There were highs and lows in city hall's rollout of the .nyc TLD last month. Early on we were cheered when we received notification that our application for the JacksonHeights.nyc domain name had been approved. And with the de Blasio Administration committed to putting the city's 350+ neighborhood domain names under the control of local residents, we began to imagine that our decade-old vision of an "intuitive" city Internet might materialize... more
Kevin Murphy reporting in Domain Incite: "ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade and a US ambassador today both talked up the multistakeholder model as a cure to concerns about PRISM and related surveillance programs. But the US warned against using the spying scandal to push internet governance into the hands of 'centralized intergovernmental control'... Chehade and Ambassador Danny Sepulveda, US coordinator for international communications and information policy, were speaking at the opening ceremony of the Internet Governance Forum in Bali, Indonesia." more
The SEACOM submarine cable, completed in the past 24 hours, is the first modern submarine cable connecting to eastern Africa, and the first of an unprecedented wave of new cable projects on both the eastern and western coasts of Africa. Approximately USD2.4 billion in new submarine cable projects are scheduled for completion by the end of 2011. The plans for so many new cables reflect both Africa's lack of international communications infrastructure, and soaring capacity requirements. more
Google is experimenting with new cryptography to future-proof Internet communications against quantum computers. Matt Braithwaite, Google Software Engineer in a blog post on Thursday wrote: "Quantum computers are a fundamentally different sort of computer that take advantage of aspects of quantum physics to solve certain sorts of problems dramatically faster than conventional computers can." more
Contrary to previous security reports suggesting compromised machines remain infected for 6 weeks, experts at Trend Micro say these estimates are far from accurate. In its recent blog post the company said: "During the analysis of approximately 100 million compromised IP addresses, we identified that half of all IP addresses were infected for at least 300 days. That percentage rises to eighty percent if the minimum time is reduced to a month." Additionally the study also indicates that while three quarter of the IP addresses were linked to consumer users, the remaining quarter belonged to enterprise users. more
A recent study released today suggests 53 percent of critical infrastructure providers have experienced what they perceived as politically motivated cyber attacks. According to Symantec's 2010 Critical Information Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Survey, participants claimed to have experienced such an attack on an average of 10 times in the past five years, incurring an average cost of $850,000 during a period of five years to their businesses. more
Whether you're a service provider or subscriber, a broken connection is an ugly situation. Operators need to shift resources to diagnose and fix the problem. Subscribers must find another way to get back online and continue with their business. And with the proliferation of cloud storage and Internet-based communication platforms, Internet connectivity is now a necessity for many. So when a disruption occurs, the angry calls are guaranteed. more
The IETF met in November 2022 in London. Among the many sessions that were held in that meeting was a session of the Decentralised Internet Infrastructure Research Group, (DINRG). The research group's ambitions are lofty: DINRG will investigate open research issues in decentralizing infrastructure services such as trust management, identity management, name resolution, resource/asset ownership management, and resource discovery. more
The European Union has struck a deal "in principle" with the United States on a new data-sharing agreement to allow digital information to flow between borders. more
When you go to the doctor for a yearly checkup, do you think about health or insurance? You probably think about health, but the practice of going to the doctor for regular checkups began because of large life insurance companies in the United States. These companies began using statistical methods to make risk or to build actuarial tables they could use to set the premiums properly. Originally, life insurance companies relied on the "hunches" of their salesmen, combined with... more
U.S. and Britain plan to conduct a test later this month to assess how regulators for the world's two biggest financial centers in New York and London would communicate in the event of a major cyberattack or broader IT problems, a spokesman for British government cybersecurity body CERT-UK said on Monday. more
ICANN has announced a list of over 40 diverse practitioners, subject matter experts, and thought leaders as members of the ICANN Strategy Panels to support development of the organization's strategic and operational plans. more
Cuba has announced it is launching country's first broadband home Internet servicea, a potentially major step forward in bringing the island online. more
A recent article by Joe Brock for Reuters describes a new geopolitical battle over undersea fibers. There are about 400 undersea fiber routes that cross oceans and that connect the world with fiber. This is a huge business, and about 95% of all international broadband traffic passes through the undersea fibers. more
Starlink gets almost all of the satellite press in the U.S., which is fair since the company now serves many homes and RVs with broadband. The company currently has over 4,600 active satellites in orbit, and if it sticks with its original business plan, it will eventually have 30,000. But there are a few other satellite companies working in the broadband space that don't get the press. more