Apple’s PR Nightmare: Open and “Fragmented” vs. Closed and “Integrated”

Over the weekend, I opined that closed app stores - meaning app stores, like iTunes, that restrict users from loading software from other sources (known as sideloading) - would not survive in a market where comparable alternatives, such as Google's Android OS, exist in an open ecosystem. In Apple's Q3 earnings call yesterday, Steve Jobs addressed the issue square on. more

Is the UN Assailing Internet Governance?

The coven of UN bodies with a hand in internet governance keeps getting bigger: not only is the General Assembly intending soon to decide the fate of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), but if the decision coming out of New York does not give them enough of a role, the UN has a back-up plan. In May of 2011, no less than four specialized UN agencies, UNESCO, UNCTAD, UNDP and (perhaps most legitimately) the ITU, are planning a Conference what will allow them to insert themselves still further into the matter. more

Singapore’s Fiber Infrastructure Beginning to Pay Off

It's still early days, but Singapore's approach to fiber deployment is beginning to pay off. In December 2007, Singapore announced a major program to get fiber deployed throughout their city state. A critical advantage of their approach was government mandated structural separation between the dark fiber layer deployed in the public right-of-way (a natural monopoly) and higher layer services (where competition is possible and highly desirable. more

The Worm and the Wiretap

According to recent news reports, the administration wants new laws to require that all communications systems contain "back doors" in their cryptosystems, ways for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to be able to read messages even though they're encrypted. By chance, there have also been articles on the Stuxnet computer worm, a very sophisticated piece of malware that many people are attributing to an arm of some government. The latter story shows why cryptographic back doors, known generically as "key escrow", are a bad idea. more

United States Is the Most Bot-Infected Country. Right?

A couple of days ago, Threatpost posted an article indicating that the United States is the most bot-infected country... I think that Microsoft's mechanism of measuring bot infections is a good one, not necessarily because it is the most accurate but because it represents the most complete snapshot of botnet statistics. Because Microsoft Windows is installed on so many computers worldwide and because so many users across the world call home to the MSRT, Microsoft is able to collect a very large snapshot of data. more

Scrutinize ICANN’s Thousand New-TLDs Limit

I am skeptical about how ICANN has arrived at a technical limit of a thousand new TLDs per year. The ICANN study driving this number must be made public so that our industry's risk management experts can size up the finding. Why am I skeptical? more

Why App Stores Won’t Survive

The recent news that online retailing giant Amazon.com would open an app store to compete with Google's Android Market has set off a flurry of speculation about the future app store landscape. Within the next few months there will be no fewer than three major Android app stores... Several other major players have announced app store intentions though specifics are lacking. And of course, there are existing independent app stores that publish Android apps, such as GetJar, SlideMe and Appbrain. more

URL Shorteners, Domain Hacks and Quasi-gTLDs: What are ccTLDs Really About?

The Twitterverse is awash with catchy URL shortening services, which allow what would otherwise be long URLs to fit within the strict character limit of individual Tweets. Before the Twitter phenomenon really took hold, tinyurl.com was one of the more popular services; now much shorter options are available, using various Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) which have the significant advantage of being only two characters after the last dot. more

IPv6 Momentum?

Last month, the Obama administration sponsored one of the first high-level government workshops on IPv6. At the meeting, the administration's Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, announced a remarkable 2012 deadline for federal agencies to support IPv6. So with a high-level US government mandate and a recent spade of vendor and carrier IPv6 announcements (e.g. VeriSign, Hurricane Electric), is the 15 year old IPv6 migration effort finally gaining momentum? more

The Submarine Cable Conundrum

The boom and bust cycle of submarine cable deployment can be traced back to the 19th century. However it doesn't look as though we have learned a lot in those 150 years. One of the problems is that it generally takes two years to plan these international projects and two years to deploy the system. And even before the process commences there are often an initial two years when the potential builders are contemplating their plans. This means that new cables need to be planned at times when there is little demand for new capacity. more