UK Ponders Net Neutrality, Overstating Broadband Competition

The recent declaration from the UK’s minister for communications that the Internet should be tiered, thereby allowing ISPs to charge for prioritised traffic (either rated by speed delivered or by content provider) is a knee-jerk response to network strain masking as a necessary network management tool, and is a potential threat to the concept of net neutrality. ...developments in the mobile data sector make it clear that capacity constraints are appearing on mobile networks as well, long before the anticipated launch of LTE-based services in the UK in 2013. more

The Cuba Internet Task Force - a Win for Trump and Castro

President Obama began working on Cuban rapprochement during his 2009 presidential campaign. After over five years of thought and negotiation, the Whitehouse announced a major shift in Cuba policy, which included allowing telecommunications providers "to establish the necessary mechanisms, including infrastructure, in Cuba to provide commercial telecommunications and Internet services, which will improve telecommunications between the United States and Cuba." more

New Paper Proposes ‘Attested DNS’ to Secure Domain Names with Trusted Hardware

Azure researchers propose attested DNS, a system that embeds confidential computing into the internet's naming infrastructure. By binding domain names to trusted hardware and software, it enhances service verification while maintaining compatibility with existing web technologies. more

A Great Bit of DNSSEC and DNS at IETF 90 Next Week

For those people tracking the evolution and deployment of DNSSEC or who are just interested in "DNS security" in general there is a great amount of activity happening next week at IETF 90 in Toronto. I dove into this activity in great detail in a recent post, "Rough Guide to IETF 90: DNSSEC, DANE and DNS Security", and summarized the activity in a Deploy360 post... more

Muzzled by the United Nations

The Internet Governance Forum is winding down today in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. There have been a lot of very constructive conversations in workshops and panels over the past four days about how to advance security, privacy, child protection, AND human rights and free expression on the Internet. Unfortunately, the biggest headline coming out of the forum so far has been an incident on Sunday... more

Internet Society Seeks Nominations for 2022 Board of Trustees

Are you passionate about preserving the global, open Internet? Do you have experience in Internet standards, development or public policy? If so, please consider applying for a seat on the Internet Society Board of Trustees. The Internet Society supports and promotes the development of the Internet as a global technical infrastructure, a resource to enrich people’s lives, and a force for good in society. Our work aligns with our goals for the Internet to be open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy. more

Public Interest Registry, ICANN Agree to Extend Deadline on Review of Proposed Acquisition of .ORG

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Public Interest Registry (PIR) today announced that they have mutually agreed to extend ICANN's time to review PIR's submissions to April 20th. more

The First Month of Cuban 3G Mobile Internet Service

ETECSA, Cuba's government monopoly ISP, is offering a number of stopgap Internet services -- navigation rooms, home DSL and WiFi hotspots, but the recently rolled out 3G mobile service is the most important. The plot to the right shows the normalized rate of Cuban domain name requests to Oracle servers during the first full month of operation - a surrogate estimate of Internet traffic volume. more

Astronomical Increases in Domain Names: Low Constancy of Abusive Registrations

When ICANN implemented the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) in 1999, the number of registered domain names were in the low eight digits. Registered domain names passed the first million in 1997. Today, they are in the first third of nine digits, and continuing to grow. In its newly released publication gTLD Marketplace Health Index (Beta) (July 21, 2016) ICANN offers through a couple dozen metrics a picture of the multiple parts that corporately go into making a healthy marketplace. It's "Beta" because the Health Index is a work in progress. more

ICANN’s Accountability and Transparency – a Retrospective on the IANA Transition

As we passed five years since the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition took place, my co-authors and I paused to look back on this pivotal moment; to take stock of what we've learned and to re-examine some of the key events leading up to the transition and how careful planning ensured a successful transfer of IANA responsibilities from the United States Government to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. more

Russian Internet Traffic Redirected Due to Routing Errors by China

Doug Madory, Director of Internet Analysis at Dyn, is reporting that the Russian Internet traffic (including domestic traffic) was re-routed out of the country due to routing errors by China Telecom. more

The Early History of Usenet, Part V: Authentication and Norms

We knew that Usenet needed some sort of management system, and we knew that that would require some sort of authentication, for users, sites, and perhaps posts. We didn't add any, though -- and why we didn't is an interesting story. The obvious solution was something involving public key cryptography, which we (the original developers of the protocol: Tom Truscott, the late Jim Ellis, and myself) knew about: all good geeks at the time had seen Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column... more

New gTLD ‘.shop’ Sells for 41.5 Million at Auction, Highest Sale to Date

GMO Registry, Inc, a Japanese domain name registry business, has won the rights to a single new top-level domain, .shop, for $41.5 million. more

U.S. Court Overrules Attempt to Seize Iran’s, Syria’s and North Korea’s Domains

In a landmark ruling, a U.S. federal court has agreed with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that the country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) are not property subject to attachment and thus overruled an attempt to seize Iran's, Syria's and North Korea's domains as part of a lawsuit against those countries' governments. more

New study: Over Half of French Enterprises Blacklisted

Public blacklists are used on a daily basis by many enterprises in order to curb spam. Frederic Aoun and Bruno Rasle, co-authors of the book "Halte au Spam", unveiled today their latest study on the subject. This contribution is divided in two parts... more