ICANN 51 Focus: Making ICANN Directly Accountable to the Broader Internet Community

ICANN 51 taking place in Los Angeles this week may not have its customary evening Gala, but it opened with rousing remarks by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker in the first-ever ICANN appearance of the head of the Cabinet agency from which it was born and which has exercised continuous oversight of its key IANA functions. The themes of the growing importance of Internet Governance and the U.S. government's steadfast commitment to defense of the multistakeholder model, as well as the connection between maintenance of an open Internet and fostering free speech and economic growth, were key elements of Secretary Pritzker's address. more

Return of the WCIT

The title looks like a horror show advertisement; or, maybe a recurrent plague. It is actually a combination of both, and last inflicted itself on the world two years ago in Dubai. It could be visiting us again in the years to come... The World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) and formerly known as Administrative Conferences have been around for the past 150 years. There have been 31 of them held under the aegis of a U.N. agency known as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and its precursors. more

IPv6 Adoption Grows By 1900% - Primarily Due to Domain Name Registrar Support

The percentage of zones under .com, .net and .org that support IPv6 has increased by 1,900% over the past 12 months according to a new census conducted by the Measurement Factory, sponsored by Infoblox. According to the census, this dramatic increase can be primarily attributed to the introduction of support of IPv6 by a single domain name registrar, Go Daddy. more

House Committees Taking Aim at IANA Transition Proposal

In an unanticipated move a third Committee of the US House of Representatives has weighed in with concerns regarding the NTIA's proposed transition of the US role as counterparty to ICANN's IANA functions contract to one with the "global multistakeholder community". On May 13th the House Armed Services Committee Report for HR 4435, the Defense Authorization bill, was released. more

The Infrastructure Guessing Game

As U.S. Congress inches closer to an infrastructure bill, the industry is feverously speculating how a broadband infrastructure plan might work. There is still a lot of compromise and wheeling and dealing to be done, so nobody knows how a final broadband program might work, or even definitively if there will be one. But since this is the billion-dollar question for the industry, it's worth a review of the possibilities. more

Mind the Step(-function): Are We Really Less Secure Than We Were a Year Ago?

In January 1995, the RFC Editor published RFC 1752: "The Recommendation for the IP Next Generation Protocol"... The Internet is a security officer's nightmare -- so much openness, so easy to capture packet traffic (and/or spoof it!) and send all manner of unwanted traffic. It was built as a research network, hosted by institutes that were 1/ professionally responsible and 2/ interested in working together collegially. So, in the 19 years since the publication of that statement, have we really failed to address the stated goal? more

Why CDNs Are Critical to Future of R&E Networks, Big Data and the Internet

Netflix has announced that they are deploying their own Content Delivery Network (CDN) for delivery of their video streams to Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) around the world. More importantly they are making the hardware and software design of their CDN servers freely available. That means any network can deploy Netflix CDN boxes deep into their network to significantly reduce traffic volumes and improve performance for users. more

Enterprise or Public Sector Investment in National Lambda Rail Presents a Unique Opportunity

Sometimes in our worries about the Duopoly, we fail to recognize that some extraordinary wealth of opportunity sits right underneath our noses. National Lambda Rail (NLR) is one such case. About six months ago I wrote in some detail about NLR and what made this entity different from previous attempts at research networks in the US... NLR runs on a philosophy of a user owned and administered research network. Intrernet2 (I2), during the ten years of its existence, has run on the basis of first a Qwest donated backbone known as Abilene and since November 2006 on the basis of a seven year managed services contract with Level 3 Communications. more

Identify DDoS Attacks with Monitoring of Internal Applications (Part 1 of 3)

Most cloud DDoS mitigation services are offered on demand meaning that customers can enable the service when they are the victim of a DDoS attack. But how can a company find out -- quickly -- that it is under attack? Sometimes it is difficult to know. In this three part series, we will examine multiple monitoring tools companies can use to capture DDoS, which can help determine whether you are under a DDoS attack. more

Montana Becomes First State to Require ISPs to Abide by Net Neutrality Principles Despite FCC Repeal

Montana Governor Steve Bullock signs an executive order requiring ISPs with state contracts to adhere to internet neutrality principles. more

Overreaching Trademark Owners and the Misguided Better Right Theory of Domain Name Ownership

In Blogs devoted to news from the domain name industry and domainers, there is great glee in reporting about overreaching trademark owners. The reason for the glee, I think, is that it's a form of collective sigh from domainers and the domain industry that the UDRP is working as it should, which means that Panels are careful in their assessments of parties' rights. more

2012: The Year of Securing Websites?

In a seemingly never-ending row of news on hacks of websites now the news in which 2.3 million individual cases of privacy sensitive data were accessible through a leak in the websites of most public broadcasting stations in the Netherlands. To make the news more cheerful, the accessible data was, if compiled, sufficient to successfully steal a complete identity. What were thoughts that came to my mind after hearing this news on Friday? more

Macro Musings for Digital Strategies Using Unstructured Data

When Doug Dawson wrote his article in February on Artificial Intelligence, he felt that #ai is saddled with too much hype as is its current counterpart, 5G. Certainly, there is a great deal of technology out there that deserves the hype and others that do not. After receiving a certification (Intro to AI) from IBM (while using Watson), I'm here to share that artificial intelligence, and its subsets of machine learning and deep learning definitely deserve a soundbite. more

A Modest Proposal for ICANN

When it comes to accountability, ICANN would rather be compared to other U.S. nonprofit companies than to the regulatory bodies it more closely resembles. If they truly wish to be treated like a nonprofit, rather than a regulator, there is a very simple solution: make all contributions strictly voluntary. more

Hiding in the Firmware?

The most interesting feature of the newly-described "Equation Group" attacks has been the ability to hide malware in disk drive firmware. The threat is ghastly: you can wipe the disk and reinstall the operating system, but the modified firmware in the disk controller can reinstall nasties. A common response has been to suggest that firmware shouldn't be modifiable, unless a physical switch is activated. more