Featured Blogs

Senate Appropriators Add IANA Language As House Requests GAO Study and Civil Society Opposes Shimkus

The Senate Appropriations Committee just reported out on June 5th its version of the Commerce-Justice-State Departments Appropriations bill for FY 15. In the course of its deliberations it added a consensus amendment on the IANA transition offered by Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE)... Parsing the amendment's language, the requirement that NTIA conduct a thorough review and analysis of any proposed IANA transition plan amounts to telling it to do its job properly; implicit in this requirement is that the analysis be shared with Congress. more

A Glance Back at the Looking Glass: Will IP Really Take Over the World?

In 2003, the world of network engineering was far different than it is today. For instance, EIGRP was still being implemented on the basis of its ability to support multi-protocol routing. SONET, and other optical technologies were just starting to come into their own, and all-optical switching was just beginning to be considered for large-scale deployment. What Hartley says of history holds true when looking back at what seems to be a former age: "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." more

India - The Internet’s Next Billion

Everyone seems to be talking about how the big boom is set to happen in India for domain names, and there are significant factors to ensure that this growth happens. The internet spends and E-commerce usage is fast becoming the face of modern India, a part of everyday lifestyle. Although awareness is still the biggest barrier domain name Registrars face with consumers, there are signs of significant improvement in trust, usability and the adoption of web services. more

ICANN Proceeds With Batching… For Now

Yesterday, ICANN released a statement to confirm its intention to evaluate new Top-Level Domain applicants in batches using the proposed timestamp system (digital archery) to determine the batches. Whilst this is not the result I was hoping for, I was not surprised by this move. more

May’s G8 Summit Can Help or Hurt the Internet

The more useful the Internet becomes, the more people focus on how to run it. It is no secret that the subject is addressed in many forums today, some with powers to regulate, some with powers to persuade (and one or two with powers only to confuse). Worse, as Internet access becomes the star player in scenes of political reformation, economic growth, and delivery of citizen services, ever more countries are keen to consider how, and if, it should be governed. more

Recognizing Lessons Learned From the First DNSSEC Key Rollover, a Year Later

A year ago, under the leadership of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the internet naming community completed the first-ever rollover of the cryptographic key that plays a critical role in securing internet traffic worldwide. The ultimate success of that endeavor was due in large part to outreach efforts by ICANN and Verisign which, when coupled with the tireless efforts of the global internet measurement community, ensured that this significant event did not disrupt internet name resolution functions for billions of end users. more

WordPress Now Powers 39.5% of the Web

Last month in the annual "State of the Word" presentation for 2020, Automattic CEO and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg announced that WordPress now powered 39% of websites, as measured by W3Techs. The number has actually grown a bit more since that time to 39.5%.1 Perhaps by next month it will pass 40%. What is more remarkable to me is to see that in December 2020, for the first time, the number of sites using WordPress passed the number of sites that were NOT using any form of content management system (CMS). more

Domain Name Disputes Deja Vu: Panavision.com and Panavision.org

History, it has been said, repeats itself. The same can be said of domain name disputes, as demonstrated by a pair of cases involving the same trademark ("Panavision") filed more than 20 years apart with remarkably similar facts. I can't hear the name "Panavision" without thinking about the origins of domain name disputes, so a decision involving panavision.org - coming more than two decades after litigation commenced over panavision.com - immediately made me nostalgic. more

Landmark IPv6 Report Published: State of Deployment 2017

On the fifth anniversary of World IPv6 Launch, we're excited to share a detailed report on the State of IPv6 Deployment in 2017. It really is staggering how far IPv6 deployment has progressed in five years. In mid-2012, Google measured less than 1% of users accessing their services over IPv6. Today that figure is getting close to 20%. Since World IPv6 Launch, several major operators are now delivering the majority of traffic from major content sources like Google, Akamai and others over IPv6. more

Why Platform Regulation Concerns ICANN

With the publication of the Australian Governmental report on Digital Platforms1and in the light of the ongoing work on the EU's Digital Services Act, the spotlight of policymaking is on platforms such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. It is natural that members of the ICANN community want to discuss the role of platforms within the ICANN framework, but sadly and predictably, the usual bylaws jockeys and keepers of the true ICANN faith were quick to stifle the conversation. more

WHOIS Detractors and Advocates: Today’s Viewpoints Post-GDPR

Opposing parties continue to debate whether WHOIS should stay after the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) took effect across the EU in May 2018. While the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees WHOIS, is looking for ways to be GDPR compliant, experts from various fields are contemplating the problems pointed out by officials. more

Will ICANN’s gTLD Flood the Sub-Domain Registrations?

Obviously, the market will explode if there were a few hundred new gTLDs creating global excitement and building new platforms on ecommerce and cyber-branding. The media hype and breakaway stories will create a boom to the traffic; all types of new and old names will be registered under current and re-registered under new gTLDs wherever possible. more

Correlation Between Country Governance Regimes & Reputation of Their Internet Address Allocations

We recently analyzed the reputation of a country's Internet (IPv4) addresses by examining the number of blacklisted IPv4 addresses that geolocate to a given country. We compared this indicator with two qualitative measures of each country's governance. We hypothesized that countries with more transparent, democratic governmental institutions would harbor a smaller fraction of misbehaving (blacklisted) hosts. The available data confirms this hypothesis. A similar correlation exists between perceived corruption and fraction of blacklisted IP addresses. more

Cuba Claims New Regulations Expand Internet Access to Homes and Businesses, But Here’s the Downside

New Cuban regulations regarding private WiFi networks went into effect yesterday, and the New York Times and others proclaimed that "Cuba expands Internet access to private homes and businesses." Yes, Cubans can legally import and install WiFi routers in their homes, small cafes, B&Bs, etc., but these regulations will make little difference in Internet access. more

Meeting Report: ICANN’s Registration Data Request Service Requestor Experiences

During CSG Open Working Session at ICANN79, Members from the ICANN Community were invited to an open meeting to share their experiences with Registration Data Request System (RDRS) from the Requestor side. As President of the Edgemoor Research Institute (ERI), I had the honor to present the keynote address and I am pleased to be able to provide you with ERI's report of the meeting. more