From 80 to 8,000 - The Growth of the RIPE NCC Membership

The RIPE NCC is 20 years old and it now has over 8,000 members. In this article we are looking at the growth curve and the composition of the membership: what industry do RIPE NCC members come from today. The RIPE NCC became the first Regional Internet Registry in September 1992 (six months after it was set up as the secretariat for the European operators community, RIPE). more

The Growing Security Concerns… Don’t Have Nightmares

Anyone concerned about the security of their computers and the data held on them might sleep a little uneasily tonight. Over the past few weeks we've heard reports of serious vulnerabilities in wireless networking and chip and pin readers, and seen how web browsers could fall victim to 'clickjacking' and trick us into inadvertently visiting fake websites. The longstanding fear that malicious software might start infecting our mobile phones was given a boost... And now a group of researchers have shown that you can read what is typed on a keyboard from twenty metres away... more

What May Happen to GAC Advice? 3 Fearless Predictions

Many TLD applicants are likely to respond to the GAC Advice in a manner that is like story telling: Based on a mixture of fiction garnished with some facts from their applications, applicants will write savvy responses with only one aim -- to calm down the GAC's concerns and survive the GAC Advice storm. The "duck and cover" strategy... According to the Applicant Guidebook, material changes to applications need to go through a Change Request process. more

Why Vertical Integration Is Good for the Domain Name Industry

ICANN's decision a little over a week ago to permit the vertical integration of registries and registrars in the new top-level domain program, which now appears in the Applicant Guidebook published over the weekend, was as welcome as it was surprising. This bold, principled stance will fundamentally modernize the domain name industry and create competitive benefits that will be felt by consumers and under-served communities for years to come. more

Five Security Blind Spots from Prolonged Implementation of a Business Continuity Plan Amid COVID-19

The novel coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) has prompted many organizations in Mainland China and Hong Kong to execute their business continuity plan (BCP). During the last epidemic in 2003, the SARS outbreak lasted for nine months – and with an infection rate that is increasing rapidly, this new coronavirus has the potential to cause prolonged periods of commercial disruption, and heavy reliance on BCPs. more

Why It Doesn’t Matter That the Virginia Anti-Spam Law was Struck Down

If the headlines are to be believed, spam is now entirely legal in Virginia and anyone can send whatever they want without any fear of reprisal, ever. Looking beyond the headlines, it appears that the Virginia Supreme Court's ruling in AOL's case against formerly convicted spammer Jeremy Jaynes declares that the Virginia anti-spam law violates the Constitutional protection of anonymous speech, and thus is null and void. more

Given Comprehensive TLD Applicant Guidebook, How Ready Are Applicants? Notes from the Field - Part 1

One of the benefits of being a third party (i.e., no financial interest in new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) or applying for any) and independent (i.e., self financed and non-exclusive) is that we at Architelos have the natural incentive, not to mention a survival imperative, to try to gain a broad and deep perspective on the market. While no one can accurately predict the future, I'd like to suggest where I think this market is headed and why. These thoughts are based on our observations over the last six months in hopes that both prospective TLD applicants and service providers will benefit. more

“One Google, One World; One China, No Google”

China's insomniac twitterati were on fire this afternoon U.S. time, powered no doubt by much caffeine and sugar in the the wee hours of the morning in China. Half an hour before Google's David Drummond posted his announcement that Google.cn is now effectively operating from Google.com.hk, Guangzhou-based open source programmer @LEMONed broke the
news that google.cn was being redirected to the Hong Kong service. Reacting to the news, @wentommy quipped: "One Google, One World; One China, No Google." more

The Uncertainty of Measuring the DNS

The period around the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century saw a number of phenomenal advances in the physical sciences. There was J.J. Thompson's discovery of the electron in 1897, Max Planck's quantum hypothesis in 1900, Einstein's ground-breaking papers on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect and special relativity in 1905, and Ernest Rutherford's study of the nucleus published in 1911 to mention but a few of the fundamental discoveries of the time. more

Apple’s Naked Self Interest

Any vendor in the platform business knows that their primary product is programming interfaces -- the so-called APIs that developers depend upon in order to deliver applications. The API exposes features of the platform, and differentiate applications running on that platform from all others. Lose control of the API, and you will lose control of the developer. Developers are the leading indicator for platform success. Ergo, lose the developer, lose the platform. more

Neustar Urges Caution to ICANN Before Batching

Neustar has sent the following letter to ICANN. Neustar sent the letter to urge caution to ICANN before launching the batching process to promote competition and choice for consumers in a fair and balanced manner... "Neustar has long been an advocate for the introduction of new generic top level domains. Given the long and sometimes arduous road the ICANN community has traveled to get to this point in the process, we are understandably anxious to avoid unnecessary delay in the launch of new gTLDS." more

Swiss Among World Leaders in Enabling DNSSEC

SWITCH, the registry for .CH and .LI domain names, enabled DNSSEC on day two of the annual Domain Pulse conference in Luzern yesterday. SWITCH became the third ccTLD registry to enable DNSSEC giving registrants of .CH domain names added security following .SE (Sweden) and .CZ (Czech Republic). more

The Use of AI in the Domain Name Industry

Artificial intelligence has important uses in the domain name industry. With the use of AI, domain name registration, management, and valuation have been made more efficient and accurate. Here are some specific ways AI is affecting domain names... AI-powered domain name generators can suggest relevant and available domain names based on specific keywords, making the search process easier and faster. more

Navigating the “Pentest” World

The demand for penetration testing and security assessment services worldwide has been growing year-on-year. Driven largely by Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) concerns, plus an evolving pressure to be observed taking information security and customer privacy seriously, most CIO/CSO/CISO's can expect to conduct regular "pentests" as a means of validating their organizations or product's security. more

Time to Take Stock: Twelve Internet and Jurisdiction Trends in Retrospect

With the growing tension between the cross-border Internet and the patchwork of national jurisdictions, it becomes crucial to keep track of key global trends that drive the debate on appropriate frameworks. One year ago, the Internet & Jurisdiction Project initiated a global multi-stakeholder dialogue process on these issues. To provide a factual basis for such discussions, it established an Observatory, supported by a network of selected international experts, to detect and categorize relevant cases via an innovative crowd-based filtering process in order to identify high-level patterns. more