Internet Protocol

Internet Protocol / Recently Commented

Hot Architectural Issues for the Internet

The Internet Architecture Board's (IAB) chair, Olaf Kolkman, asked the members of the IAB to provide a statement paper each on what they believe the current most pressing issues in terms of Internet architecture are... I have thought about this for the past few days, and realised that it's hard to come up with overarching issues and even harder to come up with issues, where the IAB actually could make a difference. But I came with up with two issues. more

NIST Releases a Profile for IPv6 in the U.S. Government for Comment - Comments Due Feb. 29

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a second draft of a proposed standards profile to support the implementation of IPv6 by government agencies. "NIST developed the 'profile' to help ensure that IPv6-enabled federal information systems are interoperable, secure and able to co-exist with the current IPv4 systems." ...The White House's Office of Management and Budget declared in 2005 that all federal agencies shall migrated to IPv6 by June 30, 2008... more

A Root Server With a View…

Running a DNS server that serves the root gives an interesting view into the world of the DNS. With the ongoing improvements to the ICANN operated L-ROOT, we've been fortunate enough to be able to make use of the "DNS Statistics Collector" (DSC) tool. "DSC" allows us to generate different views of the DNS queries we have been seeing at the L-ROOT systems. more

Change of Leadership at ICANN as Cerf Makes Way for Intellectual Property Expert

Intellectual property and computer law barrister Peter Dengate-Thrush has been elected as new Chairman of the Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The former chairman of InternetNZ, the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry for New Zealand (.nz), and cofounder of the Association of Asian Pacific ccTLDs, succeeds the legendary Vinton Cerf... more

Congestion in the Backbone: Telecom and Internet Solutions

When a network is subject to a rapid increase in traffic perhaps combined with a rapid decrease in capacity (for example due to a fire or a natural disaster), there is a risk of congestion collapse. In a congestion collapse, the remaining capacity is so overloaded with access attempts that virtually no traffic gets through. In the case of telephony, everyone attempts to call their family and friends in a disaster area. The long standing telephony approach is to restrict new call attempts upstream of the congested area... This limits the amount of new traffic to that which the network can handle. Thus, if only 30% capacity is available, at least the network handles 30% of the calls, not 3% or zero... more

Mitigating Spoofed Attacks Using IPv6 Address Space

Timothy D. Morgan's recent paper titled, "IPv6 Address Cookies", seeks to apply the fundamental shift in resource availability brought about by the vastly increased Internet address space in IPv6 to develop a novel, lower cost solution to mitigating spoofed attacks. "Spoofed denial of service attacks have plagued the Internet for a number of years, and show no signs of abating. Research into mitigation techniques has apparently not led to a financially viable solution, and new attacks have been discovered in the wild without being widely anticipated". The following provides an introduction to this paper. more

ENUM: Mapping the E.164 Number Space into the DNS

Many communications networks are constructed for a single form of communication, and are ill suited to being used for any other form. Although the Internet is also a specialized network in terms of supporting digital communications, its relatively unique flexibility lies in its ability to digitally encode a very diverse set of communications formats, and then support their interaction over the Internet. In this way many communications networks can be mapped into an Internet application and in so doing become just another distributed application overlayed on the Internet. From this admittedly Internet-centric perspective, voice is just another Internet application. And for the growing population of Voice over IP (VoIP) users, this is indeed the case... more

Communications Policy for 2006 and Beyond: VoIP as a Case in Point

In this article, published in the Federal Communications Law Journal (FCLJ), the authors (Reed E. Hundt and Gregory L. Rosston) have proposed sweeping changes to the current telecommunications regulatory regime. With impending reform in telecommunications laws, the authors argue that an important first step is the creation of a bipartisan, independent commission to examine and recommend implementation of more market-oriented communications policy. The following excerpt from the article looks into service competition with respect to VoIP... more

An Analysis of Microsoft’s MARID Patent Applications

The IETF MARID working group has been slogging away all summer trying to produce a draft standard about e-mail sender verification. They started with Meng Wong's SPF and Microsoft's Caller ID for E-mail, which got stirred together into a hybrid called Sender ID. One of the issues hanging over the MARID process has been Microsoft's Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in Caller ID and Sender ID. The IETF has a process described in RFC 3668 that requires contributors to disclose IPR claims related to their contributions. more

IP Geolocation: The New Infrastructure for Internet Interoperability

IP geolocation has evolved from routing metadata into essential Internet infrastructure, enabling compliant content delivery, cybersecurity, and digital governance while raising urgent questions about transparency, interoperability, and fragmentation risks worldwide for policymakers and providers alike. more

Vinton Cerf Retires After Two Decades at Google, Looks Ahead to AI Interoperability

Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf will retire from Google after more than two decades, leaving a legacy that shaped the modern internet while predicting standardized protocols will become essential for the next generation of autonomous AI agents. more

NANOG 97 Explores the Networking Challenges Behind the AI Boom

NANOG 97 revealed how AI is reshaping network infrastructure, from lossless data centre fabrics and optical limits to surging investment, while exposing unresolved questions about geolocation, IPv6 adoption and Internet operations in an AI-driven era. more

Running-Code Primacy - The Patch Needed to Preserve the Internet’s Original Design

This essay argues that Internet governance has drifted from technical coordination into unaccountable institutional power, and proposes "Running-Code Primacy" as a post-RIR framework grounded in distributed validation, interoperability, and voluntary adoption rather than registry authority. more

The Geopolitical Protocol: Can QUIC and LEO Satellites Mitigate the Risks of Fragile Subsea Cables?

As geopolitical tensions expose the fragility of subsea cables, Low Earth Orbit satellites and the QUIC protocol promise a more resilient internet by diversifying routes, preserving session continuity, and redefining control over global data flows. more

The Excruciating Slow Rise of DNSSEC: A Dialogue With Roy Arends About Myths, Realities and Hard Lessons

DNSSEC promised to secure DNS with cryptographic proof, yet messy rollouts, outages, and hype backlash ruined its reputation. This piece argues that storytelling and emotions shape adoption as much as specs, and that automation enables a reset. more