Making Sense of Google’s .xyz gTLD Branding

Google has a newly created parent, a holding company that is now its official owner. Of course, Google will keep using its extremely well-known name for its core search and related businesses. But the company now operates under an entity known as Alphabet -- to give its name with extension, Alphabet.xyz. Here specialists in gTLDs may be scratching their heads. Why .xyz? Why this little-known domain for one of the world's great corporations? more

A New Quality gTLD Can Compete with .COM

If you choose a new generic top-level domain (gTLD), will it be able to compete with .com? A recent academic paper indicates that the answer is yes if your new gTLD is of outstanding quality. "How Quality Drives the Rise and Fall of High-Tech Products" by professors Tellus, Yin, and Niraj in the Sloan Management Review provides evidence that new products can beat out established rivals... more

I Spoke to a Club Manager

We, domain name and Trademark professionals, think end-users know about domain names. The truth is that few of them have ever heard of what a domain name is and worth; very few have heard about new descriptive domain names so I asked a Club manager my questions... Representatives of a famous French sports club were there and I bumped into them to ask my question: "any plan to change to a .club domain name?" more

OpenDNS Adopts Proposed DNS Security Solution: DNSCurve

For more than 15 years, the IETF has been working on DNSSEC, a set of extensions to apply digital signatures to DNS. Millions of dollars in government grants and several reboots from scratch later, DNSSEC is just starting to see real world testing. And that testing is minimal -- only about 400 of the more than 85,000,000 .com domains support DNSSEC, fewer than 20% of US government agencies met their mandated December 31, 2009 deadline for DNSSEC deployment, and only two of the thirteen root zone name servers is testing with even dummy DNSSEC data. more

Bigger, Faster, Better (and Cheaper!)

Let's take a second to look back some 50 years to the world of 1972 and the technology and telecommunications environment at that time. The world of 1972 was one populated by a relatively small collection of massive (and eye-wateringly expensive) mainframe computers that were tended by a set of computer operators working around the clock and directed by specialized programmers, trained in the obscure symbol set used by the job control systems on these computers. more

Strange Email Used to Inform Marriott Customers About the Massive Data Breach

Millions of email warnings were sent out by Marriot on Friday to warn customers about the massive data breach which has affected close to half a billion guest data. more

Proxy-Privacy User Higher for Illicit Domains

WHOIS issues are looming large for the ICANN meeting next week, starting with an all-day WHOIS Policy Review on Sunday (background). WHOIS is a subject that has been the recent topic of a number of issues including a debacle over potentially disclosing the identities of compliance reporters to spammers and criminal domainers. more

2016 Predictions: What to Expect for the Next Year in New TLDs

Last week I published a blog looking back on the year that was 2015 and reflecting on some of the challenges and achievements for new TLDs. Turning our gaze forward, I think 2016 is shaping up to be the biggest and best year that we've enjoyed to date and will surpass many expectations as we continue the push towards mainstream adoption of these wonderful, innovative digital assets. more

DNSSEC Adoption Part 2: The Current Functionality Gap

Registrars have the opportunity to fundamentally change the landscape of the Internet's security infrastructure by working to close the DNSSEC functionality gap. Virtually everything every Internet user does on the Internet depends on the DNS. DNSSEC is not just about protecting the DNS, it is about building a secure infrastructure foundation upon which new and innovative services and applications can be built to benefit us all. Registrars are the linchpins to advancing the deployment of DNSSEC. more

The New Clearwire

The new Clearwire could be game-changing, but the rules of the game may not be quite as Clearwire presents them. I have been wondering since last July whether something significant would happen in the Google/Sprint world. The deal announcement earlier this weekseems to be that key development... In a nutshell, Sprint will contribute its substantial spectrum licenses in the 2.5 GHz range and its WiMAX-related assets and intellectual property. Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks will invest a total of $3.2 billion. more

ICANN Assigns Tor’s .Onion TLD as Special-Use Domain Name

The Internet Engineering Task Force has approved a Draft RFC for "The .onion Special-Use Domain Name" by the Tor Project, the provider of online anonymity and privacy services. more

Why I’m Standing for the ICANN Board and Why I’ve made My Statement Public

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

Interview With Michael Froomkin: Watching ICANN Through IETF: Part I

Michael Froomkin, a Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law and one of the founding members of ICANNWatch has recently written an article for the Harvard Law Review called, "[email protected]: Toward a Critical Theory of Cyberspace". One of the areas covered in this article is a comparison made between the ICANN model and that of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Michael Froomkin has underlined several lessons that can be learned from this contrast, including a suggestion "that claiming kinship with the IETF model is a way of claiming legitimacy, but that not every one who makes this claim is entitled to do so".

What follows is a two-part interview with Michael Froomkin and a closer look at his recent article in the Harvard Law Review. more

Comcast Unleashes Trial DNS Redirection in Select States

In a post today on Comcast's blog, Chris Griffiths, DNS Engineering Manger, has informed customers that they have begun to role a DNS redirection service -- a controversial service offered by several other ISPs over the years to redirect mistyped URLs to ad-based pages instead of a typical 404 error page. The service called "Domain Name Helper Service" is being launched as a market trial in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington according to the company. more

Notes from NANOG 83

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