Italy’s Earthquake Rescuers Ask Locals to Unlock Their Wi-fi to Assit in Search and Rescue

The Italian Red Cross says residents' home networks can assist with communications during the search for survivors following Wednesday's 6.2 magnitude earthquake which struck central Italy killing over 240 people. more

ICANN Announces Newly Created Organization to Replace IANA

ICANN has announced the name of the newly incorporated organization, Public Technical Identifiers (PTI), as a nonprofit entity to begin operation as 'Post-Transition IANA'. more

IANA Transition Under Further Attack, Now Officially Blocked by Republican Policy

"Handover of US internet control to ICANN now officially blocked by Republican policy," Kieren McCarthy reporting today in The Register: "The planned transition of the internet's critical technical functions from the US government to a technical body may come under further attack after the Republican Party officially agreed to block it on Monday. more

Tough Choices Two Years In

At the start of my term as New TLD Applicant Group (NTAG) Chair, I wrote about the importance of the 50th ICANN meeting for applicants. The meeting is significant, not only as a milestone for ICANN, but also because it marks two years since ICANN began processing new gTLD applications. Two years in, the program is at an inflection point. The final initial evaluation result was published two weeks ago and the first ICANN auction will take place this week. more

Russian Lawmakers Pass Bill to Expand Government Control Over Internet, Protests Expected to Ensue

Russian lawmakers on Thursday passed a bill to expand further government control of the internet proclaimed by backers of the bill to be a defensive measure against internet disruptions by hostile nations. more

Fifth Applicant Auction Concluded, 28 Contention Sets Resolved

After the successful conclusion of our fifth auction last week, the Applicant Auction has now resolved contention for a total of 28 strings. More than 20 gTLD applicants have participated in our auctions, ranging from many smaller companies with only one gTLD application in contention to large, publicly traded portfolio applicants like TLDH and Demand Media. more

eco and AV-Test Publish Monthly topDNS Reports for Internet Service Providers

eco's topDNS initiative and AV-Test are publishing monthly reports to help ISPs detect and mitigate DNS abuse by analysing malware, phishing, and PUA trends, creating a long-term data foundation for industry-wide transparency. more

FCC Declines Emergency Briefing Request Concerning Location Data Collection

U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai declined a top House Democrat's request for an emergency briefing on the wireless industry's data collection practices amid troubling reports about the availability of real-time location information, reports Harper Neidig in The Hill. more

May 13 Deadline to Nominate People for 2022 Jonathan B. Postel Service Award

Do you know someone who has made outstanding contributions in service to the Internet community? Someone who has made the Internet better in some way who deserves more recognition? Maybe someone who has helped extend Internet access to a large region? Or wrote widely-used programs that make the Internet more secure? Or served in some capacity behind the scenes in Internet services? more

Brazil to Host Internet Governance Summit

Amidst reports of US, British and Canadian spying on the Latin American nation, Brazil has announced that it will host a global summit on Internet governance in April. President Dilma Rousseff made the announcement after a discussion in Brasilia with Fadi Chehadé, ICANN's CEO. Chehade heaped praise on Rousseff for using her UN General Assembly speech in September to demand measures to thwart the massive US cyber spying operation revealed by US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden. The summit will take place in Rio de Janeiro. more

DDoS Mitigation: A Blend of Art and Science

As DDoS attacks become larger, more frequent and complex, being able to stop them is a must. While doing this is part science, a matter of deploying technology, there is also an art to repelling sophisticated attacks. Arbor Networks, Citrix and others make great gear, but there's no magic box that will solve all your problems for you. Human expertise will always be a crucial ingredient. more

ICANN Website Breached, Passwords Obtained by an Unauthorized Person

Usernames/email addresses and encrypted passwords for profile accounts created on the ICANN.org public website have been obtained by an unauthorized person, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers announced Wednesday night. more

ICANN Getting More Control Could Mean Major Reform

Kieren McCarthy reporting in the Register: "Domain name overseer ICANN is likely to go through a radical reorganization if it wants to be given more control of critical internet functions, currently run under contract from the US government. Two recent papers -- one from independent legal experts hired by a group looking into the contract's transitioning, and a second from an internet governance think-tank -- have both highlighted the benefit to making ICANN a true member-led organization, with the internet community given real powers to effect change." more

A Mature Broadband Market? (Implications and Industry Shifts)

It is becoming clear that the broadband market is reaching maturity. This is already causing havoc in the industry for ISPs that relied on year-over-year customer growth to prop up stock prices. Earlier this year, the New Street Research, a company that specializes in research in the telecommunications and technology sectors, said that it estimated that new broadband customers would grow by about 1 million this year. more

Performance Test White Paper for SDN Controller Issued

Recently, BII-Global SDN Certified Testing Center (SDNCTC EN | CH) issued the Performance Test White Paper for SDN Controller (hereinafter Whitepaper) at China Future Network and Development Innovation Forum, which truly fills the vacuum in SDN controller performance testing at home. It, by means of elaborate results from the open-source controller tests, provides reliable analysis report to all corners within the industry, which has been highly thought of and widely supported by experts both at home and broad. more