A Made Up Fantasy and the ICANN gTLD Reality

Gary Elliot, chairman of the Association of National Advertisers and vice president of global marketing at Hewlett-Packard, wrote a column in Advertising Age titled "ICANN's Promises Aren't Simply Speculation, They're Outright Fantasy." His arguments opposing ICANN gTLDs are similar to the other heads of various advertising associations around the world. While the main powerbrokers of the global advertising sector are mum, their association heads are using the same circulated message of cyber-squatting fears without any solid proof. Here is my analysis and an open challenge to the trade. more

Will the ICANN Auctions Kill off New gTLD Innovation?

As the launch of the first of the new gTLDs draws ever closer, more and more applicants are beginning to publicise their business models and ideas for putting the Domain Name System (DNS) to good use. By doing so, they are also shedding light on what promises to be a far less uniform Top Level for the Internet than might have previously been feared. A schism is appearing in the type of applicant/TLD model being enacted. Up until now, Donuts, Google et al have tended to hold the spotlight, and for good reason. more

ICANN 35: What’s Going Down, Down Under (Want the Low Down?)

As I've been getting ready to catch my plane for ICANN 35 (Sydney), I can't help but thinking that there are a lot of things going down these days that will dramatically affect makeup of the Internet for years to come. Next year at this time, the root could be a very, very different place. A few of the items that will be getting deconstructed, discussed, debated Down Under are outlined below... more

ICANN Should Pay Even More and Increase Its Spending Several Fold

Where does this idea that the employees of all non-profit organizations alike shall lead a public-transportation lifestyle come from? ICANN's monetary resources do not come from war widows and pensioners, for ICANN to feel guilty about every penny that it spends on administration. Nor does its resources, wherever they come from, are any that are earmarked to be spent on famine relief or on basic health care for the most unfortunate. more

What’s Going on at ICANN in Cairo

Following up on the big decision at the Paris ICANN meeting in June to make new Top-Level Domains available, there's lots of activity at the ICANN conference in Cairo, Egypt this week. A few of the hot topics of discussion that we are following are the applications process for new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs), Registry/Registrar Cross Ownership, and restructuring of the ICANN Board. more

Google Wave: Good News or Bad News for Carriers?

The recent launch of Google Wave generated a lot of attention, and for good reason. It's recently crossed my path in a few different settings, and while the news is still fresh, there is a lot here for service providers to be thinking about. At a high level, Wave is Google's entry into the real time collaboration space, and being Web-based, is poised to disrupt the status quo, not just for vendors, but service providers as well. more

A Short History of DNS Over HTTP (So Far)

The IETF is in the midst of a vigorous debate about DNS over HTTP or DNS over HTTPS, abbreviated as DoH. How did we get there, and where do we go from here? (This is somewhat simplified, but I think the essential chronology is right.) Javascript code running in a web browser can't do DNS lookups, other than with browser.dns.resolv() to fetch an A record, or implicitly by fetching a URL which looks up a DNS A or AAAA record for the domain in the URL. more

Toughest State-Level Net Neutrality Bill in the US Approved by California Senate

The California Senate on Friday voted to approve the toughest state-level net neutrality bill in the U.S. and now with both legislative houses having approved the bill, California Governor Jerry Brown has until September 30 to sign it into law. more

The Economy, Not Surveillance or Weapons Systems, Is the Real Source of National Security

The worldwide public discussion about surveillance produced by the Snowden revelations has so far largely missed a major strategic fault with national security arguments for continued mass surveillance: that economic damage to the technology sector but more fundamentally to the wider economy is a likely result. This damage is also likely to undermine security far more than any potential gains from continuing as we are - or continuing but with some transparency or narrowing that leaves the existing industrial scale surveillance system largely unchecked. more

Google Drops Out of Pentagon’s $10B Cloud Competition, Says Deal May Clash With Its AI Values

Alphabet Inc.'s Google has announced that it will not compete for the Pentagon's cloud-computing contract with an estimated value of $10 billion; says the project may conflict with its corporate values on artificial intelligence. more

New gTLD Brand Congress Emphasizes Consumers and Innovation

The New gTLD Brand Congress held earlier this week in New York provided terrific insight into how brands and New gTLD businesses are approaching the space. We saw evidence of forward movement and decision making. Here are some of the main takeaways from the event. more

This Is Not Your Father’s Traceroute Tool

Traceroute is a network tool that helps determine the path packets take as they travel from one location to another, identifying all of the "hops" along the way. I wonder why they are called hops*? Almost all operating systems have traceroute utilities built in. The command is just that "traceroute", Windows systems abbreviate the command as "tracert" to deal with the 8.3 file naming convention of old... So, let's look at what information traceroute gives you. more

Lessons from Egypt: We Need to Protect Our Connected Minds

We need to protect the power that allows us to connect our collective intelligence, as described a few weeks ago in my blog on connected minds. I argued that in order to address some of our global challenges we have to start looking at a radically new way to address them. The events in Egypt brought home the fact that if it comes to the crunch any government can disconnect us simply by bringing the Internet and other communications systems down at will... more

A Three Minute Guide to Network Automation Bliss

The cloud computing paradigm has been making steady progress in 2016. With the DevOps model making its way from cloud to networking, the business upside of fully automated service architectures is finally beginning to materialize. The associated service agility is expected to unleash new business models that transform the ways in which applications and connectivity can be consumed. more

2012: The Year of the New gTLD Program and the Year to Support ICANN - Part II

As we go into 2012, I am encouraged that there are many, including top officials and leaders in Washington DC, who believe in ICANN's leadership of the multi-stakeholder model, and that the organization should be allowed to successfully midwife the new gTLD program. The Honorable Senator John 'Jay' Rockefeller for example was reported in the ICANN Blog as giving his full support: "I think we have to get used to dot-hotels. I think we have to get used to dot-auto." more