“Can IP Be Protected in the Internet Age?” Panel Recap from Russian Economic Development Conference

In June, I attended the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum ("SPIEF"), organized by the Russian government's Ministry of Economic Development. This was a major event drawing thousands of participants to St. Petersburg... I participated on a panel entitled "Can IP Be Protected in the Internet Age?" Right away, I trust many of you find the titling odd... more

Sorry, Ajit Pai: Smaller Telcos Did Not Reduce Investment After Net Neutrality Ruling

Primary suppliers see sales go up. ADTRAN's sales in the most recent nine months were $445M, up from $399M the year before. Calix sold $372M, up from $327M. At analyst meeting this year, both said demand had picked up. Clearfield, a supplier of fiber optic gear, was up 8%. Pai claimed, "the impact has been particularly serious for smaller Internet service providers." It was a primary justification for his Net Neutrality decision. more

Sharing ICANN Can Be Win-Win for the United States

With the Internet's global reach and importance showing exponential growth, pressure on the United States to share control of ICANN is mounting. A number of experts believe that the question is simply how much the United States should give up and how soon. This essay argues that "giving up" can be a win-win solution; i.e., control sharing is not a zero-sum game. more

Substantial DDoS Attack Disrupts Twitter, Netflix, Visa and other Major Sites

Major internet sites were disrupted for several hours this morning as internet infrastructure provider Dyn reported it was under a cyberattack, mainly affecting traffic on the U.S. East Coast. more

Call the Routing Police!

There was a somewhat unfortunate outage for a major communications service provider in Australia, Optus, in mid-November. It appears that one of their peer Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) networks mistakenly advertised a very large route collection to the Optus BGP network, which caused the routers to malfunction in some manner. more

Forget it, Jake. It’s China.

A timely article in The Wall Street Journal (that I only recently got around to reading): "The future's not here." American business people once saw China as dynamic, exciting and wide open. Not anymore. To which I ask: When was China ever "wide open?" Let's not blame the recent trade and tariff issues. China is a ruthlessly competitive market that, like so many countries, tilts the playing field in favor of its home-grown companies. more

When Having a Voice Isn’t Enough

In Brussels on Friday, an esteemed panel of experts got together to discuss the challenge of improving ICANN's accountability. It's just too bad nobody from ICANN came by to hear it. ... While their prescriptions varied widely, the panelists were remarkably similar in their diagnoses - namely, that ICANN has yet to meet the fundamental challenge of making its board and staff accountable and answerable to the community that it is intended to serve. more

Researchers Develop Tools to Help Map the IPv6 Address Landscape

While there are now billions of IPv6 addresses that could be active at any given time, there are no precise estimates as to how many or where they are. more

Authorities Take Down the Mariposa Botnet

There are a number of sources talking about the takedown of the Mariposa botnet... Spanish authorities, working with researchers from Panda Labs, Defence Intelligence and a couple of other educational institutions, took down the Mariposa botnet (Mariposa is the Spanish word for "butterfly"). The Mariposa botnet is an absolutely enormous with around 12 million (!) nodes doing its bidding. It was involved in things like credit card phishing and identity fraud. more

IPv6 : Rumours Are More Accurate Than Predictions

As rumours tend to be more accurate than predictions, the last /8's are hanging already on this years Christmas tree and one should hurry to get hold of a small little RIR block to put on next year's tree. I will miss the decade of heated and passionate debates between Tony Hain and Geoff Huston on when the exhaustion would actually happen. Estimates ranged all the way from 2008 to 2020 with Tony predicting early demise of IPv4 addresses while Geoff initially thought exhaustion would come later. As time passed the interval converged and here we are. more

An Account of the Estonian Internet War

About a year ago after coming back from Estonia, I promised I'd send in an account of the Estonian "war". A few months ago I wrote an article for the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, covering the story of what happened there. This is the "war" that made politicians aware of cyber security and entire countries scared, NATO to "respond" and the US to send in "help". It deserved a better understanding for that alone, whatever actually happened there. more

New Nails in the Crypto-Anarchism Containment Coffin

Crypto-anarchism (or crypto-anarchy) is a form of anarchy accomplished through computer technology. Crypto-anarchists develop and employ their own cryptographic techniques to prevent knowledge of the information or even the identity of parties communicating over networks. The motivations vary - from just having fun and causing turmoil, to achieving perceived status within a crypto-anarchy community, to furthering socio-economic views about information availability, absolute privacy, political advocacy and spreading anti-government paranoia. more

Telesat Update – Proposal for a Larger Constellation, Canadian and DARPA Contracts, IPO and More

I've discussed Telesat's LEO broadband project in earlier posts, but the project has progressed, so an update is needed. The original plan was to launch 117 satellites but that has changed. The phase 1 constellation will now have 298 satellites and the second phase will add 1,373 for a total of 1,671. The revised plan has been submitted to the FCC, and they expect it to be approved next year. more

The Spamhaus Whitelist

For several months I have been working with the Spamhaus project on a whitelist, which we announced to the public this week. While this is hardly the first mail whitelist, our goals are somewhat different from other whitelists. Think of e-mail as ranging from inky black to pearly white... 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