What Does It Mean to Deploy DMARC?

The IETF's DMARC working group is thinking about a maintenance update to the DMARC spec, fixing bits that are unclear and perhaps changing it where what mail servers do doesn't exactly agree with what it says. Someone noted that a lot of mailers claim to have "deployed DMARC," and it's not at all clear what that really means. ... I've suggested that we could write a DMARC deployment guide that describes the parts of DMARC, the ways they interact and in what sequence it's useful to deploy them. If you'd find that useful, leave a comment. more

Astronomical Increases in Domain Names: Low Constancy of Abusive Registrations

When ICANN implemented the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) in 1999, the number of registered domain names were in the low eight digits. Registered domain names passed the first million in 1997. Today, they are in the first third of nine digits, and continuing to grow. In its newly released publication gTLD Marketplace Health Index (Beta) (July 21, 2016) ICANN offers through a couple dozen metrics a picture of the multiple parts that corporately go into making a healthy marketplace. It's "Beta" because the Health Index is a work in progress. more

Worldwide Cloud IT Infrastructure Spend Grew 9.2% to $32.6 Billion in 2016, Reports IDC

Vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 9.2% year over year to $32.6 billion in 2016, with vendor revenue for the fourth quarter (4Q16) growing at 7.3% to $9.2 billion. more

The Next New Media: Typewriters and Handwritten Letters

Who would have thought that typewriters and handwritten letters would ever be back in fashion? But back in 2013 it was reported that Russia was buying large quantities of typewriters. When this was further investigated the country denied that this was for security reasons. Since the Snowden revelations there has been a further rush on typewriters, both by government officials and by a range of, mainly corporate, businesses. more

Google to Begin Experimental Ultra High-Speed Broadband Networks

In a blog post today, Google has announced that they will begin a fiber network experiment of their own. From the announcement: "We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people." more

Donuts Acquires .TRAVEL TLD

Donuts Inc. today announced it has acquired the .TRAVEL domain name from registry operator Tralliance Registry Management Company; the .TRAVEL domain becomes Donuts' 239th TLD. more

Global Internet Growth Is Driven by Flexible Governance, Not Restrictive Regulation, Says Report

A new report has been released by Analysys Mason suggesting recent proposals to regulate the global Internet will harm growth and innovation worldwide. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will hold a treaty conference, the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), in December 2012, which will revise a 1988 treaty, the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR). more

IoT From a Network Perspective: Learning to Navigate the New Realms

Let's play the analogy game. The Internet of Things (IoT) is probably going end up being like... a box of chocolates, because you never do know what you are going to get? a big bowl of spaghetti with a serious lack of meatballs? Whatever it is, the IoT should have network folks worried about security. Of course, there is the problem of IoT devices being attached to random places on the network, exfiltrating personal data back to a cloud server you don't know anything about. more

Part 2: Let’s Have an Honest Conversation About Huawei

In the first section of this piece, I argued that the anti-Huawei litany only makes sense when one realizes that it is the Chinese state, not a global telecommunication equipment manufacturer based in China, is the target of this attack. China, in this view, is an integrated monolith, and any Chinese firm can be ordered to do the government's will without any legal, political, or economic checks and balances. more

Berners-Lee Warns About the Danger of Concentration Regarding Growing Dominance of Tech Giants

World Wide Web founder Tim Berners-Lee speaking during an interview this week, warned Silicon Valley technology giants have grown so dominant they may need to be broken up. more

Call for Participation - DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 56 in Helsinki, Finland on 27 June 2016

Do you have an idea for an innovative use of DNSSEC or DANE? Have you recently deployed DNSSEC or DANE and have some "lessons learned" that you could share? Did you develop a new tool or service that works with DNSSEC? Have you enabled DNSSEC by default in your products? (And why or why not?) Do you have ideas about how to accelerate usage of new encryption algorithms in DNSSEC? more

Meet My Friend Marlowe, She’s Dopamine for Authors

We all have a creative side, so consider meeting my friend Marlowe if you are an aspiring author. Authors.ai is a relatively new web property directly related to enhancing your novel's success or manuscript using Artificial Intelligence. Practically, Marlowe (the intelligent AI engine) reads and writes manuscripts in under an hour. Marlowe is labeled as a self-editing tool but's it is much more nuanced. more

Internet Challenges Need Win-Win Solutions

The current internet versus telcos debate that is going to be played out at the WCIT conference in Dubai later this year is still following the old confrontational pattern. The telco industry, for all the right reasons, started off as a monopolistic one. With the limited technology and knowledge of that time this system has been able to deliver telephone networks to all the countries in the world, and the industry can be proud of that achievement... However technology and knowledge have progressed... more

Montreal ICANN Meetings Creating Some Irritations

Two controversial issues which were on the agenda of the Montreal ICANN meetings creating some irritation: the way of planning to create a country code support organization (ccNSO), and the discussions around the purpose and operation of WHOIS – the database of registrants of domains. Without going into the history of the ccTLDs withdrawing from their former role within the DNSO and moving towards a self organized structure, there is an obvious conflict revolving around the term... more

The Early History of Usenet, Part V: Authentication and Norms

We knew that Usenet needed some sort of management system, and we knew that that would require some sort of authentication, for users, sites, and perhaps posts. We didn't add any, though -- and why we didn't is an interesting story. The obvious solution was something involving public key cryptography, which we (the original developers of the protocol: Tom Truscott, the late Jim Ellis, and myself) knew about: all good geeks at the time had seen Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column... more