AOL Fires Across the Bow of Spam-Friendly ISPs

The North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) conference, a gathering of Internet Service Provider (ISP) engineers and vendors convenes three times a year for mostly technical conversation along with social networking. The recent NANOG conference in Reston Virginia saw some unusually direct talk about Spam and the ISPs that tolerate it from America Online's Postmaster, Charles Stiles. more

Sender-ID Back from the Dead

With the closure of IETF's MARID group a month ago, many of us have left Microsoft's Sender-ID standard for the dead. After being rejected by the Apache Foundation and the Debian Project over licensing issues, and causing the closure of MARID for some of the same issues (in addition to already long running technical ones), some thought that Microsoft may have just buried it and gone on to better things like IETF's new MAILSIG group (in formation). But just like the ghost of Hamlet's father it just refuses to die and now it looks like it is coming back to life in a new reincarnation... more

Why DomainKeys is Broken

The recent testing by Gmail of DomainKeys affords an opportunity to look again at what the impact of it may be in any attempt to introduce a Domino addin to verify DomainKeys signatures. I have here a sample of an email sent from Gmail and that same email after being delivered to the in-box of a Notes/Domino user who prefers MIME. There are differences which make DomainKeys a real problem at Domino shops (and, I suspect, others). more

GNSO Council Review

The ICANN bylaws require a periodic review of ICANN structures and operations; the first of such reviews, that of the Generic Names Supporting Organization Council, is scheduled to be finalized in the next few weeks prior to the start of ICANN's annual meeting. To begin discussion on this topic, I draw your attention to a very thoughtful question posed by Joe Sims during the prior ICANN reform process... more

Relief Denied to Personal Name of Danish Businessman

Danish businessman Joacim Bruus-Jensen challenged the domain name www.joacimbruus-jensen.com in ICANN UDRP proceeding. He failed to prove enforceable trademark rights in his name and was denied relief in this decision by Panelist Derek Minus. Joacim Bruus-Jensen v. John Adamsen, Case No. D2004-0458 (WIPO Sept.29, 2004). The case should be considered before seeking to use the ICANN UDRP to take action based on the personal name of a business executive. more

ICANN Whois Policies Update

According to an article in the October 15, 2004 INTA Bulletin, several new "Policies Applicable to ICANN-Accredited Registrars" will be implemented by the end of 2004. The new Restored Names Accuracy Policy tales effect November 12 and requires that a domain name that was deleted due to the submission of false contact data or lack of response to a registrar's inquiries...  more

Internationalizing Top-Level Domain Names: Another Look

A paper by Dr. John C. Klensin, former Vice President of Internet Architecture at AT&T, a Distinguished Engineering Fellow at MCI WorldCom, and Principal Research Scientist at MIT. This paper has been reproduced with kind permission from the Internet Society. "Over the last few years, rising interest in internationalized domain names has been accompanied by interest in using those names at the top level and, in particular, replacing or supplementing country-code based domain names with names in the language of the relevant countries. This memo suggests that actually creating such names in the DNS is undesirable from both a user-interface and DNS management standpoint. It then proposes the alternative of translating the names so that every TLD name is available to users in their own languages." more

.eu Domain Name Contract Signed: Registration Could Begin in Six to Nine Months

The long awaited Service Concession Contract to operate the .eu registry was signed yesterday (Oct. 12). Now the European Commission will formally notify ICANN of the selected registry operator allowing official negotiations to commence between EURid and ICANN to have .eu put in the root. According to the press release, registrations could begin in six to nine months... more

Advocating Ratio Model for Deleting Domains

To date, end-users (of all levels of technical ability) who are trying to find a good domain name to establish an online identity have been endlessly frustrated by the lack of a method to fairly re-allocate "used" domain names. A full resolution to that problem is a separate (and much bigger) discussion... more

Thoughts About “Protection Against BIND”

Imagine my surprise upon reading a BBC article which identified ISC BIND as the top security vulnerability to UNIX systems. At ISC, we have striven for a decade to repair BIND's reputation, and by all accounts we have made great progress. "What could this be about," I wondered, as I scanned the BBC article for more details. It turns out that BBC was merely parroting what it had been told by SANS. OK, let's see what SANS has to say... more