Internet Governance

The Kaljarund Commission: Building Bridges Over Troubled Cyber-Water

There was one message which overshadowed all discussions at the 5th Global Conference on Cyber Space (GCCS) in New Delhi in November 2017: Instability in cyberspace is as dangerous as climate change. With four billion Internet users and five trillion dollars annually in digital transactions, instability in cyberspace has the potential to ruin the world. more

ARIN Takes Steps Toward Greater Diversity

For some time, the board of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) has expressed a desire to have greater diversity across its leadership structures. Finally, steps are being taken to have representation that better reflects the diversity of the ARIN community... since ARIN was founded on April 18, 1997, two of its main oversight structures -- the Board of Trustees and Advisory Council -- have only been populated with persons from North America. At last, that changes. more

Internet Religious Wars: Net Neutrality Episode

Turning network technical protocols into religion seems like an inherently bad idea -- transient and unstable at best. However, it happens. More than 40 years ago, the world of legacy telecommunications and network design formalism started the tendency with OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) and ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Networks). A few years later, the academic research community did it with their myriad host-to-host datagram protocols -- eventually calling one "the Internet." more

The FCC is Taking the Right Step

Today's announcement from the Commission that it intends to roll back the exercise of Title II utility-style regulation over "any person engaged in the provision of broadband internet access service" at its 14 December meeting is the right step. As a veteran of 40 years of internet related regulatory wars in the FCC and numerous other venues, the Commission's decision and the actual Rules promulgated in the February 2015 Report & Order stand among the most ill-considered application of authority and regulatory gerrymandering ever witnessed. more

Could SNET Become Cuba’s Guifi.net?

In an earlier post, I described Havana's community network, SNET, and wondered what it could become if the government and ETECSA were willing to legitimatize and support it. Spain's Guifi.net provides a possible answer to that question. Guifi.net is said to be the largest community network in the world. It began in 2004 and has grown to have 34,165 nodes online with 16,758 planned, 407 building, 612 testing and 4,043 inactive. more

Transparency: The Internet’s Only Currency

I don't know about you, but I am angry. I am angry with the state of the world and our incapacity to do something about it. I am angrier because, in all this, I thought that the Internet would be the place where we would see collective action at its best. But, that's not going to happen. At least, anytime soon. Is it time to admit that the Internet has turned toxic? No. But, it is time to ask ourselves the question... more

Your Online Freedoms are Under Threat - 2017 Freedom on the Net Report

As more people get online every day, Internet Freedom is facing a global decline for the 7th year in a row. Today, Freedom House released their 2017 Freedom on the Net report, one of the most comprehensive assessments of countries' performance regarding online freedoms. The Internet Society is one of the supporters of this report. We think it brings solid and needed evidence-based data in an area that fundamentally impacts user trust. more

Weaponizing the Internet Using the “End-to-end Principle” Myth

At the outset of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 100th meeting, a decidedly non-technical initial "Guide for human rights protocol considerations" was just published. Although the IETF has always remained true to its DARPA origins as a tool for developing disruptive new technical ideas, it launches into bizarre territory when dealing with non-technical matters. more

Data on Cuba’s SNET and a Few Suggestions for ETECSA

I've written several posts on Cuba's user-deployed street networks (SNET), the largest of which is SNET in Havana. (SNET was originally built by the gaming community, but the range of services has grown substantially). My posts and journalist's accounts like this one describe SNET, but a new paper presents SNET measurement data as well as descriptive material. more

Internet Hall of Fame Inductees Gather at GNTC to Discuss New Generation of Internet Infrastructure

Confronted with the rapid development of the Internet, the traditional network is facing severe challenges. Therefore, it is imperative to accelerate the construction of global network infrastructure and build a new generation of Internet infrastructure to adapt to the Internet of Everything and the intelligent society. From November 28 to 30, 2017, "GNTC 2017 Global Network Technology Conference" organized by BII Group and CFIEC, will see a grand opening in Beijing. more