Featured Blogs

Life Outside IPv6 (Poll)

Within every organization a chosen few are tasked with introducing IPv6 into their networks, outward facing services or applications. But who are they? We know them as Network Engineers, System Administrators and Software Developers but are they one trick ponies spending all their time in layer 3? more

No Time Bar, No Laches under the UDRP

Two Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) decisions posted this month involved domain names registered 20 and 21 years ago, David Duchovny v. Alberta Hot Rods c/o Jeff Burgar, 21 years and Commonwealth Bank of Australia v. Registration Private, Domains By Proxy, 20 years. Complainants prevailed in both cases. The domain names stand out as being the oldest to have been found registered in bad faith, and transferred. more

What’s With the 32-Bit Numbers That the Internet Keeps Defying?

By now you might have read the news "How 'Gangnam Style' Broke YouTube?" What happened is that a YouTube video named 'Gangnam Style' by a South Korean singer Park Jae-sang, known by his stage name PSY, has been viewed so many times that it broke YouTube's view counter. YouTube's view counter is built on a 32-bit integer, which provides a view-tracking capability of nearly 2.15 billion views. more

Senate Judiciary Leaders Ask New IP Czar to Facilitate ICANN-Focused Conversations

Daniel Marti was nominated to become the new White House "IP Czar" in August 2014 to replace Victoria Espinel. His predecessor, in yet another illustration of Washington's "revolving door" shuffling key individuals between the government and private sector, departed the post a year earlier to become head of BSA/The Software Alliance, the leading trade group for the software industry. more

Retrograde Inversion of Telecommunications Policy

Going backwards upside down. That's what we're doing with telecommunications policy in the U.S. The Comcast affair should prompt a re-examination of many decisions the FCC, Congress, and the courts have made over the last few years. When the FCC reports on its reactions to Comcast's activities, the right response will be "You're asking the wrong question." "What is reasonable network management" isn't the question we should be asking... more

Wow, a U.S. Ministry of 5G

This seemed to be the reaction this morning worldwide to the leaked alleged PowerPoint slides detailing the White House strategic options for a U.S. national 5G infrastructure. The gist of the slides has apparently been confirmed to Reuters by unnamed "Trump security team members." The options apparently range between creating a U.S. Ministry of 5G resembling the old world of government Post, Telegraph and Telecommunication (PTT) agencies of bygone years, and sawing off the U.S. ICT infrastructures and services from the rest of the world. more

BT and Ofcom

About 16 months ago, I heard Ed Richards of Ofcom speak at a CITI conference at Columbia, and blogged about it here. I remember thinking that Richards didn't seem to think that highspeed access to the internet was all that important. The market had to demand it, and the market wasn't being demanding. Also, he wasn't interested in government intervention to support highspeed access... more

The gTLD Opera

The curtain rises on January 12th 2012 but key players are still singing different tunes. Let's peek into their performance as they start taking center stage. FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, has sent a letter to ICANN on December 16th 2011. Re: Consumer Protection Concerns Regarding New gTLDs. They write; "We write now to highlight again the potential for significant consumer harm resulting from the unprecedented increase in new gTLDs." The following paragraph clearly highlights the lack of information about the ICANN gTLD platform. more

What Does an Administration Change Mean for the FCC?

Just as the last change in administration changed the course of the FCC, so will the swing back to a Democratic administration. If you've been reading me for a few years, you know I am a big believer in the regulatory pendulum. Inevitably, when a regulatory agency like the FCC swings too far in any direction, it's inevitable that it will eventually swing back the other way. more

Password Leaks

The technical press is full of reports about the leak of a hashed password file from LinkedIn. Worse yet, we hear, the hashes weren't salted. The situation is probably both better and worse than it would appear; in any event, it's more complicated. more

Net Neutrality? Give Me a Break

As my learned friend John Levine has noted, rightly, any policy that anyone has come up with thus far regarding net neutrality is based upon a Telco model. Now, think about that for a second. A telephone call costs pretty much the same if you whisper or shout. It costs the same if you make a quick phone-call or you yack for hours. These days, even long distance is trivially inexpensive, because the capacity to carry the world's phone-calls is well beyond any foreseeable demand. There is huge headroom. more

The Cyber Security Ecosystem: Collaborate or Collaborate - It’s Your Choice

As cyber security as a field has grown in scope and influence, it has effectively become an 'ecosystem' of multiple players, all of whom either participate in or influence the way the field develops and/or operates. It's increasingly evident that, more than ever, it is crucial for those players to collaborate and work together to enhance the security posture of communities, nations and the globe. more

ICANN 53 - Guaranteeing Accountability in Internet Governance

I recently attended the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN) 53rd meeting in Buenos Aires to further discuss the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition process. During the meeting, public and private Internet stakeholders made important strides on a transition timeline, accountability planning and future management of the Internet that supports global creativity and innovation. more

“Capacity” - The Hidden Word?

What is so secret about the word, "Capacity"? As I read and talk with people I realize the word, "capacity" is typically missing from the DNS discussion. "Capacity" and "Security" are the two cornerstones to maximizing DNS resilience; both of which are typically missing from the DNS discussion. Have you seen a single DNS node easily process over 863,000 queries per second? Have you seen a network routinely handle over 50Gbits/second in outbound traffic alone without breaking a sweat? more

Informal Working Group Publish Report On New TLDs

In an interesting move several members of the ICANN community formed an "informal" Working Group to discuss the concept of "expressions of interest" in new Top-Level Domains (TLDs). This all happened very quickly, which is more or less the opposite to how most ICANN related activities progress. ...The report, which runs to about 11 pages, is concise and seems to have covered most of the areas of interest. more