DNS

dot Brands Need to Look Under the Hood Before Partnering

As the countdown for the ICANN gTLD program ticks away its final 100 days, potential dot Brand applicants have to make important decisions in a short space of time: whether to apply for a new TLD, how to best leverage a new top-level domain, and which gTLD partner to choose. Most dot Brand applicants have excellent IT departments, but these resources are already over-stretched with current projects, and they likely lack the specific skills and experience needed to meet ICANN's exacting standards in the highly specialized area of top-level domain registry technology.

New TLD Applicants: Read This Before Selecting a Registry Provider

As each day passes, I spend more time immersing myself with prospective clients who are weighing up our offering over those of alternative providers. The more I become entrenched in this competitive process, the more it becomes increasingly clear that many of the competing RSPs pitching their wares to hopeful applicants are misleading them by hiding critically important information in fine print disclaimers or feeding them rubbish in order to whittle down the competition. Competition is a great thing; it just needs to be on the same playing field. Make sure you are comparing apples with apples.

Innovating with New gTLDs

One of the primary purposes of the ICANN New generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program is to foster innovation in the DNS industry and the wider Internet. While having a desirable TLD string that users can relate to is a good starting point, gTLD applicants may want to bolster their value propositions by offering innovative services and differentiate their TLDs from others. Defining the services to be offered is so central to a gTLD that it should be part of the initial strategy of any prospective applicant.

DDoS Attacks: What’s in Store for 2012?

According to Kaspersky Lab, 2011 has seen "numerous DDoS attacks with a variety of motives," many of which will "go down in the annals of cybercrime." As we look ahead to 2012, it's worth examining some of those motives to see what they portend.

Why Brands Need Their Own TLD - The Mulberry-Sale Site that Scammed Me

As a seasoned internet user, even an old 'Domainer', I was there when ICANN launched the first round of New TLDs. I remember the criticism we received from the media back then. We were invited to countless roundtable discussions, press conferences, and local internet events at which we were expected to answer the key media question: "Why are new TLDs necessary?" Dot BIZ, .INFO, and four more were the test bed new TLDs -- I represented .BIZ in EMEA.

Protecting Intellectual Property is Good; Mandatory DNS Filtering is Bad

It has been about six months since I got together with four of my friends from the DNS world and we co-authored a white paper which explains the technical problems with mandated DNS filtering. The legislation we were responding to was S. 968, also called the PROTECT-IP act, which was introduced this year in the U. S. Senate. By all accounts we can expect a similar U. S. House of Representatives bill soon, so we've written a letter to both the House and Senate, renewing and updating our concerns.

Bringing Order to The World’s Cybrary: New TLDs Make Sense to Organize the Chaos of the Internet

There has been considerable debate on whether the Internet needs new Top Level Domains. Advertising advocacy groups have objected to the expense of re-investment in online branding. There's a lot of work involved in telling the world .BEYONCE is where you will now find all official Beyonce related information. I'm wondering, why would anyone object to some order being applied to the internet?

Neustar Professional Services: Additional Expertise to Improve Productivity

While it would be nice if your company had IT staff members that were experts in every technology, that is just not realistic. And today, many companies face the challenge of finding the appropriate and specialized expertise that is required to deal with ongoing issues such as network optimization, performance degradations, network risks, and more.

The Human Factor in DDoS Attacks

Ripped from the headlines: A recent DDoS attack lasted an entire 60 days. In other news, a single site was attacked 218 times in Q2 alone. To those of us in the business of protecting Web infrastructure, these stories are hardly surprising. What's notable, though, is where they were reported, in The Financial, whose focus is banking and financial services, not technology. The reporters used the term "DDoS" as if it were as common as "hedge fund," something everyday business people, not just techies, grasp. It's this human element that caught my interest and got me thinking a little.

Recent Industry Changes: Internet Standards, ARIN WHOIS Changes, Hotmail Postmaster Pages

Signing Email is now a Draft Standard! Signing email transitioned from a proposed standard to a draft standard (RFC6376 -- one of the new RFCs) over at the IETF a few days ago. The other is RFC6377. Let's go through a brief history of DKIM RFCs to refresh our memories...