Critical Look at New gTLD Registries’ Tactics

This post outlines some faulty decisions by new gTLD registries. The purpose is to guide future expansions and, hopefully, adjust some of the decisions that current registries have adopted, including demand prediction, pricing, marketing, doing good versus not doing good, and launch date... GTLDs that have no competition do not need to race to launch. They have the luxury of waiting to better assess prices and postpone investments in capacity. more

Implications of ICANN’s New TLD Disqualification Policies and Cybersquatting 3-Strike Law

ICANN's proposed final applicant guidebook unraveled some new policies that would disqualify applicants from the new TLD program. ICANN states that if you lose 3 UDRP cases, you will be disqualified from being a major shareholder, partner, officer, director of a new top-level domain registry... Has ICANN opened a new can of worms with the 3-strike rule? more

DNSSEC is But One Link in the Security Chain

As the implementation of DNSSEC continues to gather momentum and with a number of ccTLDs, and the '.org' gTLD having deployed it into their production systems, I think it is worth pausing to take a look at the entire DNSSEC situation. Whilst it is absolutely clear that DNSSEC is a significant step forward in terms of securing the DNS, it is but one link in the security chain and is therefore not, in itself, a comprehensive solution to fully securing the DNS system. more

ICANN Takes “Fail” To A Whole New Level

Today is April 12 2012. It's also meant to be the day that the new TLD application window closes. Now it's not. ICANN has spectacularly failed to manage the new TLD process and will miss its own deadline by over a week... In a rather badly worded announcement ICANN states that it's extending the deadline for online applications (the only way to apply) until April 20th at 23:59 UTC. more

Blockchain Technology Can Solve Some of Africa’s Problems

Lately, the word blockchain is gaining a lot of attention from businesses, investors and governments, especially around how it could transform how we do business today. As the world looks up to Blockchain technology for radical transformations in many industries and sectors, I want to take a look at how it could help governance in Africa.
The African continent is plagued with corruption, bad governance, mismanagement and lack of accountability. more

AXIS - The Fulcrum of Africa’s Internet Success

The Internet Society (ISOC) has been working with the African Union (AU) to facilitate the African Internet Exchange System (AXIS). This AXIS project funded by the EU-Africa Infrastructure Trust Fund and the Government of Luxembourg will help keep Internet traffic in Africa internal to the continent and avoid expensive international transit costs and delay latency in routing Internet traffic through other continents. more

Supreme Court Declines to Hear Wikimedia Foundation’s Challenge to NSA Surveillance

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear the Wikimedia Foundation's appeal of a lower court's decision to dismiss their lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA).  more

Implications of DoD IPv6 Mandate on IPv4 Market

Recent Department of Defense IPv4 activity and announcements about IPv6 indicate a shift in their perspective and suggest potential impacts on the IPv4 address market. The shift could include the release of up to 175 million IPv4 addresses in the coming years, creating a risk of a glut in the market. For perspective, the market has transferred 380 million addresses over eleven years. more

Where Every Phisher Knows Your Name

Spear phishing is the unholy love child of email spam and social engineering. It refers to when a message is specifically crafted, using either public or previously stolen information, to fool the recipient into believing that it's legitimate. This personalization is usually fairly general, like mentioning the recipient's employer (easily gleaned from their domain name.) Sometimes they address you by name. Much scarier is when they use more deeply personal information stolen from one of your contacts... more

Is the New Top-Level Domains “Technical Issue” a Harbinger of Future gTLD Issues?

Does the "technical issue" announced today in ICANN's TLD Application System (TAS) and the subsequent extension of the submission deadline call into question the stability and integrity of the new gTLD program? This development underscores the notion that ICANN could consider a more metered and staged approach to the introduction of gTLDs... more

Google Voice: Race to the Bottom for Telephony - or Something Else?

Just when you thought making phone calls couldn't get any cheaper, along comes last week's news from Google about their latest iteration of Google Voice. There have been several steps along the way for Google to get to this point, and there are a host of reasons why this news is of interest to service providers of all stripes. I often write about how certain technologies and disruptive forces change the business of being a service provider, and this is but the latest example. more

Bloomberg on Netflix as World’s Biggest User of Cloud Computing

Netflix is arguable one of the world's biggest users of cloud computing, renting all its computing power from Amazon Web Services, the cloud division of Amazon.com, which runs its own video-streaming service that competes with Netflix. Ashlee Vance from Bloomberg reports. more

Russian Cyberattack Disrupts Operations at Japan’s Largest Maritime Port: Global Threat Intensifies

Japan's largest maritime port, the Port of Nagoya, suffered significant disruption due to a cyberattack, allegedly by the Russian group Lockbit 3.0. The attack, involving ransomware that locks systems until a payment is made, resulted in a terminal outage on Tuesday, with operations expected to resume Thursday. more

IBM to Acquire Red Hat, Plan to Provide Open Approach to Cloud

IBM and Red Hat, leading provider of open source cloud software, announced today that IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion. This changes everything about the cloud market, says Ginni Rometty, IBM President and CEO. "IBM will become the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses." more

DNSSEC and DNS over TLS

The APNIC Blog has recently published a very interesting article by Willem Toorop of NLnet Labs on the relationship between Security Extensions for the DNS (DNSSEC) and DNS over Transport Layer Security. Willem is probably being deliberately provocative in claiming that "DoT could realistically become a viable replacement for DNSSEC." If provoking a reaction was indeed Willem's intention, then he has succeeded for me, as it has prompted this reaction. more