Customer Owned Fiber in Ottawa

Arstechnica had a nice article yesterday by Timothy Lee entitled 'The really long tail' following up on Derek Slater's article last week on the Google Public Policy Blog entitled 'What if you could own your Internet connection?' Both articles are about a pilot project in Ottawa.The "tail" in Timothy's article is the "last mile" (or as I prefer, "first mile") fiber connection from individual homes to a network peering point or other aggregation point where individuals can then choose from among multiple competing ISPs. The importance is, as Timothy Lee puts it... more

Google’s Good Bandwidth Gambit

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has made the FCC an offer it shouldn't refuse. At this point it's unlikely that the FCC will accept but it would be good for the United States if it did -- and good for Google, of course. Two problems with the Google offer: at&t and Verizon hate it and it probably would result in the 700MHz auction bringing in somewhat less money (immediately) for the treasury than an alternative which would encourage the telcos to bid. more

Connectivity in Every Language: Building a Multilingual Internet Together

Around the world, communities are racing to close the digital divide. From fiber deployments in rural areas to affordable smartphones and digital skills training, the goal is clear: connect the unconnected. But as we pursue that goal, a deeper question emerges that demands just as much urgency as infrastructure: When people get online, can they actually participate in the digital world? more

The Rise of a Secondary Market for Domain Names (Part 3/4): Domain Names as Virtual Real Estate

The way the Internet operates drove a wedge between strings of lexical and numeric characters used as marks and alphanumeric strings used as addresses. Domain names were described by Steve Forbes in a 2007 press release as virtual real estate. It is, he said, analogous to the market in real property: "Internet traffic and domains are the prime real estate of the 21st century." more

Bringing Order to Chaos

If we were to apply themes to Internet governance world, the narrative for 2014-15 is definitely 'change'. The governance ecosystem is knee deep in the IANA transition, with a few meetings and teleconferences of the IANA Transition Coordinating Group behind us, and a ramping up of activity around ICANN accountability and governance. While the IANA transition and ICANN accountability processes are being conducted in parallel and independently, it's important to note that not only are they related, they are dependent on one another. more

NFV Orchestration Without Network Visibility: OS MANO Needs Operational Improvements

Open Source (OS) Management and Orchestrations (MANO) is a European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) initiative that aims to develop a Network Function Virtualization (NFV) MANO software stack, aligned with ETSI NFV. The main goal of MANO is to simplify the onboarding of virtual network components in telco cloud data centers. The initiative has gained impressive momentum among leading Communication Service Providers (CSPs) around the world as part of their NFV programs. more

RIPE 75: Imprssions of the Meeting

RIPE held its 75th meeting in Dubai in mid-October. As usual, there was a diverse set of presentations covering a broad range of activities that are taking place on today's Internet. The topics include issues relating to network operations, regulatory policies, peering and interconnection, communications practices within data centers, IPv6, the DNS, routing and network measurement. If that's not enough, the topic of the Internet of Things has been added as a Working Group in the RIPE pantheon. If you add address policy, database and RIPE services to the mix, you get a pretty packed five days with topics that would appeal to most Internet folks. more

Uncontrolled Interruption? Dozens of “Blocked” Domains in New gTLDs Actually Delegated

The Mitigating the Risk of DNS Namespace Collisions report, just published by JAS Global Advisors, under contract to ICANN, centers on the technique of "controlled interruption," initially described in a public preview shared by Jeff Schmidt last month. With that technique, domain names that are currently on one of ICANN's second-level domain (SLD) block lists can be registered and delegated for regular use, provided that they first go through a trial period where they're mapped to a designated "test" address. more

Qatar Crisis Started With a Hack, Now Political Tsunami in Saudi Arabia - How Will You Be Impacted?

The world has officially entered what the MLi Group labels as the "New Era of The Unprecedented". In this new era, traditional cyber security strategies are failing on daily basis, political and terrorist destruction-motivated cyber attacks are on the rise threatening "Survivability", and local political events unfold to impact the world overnight and forever. Decision makers know they cannot continue doing the same old stuff, but don't know what else to do next or differently that would be effective. more

CAN SPAM Issues in Zoobuh V. Better Broadcasting

Last week a Utah court issued a default judgement under CAN SPAM in Zoobuh vs. Better Broadcasting et al. I think the court's opinion is pretty good, even though some observers such as very perceptive Venkat Balasubramani have reservations. The main issues were whether Zoobuh had standing to sue, whether the defendants domain names were obtained fraudulently, and whether the opt-out notice in the spam was adequate. more

Dan Kaminsky Releases Phreebird for Easy DNSSEC

Today marks another key step in DNSSEC deployment. Congrats to Dan Kaminsky, chief scientist at Doxpara and one of our partners on the Practice Safe DNS campaign, on the release of his new code Phreebird. Announced today at Black Hat Abu Dhabi, Phreebird Suite 1.0 is a free, easy-to-use toolkit that lets organizations "test-drive" DNSSEC deployment. more

Skype Messes Up, Badly

The Open Net Initiative's Information Warfare Monitor project has published a stunning report by "Hacktivist" Nart Villeneuve titled: "Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China's TOM-Skype platform." It has been covered by both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal... more

New Report Uses Media Impressions as a Measure for New TLD Usage and Success

With so many new domain extensions now available in the online space, it is very hard to measure the success of an individual TLD (Top Level Domain). There have been various methods used, such as total domain registration count, hosted live sites in the Alexa top-million, premium domain sales, aftermarket value, etc. Many of these metrics do help in understanding a new extension's progress, however, top-line registrations alone do not tell a complete story. more

NTIA Request for Comments on the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Functions

On Feb. 25, 2011, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration released the following request for comments concerning the USG's contract for the IANA function. As indicated, the USG's contract for the IANA function with ICANN expires later this year. Interested parties can file comments with NTIA by March 31, 2011. more

Maximizing Qname Minimization: A New Chapter in DNS Protocol Evolution

Data privacy and security experts tell us that applying the "need to know" principle enhances privacy and security, because it reduces the amount of information potentially disclosed to a service provider -- or to other parties -- to the minimum the service provider requires to perform a service. This principle is at the heart of qname minimization, a technique described in RFC 7816 that has now achieved significant adoption in the DNS. more