Netflix Has Buyer’s Remorse Over Its Paid Peering Deal With Comcast

Soon after capitulating to Comcast's surcharge demand for improved treatment of its traffic, Netflix got better downstream delivery speeds. Apparently Comcast did not have to undertake a major bandwidth expansion program. Much to the immediate relief of Netflix, Comcast merely needed to allocate more ports for Netflix traffic. So with a reallocation of available bandwidth, Comcast solved Netflix's quality of service dilemma apparently without degrading service to anyone else, upstream or downstream. more

ICANN and the Developing World: Examining The Outreach Program

Shravanti Reddy?s recent piece draws attention to an important issue that has nagged at ICANN ever since the ill-fated at large elections, when participants from the developed world greatly outnumbered those from the developing world. This imbalance was somewhat mitigated by the regional delineation of candidates, but it nonetheless raised two important questions that have yet to be settled:

First, how can ICANN (and, more generally, Internet governance) be more inclusive of developing countries? And second (less often asked, but perhaps even more important): Why should developing countries care about ICANN -- i.e., why does the answer to the first question even matter? This article discusses some recent developments related to the first question; a later article will consider some specific reasons why ICANN matters to the developing world. more

Privacy and Security - Five Objectives

It has been a very busy period in the domain of computer security. With "shellshock", "heartbleed" and NTP monlink adding to the background of open DNS resolvers, port 445 viral nasties, SYN attacks and other forms of vulnerability exploits, it's getting very hard to see the forest for the trees. We are spending large amounts of resources in reacting to various vulnerabilities and attempting to mitigate individual network attacks, but are we making overall progress? What activities would constitute "progress" anyway? more

Challenges for .brands - Launching Your .brand

One of the consistent themes of this blog series is that despite similarities across .brand TLDs, no two brands will settle on the exact same strategy and process for moving their TLD to launch. As I discussed last week, an implementation plan ensures that each required action is documented, responsibility for it is assigned and a more detailed project plan can be developed to take this process further. more

Belgian Country Code Now Supports Internationalized Domain Names

Earlier this week dns.be launched Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). The Belgian registry opted to support the accented characters for Dutch, French and German. In so doing they've also ended up providing support for other European languages, such as Swedish, Finnish and Danish... The registry reported quite a bit of interest in the launch with over 3000 IDN domains being registered in the first hour. That number had practically doubled by close of business on the first day. more

Internet Population Passes 1 Billion, and We’re Still Afraid

We're learning this week that we have officially passed the one billion number in terms of people using the Internet. Eric Schonfeld writes in his article on TechCrunch that the number is probably higher than that. One billion is a staggering number, even though it makes up only 15 to 22 percent of the world's population. Nevertheless, those one billion Internet users give us a lot to deal with on their own in terms of social and security issues on the web. more

The Next Stage of the Broadbanding of the World

The UN Broadband Commission -- which I assisted in establishing and to which I am special advisor -- is now in its fifth year. Set up by the two UN agencies, UNESCO and ITU, it received the support of 50 leading international people such as government ministers, heads of a range of UN and associated organisations, and CEOs of leading private industry companies. Overall it is a public-private partnership. It is chaired by the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, and Carlos Slim from Mexico. more

Berkman Broadband Study: Mixing Passion and Scholarship

Last week, comments were filed with the FCC in response to the Berkman study of international broadband comparisons... Many of the comments were not supportive of the Harvard Berkman study. In an earlier blog posting, we had observed that there appeared to be statistical problems in the Berkman study that would not hold up to peer review. Our comments may have understated the extent of the problems. more

Appearing Respondents Called Out as Cybersquatters

UDRP complainants prevail in the range of 85% to 90% which approximately correlates with the percentage that respondents default in responding to complaints. The annual number of complaints administered by ICANN providers has been hovering around 4,000 +. Astonishingly, the number has remained steady for a good number of years despite the phenomenal increase... Compared to the whole, there are a relatively small number of contested disputes, perhaps in the annual range of 400 to 500, and of those a larger percentage are called out as cybersquatters. more

ICANN’s New gTLDs: The Game Changers Have Landed

The day after 'reveal day' two big questions will emerge; firstly was the advertising branding world so wrong or secondly, the parties behind the proposed names so invincible and can turn their $350 million dollars into many tens of billions. To be fair the jury may be out nevertheless, here are some facts... The Internet was never designed to solve the global business naming problems; it was the extension of DARPA, a failsafe military communication system later adventured into public use. more

Berners-Lee Warns Rise of Dominant Platforms has Resulted in Weaponization of the Web at Scale

The World Wide Web turned 29 today and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, web inventor, has shared some stern warnings about the direction it is headed. more

Really? A Hearing on New gTLDs at this Late Stage?

To the dismay of many (and the chagrin of some), it appears as though the US House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet will be conducting a hearing on New generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). Meanwhile, ICANN is careening towards the finish line of the new gTLD Program with a vote by the ICANN Board scheduled for June 20th. Just what this all means remains to be seen. more

Meeting with ITU Secretary General Dr Hamadoun Touré

During the ITU Conference I had the honour of a private meeting with Dr Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the ITU since 2006... Dr Touré has a fascinating background. Born in Mali and educated in Russia, he has brought with him a distinctly fresh approach to the ITU. He has been Africa's Regional General Manager for ICO Global Communications and worked at various levels at the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (INTELSAT). more

Mac Hit by Another Wave of Malware… Users in Denial?

In case you haven't been watching cyber news recently, last week various security researchers published that Macs were infected by the Flashback Trojan and that the total number of infections worldwide was 600,000. This number was published by a couple of blogs. I debated writing about this topic since we had a previous Mac outbreak last year that initially spiked up, caused Apple to go into denial about the affair before issuing a fix, and then the malware kind of went away. Will this follow the same pattern? more

Department of Commerce Begins Re-Solicitation for IANA Contract

In follow up to the cancelation of IANA Contract RFP last month, the United States Department of Commerce (DoC), National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) have just issued solicitation of the contract. more