines of effort" are multi-orbit operations and logistics and hardware-to-software transformation modernization. more

Parallel Processes: ICANN Accountability and the IANA Transition

ICANN President Fadi Chehade gave Internet stakeholders a welcome surprise last week when he announced ICANN would launch a community-driven process to strengthen its accountability, and that this process would be "interdependent" with the transition of IANA functions away from U.S. Government oversight. It was fitting that Fadi announced the accountability process at NETmundial in Sao Paolo, where Internet stakeholders from around the world gathered to discuss the evolution of the global Internet governance. more

New ICANN Requirements for New gTLDs Are Irrelevant

ICANN is barking up a number of wrong trees with the latest version of its Evaluation and Questions Criteria for generic top-level domains (gTLDs). The document asks for financial projections, the applicant's goals for its TLD, and the benefits the applicant expects to derive. All that information is meaningless. more

Senator Cotton: Extraordinary Expansion of Huawei Cloud

Huawei's Cloud is growing faster than Amazon, Microsoft, or Google, Iain Morris writes. He cites U.S. Senator Tom Cotton on growth in "Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates." Cotton further says: "In addition, Huawei's cloud services revenues reportedly rose by almost 170 percent in 2020. This accelerating revenue stream threatens to undermine U.S. efforts to curtail Huawei's power, influence, and financial strength." I think Cotton is a little high on Huawei Cloud growth... more

Deploying DNSSEC: Lessons from Domain Registrar Implementation

As a registrar at the front end of the DNSSEC deployment effort, our technical team has made a sustained investment in DNSSEC deployment so that our customers don't get overwhelmed by this wave of changes to the core infrastructure of the Domain Name System. Along the way, we've learnt a lot about how to implement DNSSEC which might hold useful lessons for other organizations that plan to deploy DNSSEC in their networks. more

Domain Name Disputes Break Two Records in 2017

The year 2017 turned out to be a record-setting year for domain name disputes, in two ways: The number of complaints filed as well as the total number of domain names in those complaints. Specifically: The number of cases at WIPO crept up to 3,073 from 3,036 in 2016 (the previous record), a modest gain of just over 1 percent. Those cases included 6,370 domain names, up from 5,354 in 2016 (also a record-setting year), a spike of nearly 19 percent. more

FY16 Appropriations Act Extends IANA Transition Freeze without DOTCOM Act

The U.S. Government has been operating so far in Fiscal Year 2016, which began on October 1st, with funding provided by two continuing Appropriations bills. The last one passed on December 11th and provides funding through midnight tonight, December 16th. Meanwhile, bipartisan Senate and House leadership, Appropriations Committee members, and Chairs of authorizing committees have been negotiating an omnibus Appropriations bill, along with a separate revenue package of tax provisions, behind closed doors. more

Collecting Cybercrime Data: Can Signal Spam Be a Piece of the Puzzle?

The gathering of coherent data on cybercrime is a problem most countries haven't found a solution for. So far. In 2011 it is a well known fact that spam, cybercrime and botnets are all interrelated. The French database Signal Spam may be a significant part of the solution to gather, analyse and distribute data on spam, phishing, cybercrimes and botnets, but also be a forum in which commercial mass e-mail senders and ISPs can work on trust. more