Last Saturday marked the 53rd anniversary of the Internet. While the vast majority of its five billion users have been online for less than a decade, the Internet was taken into use on October 29th, 1969, when two computers connected to the ARPANET exchanged a message. Although the Internet has been around for a while, it remained below most people's radar until the late 1990s when the dot com boom started. more
OARC held its fall meeting in Belgrade on October 22 and 23. Here are my impressions of some of the presentations from that meeting... UI, UX, and the Registry/Registrar Landscape - One of the major reforms introduced by ICANN in the world of DNS name management was the separation of registry and registrar functions. The intent was to introduce competition into the landscape by allowing multiple registries to enter names into a common registry. more
The Internet hints at the much larger possibilities of open connectivity in enabling discoveries such as the web but for the physical world. The ideas themselves go to a deeper level of thinking about how we build systems and how we can enable the future. This post is aimed at people building systems and devices which can be interconnected to create systems and meta-devices. more
It is time to recognize the Internet as a public good - freely available like other basic infrastructures such as roads and sidewalks. In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web by taking advantage of open connectivity available among universities and research institutions. Today we see that same open connectivity within corporations, in our homes, and on university campuses. more
As the name indicates, the Internet of Things (IoT) should be an extension of the Internet. However, in reality, most IoT applications are Siloed infrastructures. We will analyse the main challenges in the IoT and explain how an Internet registry could be evolved to provide a secure and privacy integrated Identity and access management service for IoT. more
There is an interesting battle going on to be the technology that monetizes the control of Internet of Things devices. Like a lot of tech hype, IoT has developed a lot slower than initially predicted -- but it's now finally becoming a big business. I think back to a decade ago when tech prognosticators said we'd soon be living in a virtual cloud of small monitors that would monitor everything in our life. According to those early predictions, our farm fields should already be fully automated, and we should all be living in the smart home envisioned by the Jetsons. more
When did the Internet begin? It all gets a bit hazy after so many years, but by the early 1970s, research work in packet-switched networks was well underway, and while it wasn't running TCP at the time (the flag day when the ARPANET switched over to use TCP was not until 1 January 1983) but there was the base datagram internet protocol running in the early research ARPA network in the US. Given that this is now around 50 years ago, and given that so much has happened in the last 50 years, what does the next 50 years have in store? more
The International Trademark Association's Blockchain Subcommittee is interested in meeting companies working on Blockchain applications related to intellectual property. The Blockchain Subcommittee's mission is to explore the use of blockchain technology in trademark prosecution, maintenance, protection, and practice, including the opportunities and threats to the value of trademarks, brands, and consumer trust in emerging blockchain technologies. more
One of the consequences of the Jan 6th events is a renewed attention towards Surveillance Capitalism as a key doctrine undermining democracy.2 This part 2 of the 2 part series of discusses the rise and fall of Surveillance Capitalism under the premise that the better we understand the danger at the door, the better we are able to confront it. more
When valuing a stock, analysts and shareholders evaluate always revenue and profit. Big tech COFs are sitting on assets worth tens of millions of dollars of annual profit (not just revenue, but true profit) in the form of unallocated IPv4 addresses. By not selling or leasing these out, they are incurring expenses to hold them and missing out on tremendous profits. At a 20X multiple (for context, Cisco is trading at nearly 18X earnings, Google at just over 33X earnings, Shopify at well over 700X earnings), big tech CFOs are actively preventing over $250 billion in market capitalization for their shareholders. more
In 2020, the pandemic accelerated digitalization around the globe. Homeoffice, Online Shopping, Zoom Conferences became part of the daily life for billions of people. But if somebody would have expected that the Covid-19-Desaster is a wake-up call for the world to be more united, work hand in hand, and pool resources reducing risks of a borderless threat, this "somebody" was wrong. 2020 was dominated by "My country first." more
Dear Chief Financial Officers of tech giants, the internet is in crisis, and you can lead your organization to help solve the problem. You'll be well compensated, and you'll enjoy massive public relations benefits. I fear that if you don't, global governments will force your hand. There is a shortage of available IPv4 addresses but we are years away (possibly a decade or more) from IPv6 viability and adoption in North America. more
We are all aware of the pollution caused by burning coal and combusting oil. The results are obvious: exhaust spewing from vehicles, factories, and power plants. Many of us don't realize we are actively contributing to the unnecessary burning of energy (natural gas and coal in the US) to power the Internet. We wag our fingers at Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and data centers, but the fact is that our own organizations are wasting electricity every single hour out of ignorance or apathy. more
The Internet of Things (IoT) is on an explosive growth trajectory. According to Transforma Insights, the number of IoT-connected devices is projected to increase to 24.1 billion worldwide by 2030. That's almost a three-fold increase from 2019. Much of this growth will be fueled by the coming 5G revolution, which will enable businesses and consumers to take advantage of a wide range of increasingly sophisticated connected devices. more
We used to think of computer networks as being constructed using two fundamental common infrastructure components: names and addresses. Every connected device had a stable protocol address to allow all other devices to initiate a communication transaction with this device by addressing a data packet to this protocol address. And every device was also associated with a name, allowing human users and human use applications to use a more convenient alias for these protocol addresses. more
UK Government Planning on New Laws for IoT Devices Including a Mandatory Security Labelling SchemeA World-Renowned Source for Internet Developments. Serving Since 2002.