DNS

ICANN vs EPAG/Tucows: Tucows Releases Statement on What They’re Doing and Why

As I noted over the weekend, ICANN has instigated legal action against EPAG, an ICANN accredited registrar based in Germany that is part of the Tucows group. ICANN claims that the case is to "preserve WHOIS data", but Tucows asserts in their statement that the ICANN approach is flawed. It's not a frivolous statement, but one they've backed with fairly detailed rationale - and this is just their public statement and not a formal legal filing. more

Interview With Michael Froomkin: Watching ICANN Through IETF ? Part II

In the first part of our interview with Michael Froomkin, a Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law and one of the founding members of ICANNWatch, several issues were discussed regarding his recent article in the Harvard Law Review called, "[email protected]: Toward a Critical Theory of Cyberspace".

Michael Froomkin, who has underlined several striking lessons to be learned from IETF/ICANN contrast, continues with us in the second part of this interview, addressing even deeper matters such as ICANN's institutional design. more

The DNS at the IGF

It's unclear what this means in the long run. Do bad actions and actors go undetected? Do we lose our visibility into network management? What is a "secure" network, and how do we secure it using traditional techniques of network perimeter traffic inspection when all the network traffic is opaque? If we can't see inside the DNS anymore, then how can we tell if (or when) the DNS has been captured by one or two digital behemoths? more

Technical Viability of Dotless Domain Names

It was never obvious at the outset of this grand Internet experiment that the one aspect of the network's infrastructure that would truly prove to be the most fascinating, intriguing, painful, lucrative and just plain confusing, would be the Internet's Domain Name System. After all, it all seemed so simple to start with: network applications rendezvous with their counterparts using protocol-level addresses, but we users prefer to use "natural" identifiers that act as aliases for these addresses. more

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. more

NTIA Committed to ICANN Reform

National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has made a long term commitment to taking the actions necessary to reform ICANN. Specifically, the Department of Commerce's Strategic Plan for FY 2004-2009 discusses the need for NTIA to take action to reform ICANN. The Strategic Plan details three Strategic Goals for the Department to achieve over the next five years. The second goal is to "Foster science and technological leadership by protecting intellectual property, enhancing technical standards, and advancing measurement science."  more

GSA Looking Into .gov Outages

"The General Services Administration is analyzing what caused an outage of .gov websites for a few hours Wednesday morning," reports Federal Times. Officials said the problem involved so-called DNSSEC cybersecurity measures that affected access to certain .gov sites, according to GSA spokeswoman Mafara Hobson. more

The Whois Wars Go On

There is a lot of discussion about the Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Phase 2 report on evaluating a System for Standardized Access/Disclosure (SSAD) to non-public gTLD registration data after the decisions taken by the GNSO Council on September 24th. Notably, the Business Constituency (BC) and the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) have voted against the adoption of the Final Report of the EPDP team. more

ISOC Joins Opposition to Stop Online Piracy Act

In a letter released on Monday, the Internet Society Board of Trustees has expressed concern with a number of U.S. legislative proposals that would mandate DNS blocking and filtering by ISPs to protect the interests of copyright holders. "Policies mandating DNS filtering undermine the open architecture of the Internet and raise human rights and freedom of expression concerns," says Internet Society (ISOC). more

ICANN (TBD): Why is ICANN Always to Blame and What to Do About It

With great anticipation I waited for the most recent Applicant Guidebook version 4 aka DAG4. I was looking forward to seeing gTLD program timeline. Was it possible that ICANN would give us another timeline and be firm with it? And then I saw it. Those 3 letters next to the new October 2010 launch date: tbd. So the date is October 2010 but it is "To Be Determined"? On one hand we have a set date but on the other hand it is yet to be determined. more

Google Rolling Out Its Services Over IPv6

While Google admits that offering its services over IPv6 is still in its infancy, the company today announced the option for accessing Google services over IPv6. Last year, Google started offering Google search over IPv6 on IPv6-only websites like 'ipv6.google.com' requiring IPv6 connection, but other Google products have not been generally available over IPv6, says Google. "That's why we created Google over IPv6." more

ICANN’s “Unelected” Crisis

The leaked release of the European Commission's working papers on the future of Top Level Domains highlights the impending collision between adherents of the present "multistakeholder" ICANN governance model, and an ever longer list of national governments who challenge that model. At the core of the controversy is the question of how ICANN can claim legitimacy in the DNS world when none of its Directors or Officers are elected. Even worse, its only answer, when challenged legally, is that it is responsive to its contract with an agency of the U.S. Government... more

The Resolvers We Use

The Internet's Domain Name System is a modern day miracle. It may not represent the largest database that has ever been built, but nevertheless it's truly massive. And even if it's not the largest database that's ever been built, it's perhaps one of the more intensively used... Given the fragmentation of the IPv4 address space with the widespread use of various forms of address sharing, then it increasingly looks as if the DNS is the only remaining common glue that binds the Internet together as a single network. more

Beyond the Top Level: DNSSEC Deployment at ICANN 40

I recently wrote about the encouraging level of DNSSEC adoption among top-level domain name registries, and noted that adoption at the second level and in applications is an important next step for adding more security to the DNS. The root and approximately 20 percent of the top level domains are now signed; it is time for registrars and recursive DNS servers operated by the ISPs to occupy center stage. more

.Mobi Premium Name Auction Off to Wild Success at TRAFFIC in Miami

I'm in attendance at the the TRAFFIC EAST 2006 show, in Hollywood [Miami], Florida. There has been a lot of buzz here about the .Mobi top level domain, ranging from the talk of early registrants hoping to create the next big mobile portal to those that were keen to see implementations of mobile content. There was a domain name auction this evening where flowers.mobi sold for $200,000.00 (USD), and fun.mobi for $100,000.00 (USD) from a long list of domain names in the com, net, info, org, us and mobi extensions. more