News Briefs

Escalating Violence in Iraq Leads to Internet Shutdown

The escalating violence in Iraq has resulted in government shutting the the local Internet access according to a report by Renesys today. From the report: "Renesys has observed two large Internet outages this week that our sources confirmed to be government-directed outages. These interruptions appear to coincide with military operations, amid concerns that ISIL forces are using Internet websites to coordinate their attacks." more

Popular RSS Reader Feedly Suffers Back to Back DDoS Attacks, Held for Ransom

Popular RSS reader Feedly has been hit by major distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks beginning 2:04am PST on Wednesday causing the service to be completely down for several hours two days in a row. (Second attack still undergoing as of the time of this post.) more

50K .uk Domains Registered on Opening Day, Nominet Reports

Within 24 hours of opening, .uk domain registrations have topped the sales charts, according to Nominet. "More than 50,000 domains were registered, making this one of the fastest selling new domain releases on record, and beating the first day sales for all of the current batch of new generic Top Level Domains by a large margin." more

Annual Internet Traffic to Grow More Than 20 Percent, Reaching 1.6 Zettabytes by 2018

Global IP traffic for fixed and mobile connections is expected to reach an annual run rate of 1.6 zettabytes -- more than one and a half trillion gigabytes per year by 2018, according to the Cisco's Visual Networking Index. more

Paul Vixie on How the Openness of the Internet Is Poisoning Us

In a video interview conducted during the NSCS ONE conference, Paul Vixie CEO of Farsight Security further discusses the topic of his presentation titled: "Defective by Design -- How the Internet's Openness is Slowly Poisoning Us". more

Group Launches Coalition for Local Internet Choice

A new coalition of public and private entities was launched today with the mission to support the rights of local communities to make their own decisions regarding broadband Internet networks - "unhindered by state laws or other policies that attempt to stifle or preclude local innovation and investment." more

ICANN Publishes Final Process to Be Used for Development of IANA Stewardship Transition Plan

On June 6 2014, ICANN published a Process to Develop the Proposal and Next Steps that is the culmination of a series of community discussions and input into the process to develop a proposal to transition the IANA functions to the global multistakeholder community. more

Comment Period for ICANN Accountability Process Enhancement Extended

ICANN made an announcement today stating that in response to ensuring the community has sufficient time, while also having the process in parallel to, and informing, the process to Transition NTIA's Stewardship of the IANA Functions, there is a one week extension of the comment period to 6 June. more

Apple Rumored Building Its Own CDN, Negotiating Paid Interconnect Deals With ISPs

Apple has reportedly formed a new internal group to work on building out their own content delivery network (CDN) to deliver Apple software updates, apps and other Apple related content. more

Global Panel Releases Report on How to Evolve Internet Governance Ecosystem

The Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms - a global Panel of stakeholders from various organizations and governments - today released key recommendations on how to evolve the Internet governance (IG) ecosystem to accommodate global needs for collaboration, interconnectivity and Internet growth. The report also presents a roadmap and timeline for the future management of the Internet. more

DCA Receives an Injunction It Requested in Its IRP Proceedings

DotConnectAfrica Trust (DCA) received an Injunction it requested in its IRP Proceedings in an arbitration process against ICANN ('DCA Trust vs. ICANN') governed by the International Dispute Resolution Procedures of the ICDR based in New York and the Supplementary Procedures for ICANN IRP Process. more

New York City Mayor Announces Next Step For Public Launch of Dot NYC (.nyc) Domain

Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced the start of the first “sunrise” phase of the roll-out of the .nyc web address, beginning a five-month countdown towards the full-scale public launch in October 2014. Through .nyc, the city plans to generate revenue, help residents take advantage of government services, encourage local businesses to thrive, market and promote tourism, and spread the dynamic image of New York City around the world. more

3 Billion Internet Users by End of 2014, Two-Thirds from Developing World

Releasing new statistics today, the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) announced that by end of 2014, there will be nearly three billion Internet users -- two-thirds of them from the developing world -- with mobile-broadband penetration approaching 32 per cent. Moreover, people from developing countries make up for more than 90 per cent of those who are not yet using the Internet. more

NY Tech Companies Visit FCC to Express Net Neutrality Concerns

On Friday, May 2, 2014, representatives of the companies Kickstarter, Meetup, and Tumblr, along with representatives of the New York City Tech Meetup and Engine Advocacy, met with FCC staff to express their strong opposition to the FCC Chairman's draft proposal concerning network neutrality... "While the Chairman's proposal may look good on paper, it provides no certainty or effective remedy for smaller entrepreneurs building real businesses on the internet." more

Internet Is Too Loud, Literally

Lily Hay Newman reporting in Slate: "You may associate the sound of the Internet with the sound of a computer fan or the extinct song of dial-up. But the real sound of the information super highway is the whir of hard discs and fans spinning inside servers and creating a powerful white noise. It seems like it might be a soothing din, but workers report that it's a problem." more