DNS

Good is Better than Perfect in ICANN Accountability

In the next few months, ICANN will have a concrete opportunity to improve its accountability and transparency by enacting the recommendations of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT). Those recommendations may not be perfect, but if the history of the ICANN process is any indication, we can't afford to let the perfect be the enemy of the very good. more

A Closed And Secret Process Is Not The Answer To Reform

The recent meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in China demonstrates a serious dilemma for Internet users around the world. In the name of reforming ICANN and making it more responsive, ICANN ended the seats of the At-Large directors on its board. This was the part of the ICANN structure that was supposed to be responsive to Internet users. more

CIRA’s Second Public Letter to ICANN

Readers of my blog may recall that the Canadian Internet Registration Authority wrote a public letter earlier this year to ICANN that expressed concern over the current lack of accountability (note that I am on the CIRA board). The letter indicated that CIRA was withholding payment of any voluntary fees to ICANN until the accountability concerns were addressed. This week CIRA followed up with a second public letter to ICANN... more

Taking a Closer Look at the Recent DDoS Attacks and What it Means for the DNS

The recent attacks on the DNS infrastructure operated by Dyn in October 2016 have generated a lot of comment in recent days. Indeed, it's not often that the DNS itself has been prominent in the mainstream of news commentary, and in some ways, this DNS DDOS prominence is for all the wrong reasons! I'd like to speculate a bit on what this attack means for the DNS and what we could do to mitigate the recurrence of such attacks. more

Supporting New DNS RR Types with dnsextlang, Part I

The Domain Name System has always been intended to be extensible. The original spec in the 1980s had about a dozen resource record types (RRTYPEs), and since then people have invented many more so now there are about 65 different RRTYPEs. But if you look at most DNS zones, you'll only see a handful of types, NS, A, AAAA, MX, TXT, and maybe SRV. Why? A lot of the other types are arcane or obsolete, but there are plenty that are useful. more

Deploying DNSSEC: Lessons from Domain Registrar Implementation

As a registrar at the front end of the DNSSEC deployment effort, our technical team has made a sustained investment in DNSSEC deployment so that our customers don't get overwhelmed by this wave of changes to the core infrastructure of the Domain Name System. Along the way, we've learnt a lot about how to implement DNSSEC which might hold useful lessons for other organizations that plan to deploy DNSSEC in their networks. more

In Congress, A Confusing Argument Against New TLDs

In a recent post to CircleID entitled New Domains and ICANN Accountability, Steve DelBianco paints himself as "frustrated" that ICANN didn't take a different path toward new Top-Level Domains (TLDs). Mr. DelBianco was one of four witnesses at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts and Competition on September 23, 2009. He is a creative advocate for his clients, an engaging speaker, and a skillful writer, and he produced a synopsis of the hearing which sounded convincing -- until I tried to make sense of it. more

One Billion Internet Users

Last week ICANN took another very significant step forward in the expansion of the internet by approving the delegation of a number of Chinese script IDN ccTLDs. Although we have all heard statements that portray the introduction of IDN ccTLDs as being perhaps the single most important factor in the achievement of ICANN's "One World, One Internet" vision, we should take a moment to appreciate the true significance of this latest round of IDN ccTLD approvals. more

Nominations Open for 2024 Public Interest Registry (PIR) Board of Directors

Are you interested in helping guide the future of the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit operator of the .ORG, .NGO and .ONG domains? (and more) Or do you know of someone who would be a good candidate? If so, the Internet Society is seeking nominations for two positions on the PIR Board of Directors. The nomination deadline is 31 January 2024. more

Extreme Vulnerability at the Edge of the Internet - A Fresh New Universal Human-Rights Problem

By design, the Internet core is stupid, and the edge is smart. This design decision has enabled the Internet's wildcat growth, since without complexity the core can grow at the speed of demand. On the downside, the decision to put all smartness at the edge means we're at the mercy of scale when it comes to the quality of the Internet's aggregate traffic load. Not all device and software builders have the skills - and the quality assurance budgets - that something the size of the Internet deserves. more

Breaking the Internet’s Consensus Rule

The Internet, ultimately, is a fragile thing, as an entity. It depends upon the consensus of those responsible for its infrastructure to operate on a daily basis. Because of the inherent robustness as a technical architecture, there is no entity that can "break the Internet" in the sense of stopping the flow of traffic, but there are several entities that can create a variety of inconveniences, some minor and some serious, for the millions who use the Internet. more

House Committees Taking Aim at IANA Transition Proposal

In an unanticipated move a third Committee of the US House of Representatives has weighed in with concerns regarding the NTIA's proposed transition of the US role as counterparty to ICANN's IANA functions contract to one with the "global multistakeholder community". On May 13th the House Armed Services Committee Report for HR 4435, the Defense Authorization bill, was released. more

Internet Society’s New Policy Brief Series Provides Concise Information On Critical Internet Issues

Have you ever wanted to quickly find out information on key Internet policy issues from an Internet Society perspective? Have you wished you could more easily understand topics such as net neutrality or Internet privacy? This year, the Internet Society has taken on a number of initiatives to help fill a need identified by our community to make Internet Governance easier to understand and to have more information available that can be used to inform policymakers and other stakeholders about key Internet issues. more

The Promise of Multi-Signer DNSSEC

DNSSEC is increasingly adopted by organizations to protect DNS data and prevent DNS attacks like DNS spoofing and DNS cache poisoning. At the same time, more DNS deployments are using proprietary DNS features like geo-routing or load balancing, which require special configuration to support using DNSSEC. When these requirements intersect with multiple DNS providers, the system breaks down. more

Asia Pac Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress to Be Held in Hong Kong on May 14-15

The Asia Pac Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress for first and prospective second round applicants will be held in Hong Kong and timed to take place in conjunction with the International Trademark Associations' (INTA) 136 Annual Conference at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) starting on May 10. more