Australia’s First Online Census Halted Due to Multiple DDoS Attacks

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports deliberate and "malicious" attacks from offshore, designed to sabotage nation's first online 2016 Census. more

Comment Period for ICANN Accountability Process Enhancement Extended

ICANN made an announcement today stating that in response to ensuring the community has sufficient time, while also having the process in parallel to, and informing, the process to Transition NTIA's Stewardship of the IANA Functions, there is a one week extension of the comment period to 6 June. more

São Paulo Multistakeholder Guidelines: A Blueprint for Inclusive Digital Governance

The São Paulo Multistakeholder Guidelines adopted at last week's NETmundial +10 conference (Sao Paulo, 29-30 April 2024) provide a breath of fresh air in the current digital debates. They untangle quite a few confusions and offer a pragmatic path forward. The NETMundial statement resolves terminological confusion between internet and digital by combining two terms in the phrase 'internet governance and digital policy'. more

SpaceX Starlink Comes to South America

SpaceX has roughly 90,000 Starlink beta test customers in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand and now they have one in South America -- in Sotomó, an isolated town at 41.6° South in Chile's Lake Region. Chile's second terminal will be online at a school in Caleta Sierra in a few days and other pilot locations will follow. Twenty families live in Sotomó and it is only accessible by private boats or subsidized services that navigate the Reloncaví Estuary on which it is located. more

Start of Reiwa Period in Japan Affects Domain Name Industry

There was some buzz about the start of the "Reiwa Era" (????) in Japan. New companies are using Reiwa as part of their names already, and it has implications for the Internet Domain Name industry as well. Here's what we found out... In Japan, the reign of each emperor has its own corresponding era. The current era, Heisei, began when Emperor Akihito ascended the throne on January 8, 1989. With Emperor Akihito set to abdicate the throne to his eldest son Naruhito on April 30, 2019, a new era is about to begin. more

The Reverse Donut

A lot of rural areas are going to get fiber over the next five years. This is due to the various large federal grant programs like ReConnect and RDOF. New rural broadband is also coming from the numerous electric cooperatives that have decided to build broadband in the areas where they serve rural electric customers. This is all great news because once a rural area has fiber it ought to be ready for the rest of this century. more

Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service Rapidly Gaining Acceptance Among Enterprises

Public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings are rapidly gaining acceptance among enterprises as a viable alternative to on-premises hardware for IT infrastructure, According to new IDC study more

Kill the Spreadsheets! Automate VPN IP Assignments and Tracking over MPLS/VRF and vLAN

Advancements in virtual private networking have extended system capabilities for service providers. Providers can divide LANs into multiple discrete segments using either Virtual Local Area Networks (vLANs), leverage Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) or Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) to host Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) that support service operations over multiple instances. more

FCC Touts 6G

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has seemingly joined forces with the marketing arm of the cellular industry in declaring that the spectrum between 7-16 GHz is now considered to be 6G. Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel recently announced that the agency would soon begin looking at the uses for this spectrum for mobile broadband.  more

VoIP’s Threadbare New Clothes

Om has burnt the midnight oil analyzing Vonage's S-1 filing, coming to the conclusion that, while churn may not be as ugly as people thought, it's still cause for concern, and apparently intensifying. His point at the end about definitions is particularly good, as excluding cancellations in the first 30-days is undoubtedly flattering to the numbers. The net present value of Vonage's lifetime customer revenues is an issue which VoIP-watchers have long speculated about with trepidation -- what if marketing spending, churn, and price competition combined to form a toxic soup which fatally poisoned the economic proposition for access-independent VoIP? more

Canadian Government Stepping Up on Internet Surveillance

A Canadian law expected to be introduced next week could greatly assist law enforcement authorities in the country to access date revealing internet-user habits and personal information. Privacy watchdogs caution if the so-called Lawful Access law is passed, it would give police access to webbrowsing history and sensitive personal information, and would grant greater permission to track the cellular phones of suspects -- much of it without the requirement of a warrant. more

.COM About to Hit 100-Million Mark

Although not quite there yet, statistical figures indicate total registration for the .com top-level domain will soon be reaching 100 million by the end of this year. The worlds most popular TLD currently has 98 million registered domains and accounts for 45% of all TLDs. more

FBI Director Warns of Vastly Outnumbered US Cyber Intelligence Staff in Face of Chinese Hackers

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is facing a massive cybersecurity challenge as the U.S. is vastly outnumbered by Chinese hackers, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray. In testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Thursday, Wray urged Congress to provide the FBI with more funds to bolster its cyber intelligence staff. more

Professional Services Are a Safe Bet to Address Staff Shortages

Many organizations today are tightening their belts. They have smaller budgets and fewer resources even though they face an ever-growing list of projects, tasks and corporate IT initiatives to complete. IT departments are hard pressed to streamline operations but don't necessarily have the manpower -- be it resources or specific skillsets -- to add capabilities that will achieve such efficiency. There are only a few possible solutions organizations can consider to address this common problem... more

Pen Testing the US Cyber Strategy

If it's not an era of intense faith in the multilateral system, somewhere among the Trump Administration's anonymous adults in the room there is a believer, and the Internet might be the better for it. Evidence for the existence of this fifth columnist lies in the US National Cyber Strategy, launched last month under the commander-in-chief's unprepossessing signature, which looks to provide security for America's connected economy. more