US Justice Department and FBI Dismantle Long-Running Russian State-Sponsored Cyber-Espionage Operation Targeting NATO

The United States Department of Justice has announced that it has neutralized a global network of computers compromised by malware called "Snake," which the U.S. government attributes to a unit within Center 16 of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). more

Be Agile or Be Edged Out: “Live” from TM Forum 2017

I like a conference that's "Live". Not just a lively crowd coalescing together to passionately discuss and debate matters of common interests, but more so in the sense of physical presence: things you can feel and touch. In the case of the TM Forum Live! 2017 event, held last week at Nice, France, it's the Catalyst Pavilions where innovative solutions, best practices, and even exploratory experimentations were on full display. Do I mean that for an IT Operation Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS) trade show, you can touch it? Yep. more

Domain Abuse: Are We Speaking the Same Language?

For those of us in the domain name industry, it's clear that security threats and the way we track, report, and mitigate them has been a topic of increased discussion and focus in recent months. As we prepare to come together as a community again at the next ICANN public meeting in Marrakech, many of us will look to continue these conversations, as there is no doubt it is a topic of importance, relevance and urgency for our community at this time. more

The TLD Operator Webinar Transitions to the DNA University

Readers of my posts will have noticed that we've been working over the last two months to launch the TLD Operator Webinar which was held recently. Its purpose was to unite all new TLD applicants and collectively share our experiences in order to build momentum in the industry and support each other in our pursuits. With more than 300 registrations and 40 percent of all new TLDs attending, we were humbled and overjoyed with the success -- validating our 'educated guess' that there was a global appetite for information to assist new TLD applicants. more

Domain Name Registries and Registrars: The New Digital Trust and Safety Wardens in Bluesky

Just recently, Bluesky -- the decentralized social network running on an open protocol called AT Protocol -- announced that as a mechanism for supporting its business financially, it will directly sell domain names as handles for its users. The sales will be processed through an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) accredited registrar, called Namecheap. Currently, the handles on social media platforms are internal handles and not independent domain names. more

Quantifying the Benefits of Fiber

Dr. Bento J. Lobo, an economist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga undertook a study to quantify the benefits of the municipally-owned fiber network in Chattanooga. Any citywide fiber network brings economic development to a community, but a municipally-owned system brings additional benefits because of the way that the business is more deeply integrated into the community. more

Lessons from Sandy: Building Networks and Cyber-Infrastructure to Survive Climate Change

Hurricane Sandy has been a badly needed wake up call for the Internet community as to the threat of climate change. Although most people have forgotten, Sandy is the second hurricane to hit New York in as many years with Irene last August and a third tropical depression headed to New York at the time of this writing. Two, supposedly once in a hundred year storms, within such a short time frame should even make the most die-hard denialist that something's afoot. more

Rebalancing Telco Infrastructure Investments

One of the reasons telecommunications has been so successful for more than 160 years is that it adopted a strategy that resulted in a seamless network all around the world. You can pick up a phone anywhere in the world and, with little or no instruction, make a call to anybody else in the world without worrying what phones and technology they are using on the other end of the line... But during that process the nature of the network operators changed. more

Ensuring Last Minute GAC Safeguards

In light of some changes contained in the most recent Applicant Guidebook as well as some of the proposed contractual provisions contained in the recent IANA Statement of Work, there is a potential growing justification to make some necessary last minute changes to the legal terms and conditions contained in Module 6 of the Applicant Guidebook. Specifically, the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and its individual members have a clearly defined role in the new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) process... more

Google’s Simple Home Page Now Patented

Ryan Tate of Valleywag writes: "After a five-and-a-half-year fight, Google and its attorneys have managed to convince federal bureaucrats to bestow a patent on the company's iconic home page. We always thought the page was brain-dead simple, but apparently it's an innovative 'graphical user interface. ...In other words, subject to how the patent is enforced, Google owns the idea of having a giant search box in the middle of the page, with two big buttons underneath and several small links nearby." more

Spanish Joint-Network Investment in FttH Seeing Returns

Spain's economic anguish has had a number of repercussions for the country's telcos, with stable or declining revenue causing much nervousness as operators struggle to fund essential investment in spectrum and both fixed-line and mobile networks. Earlier this year Vodafone felt the pinch, announcing plans to cut its Spanish workforce by up to 1,000. Though general economic conditions have not helped, the move partly resulted from its own decisions. The company saw revenue drop for several quarters and so decided to save money by cutting handset subsidies. more

Extending the JPA is the Right Thing to Do

Internet governance is getting a thorough look under the hood, thanks to the National Telecommunication and Information Administration. NTIA recently concluded its public comment period under a Notice of Inquiry (NOI), which asked for public comments regarding the future of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between the Department of Commerce and ICANN. At its core, the NOI asks whether the White Paper's original vision of privatizing the technical coordination and management of the Internet is working. For reasons I will explain, it would be deeply unwise for NTIA to terminate the JPA just yet. more

A Root Server With a View…

Running a DNS server that serves the root gives an interesting view into the world of the DNS. With the ongoing improvements to the ICANN operated L-ROOT, we've been fortunate enough to be able to make use of the "DNS Statistics Collector" (DSC) tool. "DSC" allows us to generate different views of the DNS queries we have been seeing at the L-ROOT systems. more

Domain Name Disputes Doubled Since 2003, Origin of Most Cases in US

Domain name disputes have been on steady rise for the past several years and have more than doubled since 2003. As reported today by Pingdom, while there was a period between 2000 and 2003 when the number of domain dispute cases declined, they have been continuously increased since 2003 with most cases involving more than one domain name. more

Government-Directed Internet Shutdowns and Fiber Cuts Continue in 2019 Impacting Various Countries

Internet disruptions observed in 2018 as a result of government shutdowns, cable problems, power outages, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have already seeped into 2019. more