At today's "Managing Critical Internet Resources" session of the Internet Governance Forum 2009, the ITU agenda on taking a role in IPv6 distribution once again reared its ugly head. In a heated exchange, Professor Dr Sureswaran Ramadass, the Director of Nav6 an ITU consultant/fanboy squared off with the new ICANN CEO about competition in IPv6 address distribution. more
The number of applications this year for the seven positions within ICANN has been so low that the NomCom has gone to the trouble of printing up pamphlets, holding a public meeting at Marrakech and extending the deadline by a fortnight. At the two public Board sessions in Marrakech the grand hall that was provided was virtually empty, sparking some debate as to why. Susan Crawford ventured that it was because ICANN was failing to connect with people; Vint Cerf suggested that ICANN was so successful at doing its job that people didn't feel the need to attend. Mouhamet Diop pointed out that we were in a French-speaking Arabic country and no one was going to sit through four hours of discussion if they didn't understand a word of it... more
The network operations community is cautiously heading back into a mode of in-person meetings, and the NANOG meeting at the start of November was a hybrid affair with a mix of in-person and virtual participation, both by the presenters and the attendees. I was one of the virtual mob, and these are my notes from the presentations I found to be of personal interest. I hope you might also find them to be of interest as well... The year 2021 has not been a good year for Internet outages. more
2016 marked the start of the third and final phase of the China Next Generation Internet (CNGI) IPv6 program. more
APNIC happened to be the first Regional Internet Registry to meet in the IANA post IPv4 era. While discussions and proposals on how to divvy up the last 'slash 8' into tinier blocks are to be expected, it was rather unreal to see the energy spent divining how the RIR's would share IPv4 space that would eventually be returned to IANA and then regurgitated. A timewarp with the exhaustion clock turning backwards? more
DNS blacklists for IPv4 addresses are now nearly 15 years old, and DNSBL operators have gathered a great deal of expertise running them. Over the next decade or two mail will probably move to IPv6. How will running IPv6 DNSBLs differ from IPv4? There aren't any significant IPv6 DNSBLs yet since there isn't significant unwanted IPv6 mail traffic yet (or significant wanted traffic, for that matter), but we can make some extrapolations from the IPv4 experience. more
Dear Chief Financial Officers of tech giants, the internet is in crisis, and you can lead your organization to help solve the problem. You'll be well compensated, and you'll enjoy massive public relations benefits. I fear that if you don't, global governments will force your hand. There is a shortage of available IPv4 addresses but we are years away (possibly a decade or more) from IPv6 viability and adoption in North America. more
There are still a number of countries who have Queen Elizabeth as their titular head of state. My country, Australia, is one of those countries. It's difficult to understand what exactly her role is these days in the context of Australian governmental matters, and I suspect even in the United Kingdom many folk share my constitutional uncertainty... In the United Kingdom every year the Queen reads a speech prepared by the government of the day, which details the legislative measures that are being proposed by the government for the coming year. Earlier this month the Queen's speech included the following statement in her speech. more
The Internet Society Deploy360 Programme issues a call for speakers for a series of upcoming global ION Conferences. ISOC welcomes submissions from IPv6 and DNSSEC experts to speak at any of the following ION conferences. more
After interacting with over 1000 network engineers during training sessions about what they think could help drive IPv6 deployment in Africa, I have come to the realisation that a three prong approach is required... Many training courses focus on the first issue, and quite logically, that's where the real work lies. I've developed such a course that has been delivered in over 45 countries, and there are lots of other great training available, both free and paid. more
LinkedIn has announced that earlier this month, and for the first time in our company's history, more than 50% of its pages were accessed over IPv6 from mobile devices in the US. more
As current statistics now clearly indicate, two-thirds of the estimated 560 million people online are non-English speakers. As one would expect, in the upcoming ICANN Shanghai Meeting of October 28, 2002, IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names, also known as Multilingual Domain Names), are one of the main topics of discussion. This global affair is also fueling the growing list of Internationalized Domain Name Certified Registrars that offer domain names in many other non-English characters with .com, .net, and .org. more
According to IDC, smartphones outsold personal computers, laptops included in Q4 2010! Nokia just announced the demise of the Venerable Symbian in favour of Windows 7 phone and Microsoft's bing search engine! Tectonic shifts are under way to adapt to the rise of wireless broadband, an all IP world, and the growing weight of Apple and Google Android. It is also time to head once again for Barcelona with the Mobile World Congress starting on the 14th. Highlights this year? more
Microsoft has digressed from a previously announced plan to move its internal wireless guest network to IPv6-only. more
The North American Network Operator's Group held its 64th Meeting in San Francisco in early June. Here's my impressions of some of the more interesting sessions that grabbed my attention at this meeting... At the start of the year, the US FCC voted to reclassify Broadband Internet access services under Title II of the US Telecommunications ACT -- effectively viewing Internet access providers as common carriers, with many of the rights and responsibilities that goes with this classification. more