The Internet Governance Project (IGP) issued a set of reports analyzing the current "state of play" in Internet governance. The reports were commissioned by the United Nations ICT Task Force as an input into the deliberations of the UN Secretary-General's Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG). The report identifies the international organizations and agreements affecting the Internet, and points out where there are conflicts and gaps. more
I'm kinda foxed by the some of the discussion going on about "Net Neutrality". The internet was designed from the outset not to be content neutral. Even before there was an IP protocol there were precedence flags in the NCP packet headers. And the IP (the Internet Protocol) has always had 8 bits that are there for the sole purpose of marking the precedence and type-of-service of each packet. It has been well known since the 1970's that certain classes of traffic -- particularly voice (and yes, there was voice on the internet even during the 1970's) -- need special handling... more
Next week on 1 July 2020 marks the 30th anniversary of one of the most significant treaty instruments in modern times. On 1 July 1990, the Melbourne Treaty came into force as the first and only global treaty that enabled worldwide internets and mobile networks to exist, together with the cybersecurity provisions designed to protect those infrastructures. The achievement remains as an enduring tribute to Richard Edmund Butler of Australia who was one of the most influential, and best-loved Secretaries-General of the ITU. more
Happy Launchiversary! It's been two years since World IPv6 Launch in 2012, the day many major Internet Service Providers (ISPs), home networking equipment manufacturers, and web companies around the world started permanently enabling IPv6 for their products and services. In the last two years, participation and interest in IPv6 has only grown. Today nearly 250 network operators around the world are participating in World IPv6 Launch measurements, and we continue to see increased IPv6 deployment by network operators, websites, and home router vendors. more
Andrew McLaughlin, in his excellent dismemberment of the BBC's report on the "IPv4 address crisis", is observing not a random piece of sloppy research, but the success of settled policy. That policy, pursued by public relations companies serving information technology and telecommunications (IT&T) companies, is simple to sum up: "identify, support and encourage technically ignorant journalism". It centres around the most valuable word in the lexicon of the public relations firm: "placement"...A key characteristic of the "placement" story is its conformance to a template...With one search, I found a CNET story published in July with quite startling parallels to the BBC story... more
May 6th 2007: ARIN board of trustees passes a resolution advising the Internet community that migration to a new version of the internet protocol, IPv6, will be necessary to allow continued growth of the internet. June 29th 2007, Puerto Rico: ICANN Board resolution states that: The Board further resolves to work with the Regional Internet Registries and other stakeholders to promote education and outreach, with the goal of supporting the future growth of the Internet by encouraging the timely deployment of IPv6. Oct 26th 2007 at the RIPE 55 meeting in Amsterdam... Nov 15th 2007: IGF meeting, Rio de Janeiro... This is but a small sample of the fast growing visibility IPv6 acquired this year, 2007. more
A few weeks ago I came across an old interview of me by ITespresso.fr from 10 years back entitled "IPv6 frees human imagination". At the time, I was talking about the contributions IPv6 was expected to make and the challenges it had to face. After reading the article again, I realized that it has become a little dusty (plus a blurred photo of the interviewee :-)). But what caught my attention the most in the interview was my assertion: "If IPv6 does not prevail in 2006, it's a safe bet that it will happen in 2007". Wow! more
The past several years have seen significant efforts to keep local Internet communications local in places far from the well-connected core of the Internet. Although considerable work remains to be done, Internet traffic now stays local in many places where it once would have traveled to other continents, lowering costs while improving performance and reliability. Data sent directly between users in those areas no longer leaves the region. Applications and services have become more localized as well, not only lowering costs but keeping those services available at times when the region's connectivity to the outside world has been disrupted... The recently published paper, "Geographic Implications of DNS Infrastructure Distribution" focuses on the distribution of DNS infrastructure. more
Ten years ago, I wrote an article that looked back on the developments within the Internet over the period from 1998 to 2008. Well, another ten years have gone by, and it's a good opportunity to take a little time once more to muse over what's new, what's old and what's been forgotten in another decade of the Internet's evolution... The evolutionary path of any technology can often take strange and unanticipated turns and twists. more
"Internet protocols simply aren't adequate for the changes in hardware and network use that will come up in a decade or so," says Professor Dave Farber who was recently interviewed by Andy Oram. "Dave predicts that computers will be equipped with optical connections instead of pins for networking, and the volume of data transmitted will overwhelm routers, which at best have mixed optical/electrical switching," writes Oram. more
The Advocate General, top advisor to the European Court of Justice, has issued an opinion today about Internet anonymity, Electronic Privacy Information Center reports. more
Last month Wired News, the online service that grew out of Wired Magazine, decided that it was going stop using an upper-case 'I' when it talked about the internet. At the same time Web became web and Net became net. According to Tony Long, the man responsible for their style guide, the change was made because 'there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words'. In fact, he claims, 'there never was.' ...Forgive me for saying, but those who choose 'internet' over 'Internet' are as wrong as those who would visit london, meet the queen or go for a boat trip down the river thames. more
The new year is upon us and it's time for our annual look at CircleID's most popular posts of the past year and highlighting those that received the most attention. Congratulations to all the 2016 participants and best wishes to all in the new year. more
As we start moving more real-time communications into web browsers with the upcoming WebRTC/RTCWEB offerings, what do we do about congestion control? How do we ensure that all these browser-based communications sessions share the network fairly? With RTC capabilities now already available in builds for browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, how do we deal with the expected increase in voice, video, chat and data traffic? more
From the creation of DNSAI Compass ("Compass"), we knew that measuring DNS Abuse1 would be difficult and that it would be beneficial to anticipate the challenges we would encounter. With more than a year of published reports, we are sharing insights into one of the obstacles we have faced. One of our core principles is transparency and we've worked hard to provide this with our methodology. more
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