According to new data from TeleGeography research group, international Internet traffic grew 53% between mid-2007 and mid-2008, down from 61% the preceding year. Traffic growth between the US and Latin America was especially fast, surging 112%. In contrast, traffic on internet backbones between major cities in the relatively more mature US market rose a modest 47%. For the second consecutive year, according to the study, total international Internet capacity grew faster than total Internet traffic, leading to lower utilization levels on many internet backbones. Between 2007 and 2008, average traffic utilization levels decreased from 31% to 29%... more
The IGF-USA 2014 will take place on July 16th, 2014 at George Washington University in Washington, DC. The complete agenda has now been published and registration is open. more
Google has received over 1,100 community requests in response to their up coming experimental, "ultra high-speed broadband networks," according to the company. Google plans to announce their target communities by the end of the year. "Of course, we're not going to be able to build in every interested community -- our plan is to reach a total of at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people with this experiment," says Google's Product Manager, James Kelly, in a blog post. more
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a new site to keep track of 'Terms of Service' for major websites such as Google, Facebook, eBay and others. The new website called TOSBack has been created to help users easily find privacy policies of various websites and to alert them when those policies are changed. "Some changes to terms of service are good for consumers, and some are bad," says EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "But Internet users are increasingly trusting websites with everything from their photos to their 'friends lists' to their calendar -- and sometimes even their medical information. TOSBack will help consumers flag changes in the websites they use every day and trust with their personal information." more
Web security company, ScanSafe reports that, in the past quarter, companies in the Energy industry faced the greatest risk of Web-based malware exposure, at a 196% heightened risk compared to other verticals. The Pharmaceutical and Chemicals industry faced the second highest risk of exposure at 192% followed by the Construction & Engineering industry at 150%. The Media and Publishing industry were also among those at highest risk, with a 129% heightened risk compared to other verticals. more
In the high-stakes world of internet domains, .eco was a dream green prize -- and is now finally going online, Lisa Johnson reporting in CBC News. more
The Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms - a global Panel of stakeholders from various organizations and governments - today released key recommendations on how to evolve the Internet governance (IG) ecosystem to accommodate global needs for collaboration, interconnectivity and Internet growth. The report also presents a roadmap and timeline for the future management of the Internet. more
Millions of households in UK will be paying a "broadband tax" in order to fund increase and improvement of broadband access in the country according to the Digital Britain white paper launched yesterday. BBC today reports: "One of the biggest surprises in the Digital Britain report was the news that everyone with a fixed line telephone would pay a broadband tax. At 50p a month the amount is unlikely to break the bank but experts are already questioning what it will buy." more
The White House will not publicly support a controversial bill that would give law enforcement guaranteed access to encrypted data, according to reports. more
According to reports today, hackers have attacked Palestinian servers, cutting off phone and Internet service across the West Bank and Gaza. Foreign governments are accused to be behind the attack. "Since this morning all Palestinian IP addresses have come under attack from places across the world," said the Palestinian communications minister today. Reneys reports these outages are the largest observed all year for this country, which normally has a fairly stable Internet. more
The .ORG Stewardship Council is, in a lot of ways, a natural progression or evolution from our current PIR Advisory Council. The Advisory Council is made up of independent .ORG community members from around the world that provide advice to PIR on policy issues affecting them. The "AC," or the Advisory Council, has been a key part of PIR's work since its inception. more
It's sometimes easy to forget that the broadband business is just over twenty-five years old. The telephone companies had a monopoly on copper-based technologies until Congress passed the Telecommunication Act of 1996, which forced the big telephone companies to allow competition for copper-based broadband services. more
In part one of this post we introduced the cyber response curve. In this post, we have outlined some observations which illustrate how different level of maturity and approaches can affect your cyber response curve. more
Over at Krebs on Secrity blog, Brian Krebs reports: "Purveyors of fake anti-virus or 'scareware' programs have aggressively stepped up their game to evade detection by legitimate anti-virus programs, according to new data from Google. In a report being released today, Google said that between January 2009 and the end of January 2010, its malware detection infrastructure found some 11,000 malicious or hacked Web pages that attempted to foist fake anti-virus on visitors." more
The controversial Chinese cybersecurity law that has been sparking objections amongst foreign governments and business groups reached a step closer to approval today as parliament held the third reading of the draft bill. more