I have long been perplexed at how Google plans to make a profit with their Kansas City Fiber project. Originally the project was touted as an altruistic move by Google to really understand the underlying costs of deploying fiber in a large municipality. But as anyone who has been in the trenches can tell you, it is not the technology that determines the cost of a fiber deployment, but the tyranny of the take-up. more
The debate about the control of the internet is intensifying, with interesting discussions expected later on this year in Dubai at the WCIT conference organised by the ITU. Over the last 25 years the industry has moved from being mainly telephony-based to being mainly IP-based, and many say that what is now at stake is the future of the internet as we know it at this point in time... The reality now is that the political stakes of the internet have risen significantly. more
Representatives of both AT&T and Verizon have stated that their companies will soon offer "toll free" broadband services. So far they have not provided much detail, but the prospect for customer and content provider surcharges should trigger concern, even outside the context of the network neutrality debate. First let's consider the frame the carrier reps use: "Toll Free." This is an old school "Bellhead" reference... more
Mobile networks aren't usually thought of as sources of spam, but a quick look at some of the resources that track spam reveals they actually are. This is counter intuitive at first glance because when most people think of mobile they think of smartphones, and those aren't known to be sources of spam (at least not yet). What's really going on is PCs connected to mobile networks with air cards, or tethered with a smartphone where it's permissible, are the culprits more
EFF and several other civil society organizations have declared a 'Stop Cyber Spying Week' in protest of several controversial U.S. cybersecurity legislative proposals, including the bill currently before Congress and the Senate called CISPA... more
"While SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S., lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other countries," says Michael Geist in a blog post today. Geist writes: "With Bill C-11 back on the legislative agenda at the end of the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style rules. In fact, a close review of the unpublished submissions to the Bill C-32 legislative committee reveals that several groups have laid the groundwork to add SOPA-like rules into Bill C-11 ..." more
From will they ever learn department, we are once again seeing attempts by incumbent carriers to skirt rules around network neutrality. They tried and failed with UBB. Now they are at it again with "speed boost" technologies. The two technologies at question are Verizon's "Turbo" service and Roger's "SpeedBoost". more
A new law passed in Malaysia's largest city, Kuala Lumpur, this month will require all food and beverage outlets to provide wireless internet access to customers by April of this year. The law makes WiFi access for customers a requirement for food operators when applying for a new license for a restaurant or renewing an existing license. Cafes, pubs, bars and club lounges are also required to provide WiFi services, the mayor of Kuala Lumpur, Tan Sri Fuad Ismail, was quoted as saying to a Malaysian newspaper recently. more
2011 has been a significant year for the technology sector globally. Information technology is touching more people in more ways than ever before. Developed markets will be considering a 2012 in which business innovation, competitiveness, and service differentiation are built on ubiquitous broadband, cloud computing, smarter mobile computing, and an increasing plethora of Internet-connected devices. By contrast, securing the technology future for developing markets demands that attention be placed on more fundamental issues. more
Since November of last year we have been discussing the problem of illicit and illegal online pharmacy support by ICANN-accredited Registrars. In several articles and direct contact with the Registrars we have tirelessly tried to convey the seriousness of this problem, many listened, some did not... With the background information already known, the case presented here is much more specific and concerns EvaPharmacy, which was until recently, the world's largest online criminal pharmacy network. more
At the opening of NANOG 53, Kevin McElearney of Comcast commented that within Comcast Regional Area Networks (CRANs), the company is regularly pushing 40+ Gbps of traffic out to the global Internet. This is a massive amount of traffic and in many cases, it's more traffic than entire countries around the world push out to the Internet. It got me thinking about just how much traffic there is on the Internet and the rate at which that traffic will grow over the coming years. more
The US government is looking at telling ISPs how to deal with compromised customers and botnets. They're a bit late to the party, though. Most of the major commercial ISPs have been implementing significant botnet controls for many years now. more
Qtel, the largest carrier in Qatar (and nearly the only Internet provider) appears to connect all their users (~600K) to the Internet through just one or a very few public IPv4 addresses. 82.148.97.69 was their single public address in 2006-2007. How can network address translation (NAT) put all those users through just one IP address? more
Google is deploying fiber at its own expense in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri to demonstrate the value of one gigabit (a gigabit is a billion bits -- a lot) per second residential Internet connections and perhaps to show at&t and Verizon and the cable companies how the search giant might fight back if its growth is restricted by their restrictions or limitations. ... Whoops. Google just learned the same lesson that President Obama learned in Stimulus 1 more
On September 12 China, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan released a Resolution for the UN General Assembly entitled "International code of conduct for information security." The resolution proposes a voluntary 12 point code of conduct based on "the need to prevent the potential use of information and communication technologies for purposes that are inconsistent with the objectives of maintaining international stability and security and may adversely affect the integrity of the infrastructure within States..." more
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