Julius Genachowski, FCC, and White Spaces: The Good and Not So Good News

Julius Genachowski, Obama's nominee to head the FCC, is a friend of Fred Wilson. Fred gives ten reasons why he likes the nominee on his blog. Genachowski was a top technology advisor to Obama during his campaign and reportedly advised the campaign on its superb use of the Internet. He is also a supporter of "net neutrality" although the devil is in the details on that issue. Even though the nominee is a lawyer, he has business experience as a VC, as an Internet executive, and as a board member of various Internet companies -- all good reasons to be hopeful about this very important policy post. That's the good news. The bad news from several days ago... more

Why .CHAT Could Be All That .TEL Wanted to Be and More

Almost everyone that has been working in the domain name industry for a while has a story about .TEL. It was introduced in 2005 and went live in 2009 with a flurry of publicity. It was a grand concept aiming to revolutionize the way in which people keep in touch. Unlike traditional domain names, the purpose of a .TEL domain name is to help manage and exchange contact information about people and corporate entities. more

Did We Build the ‘Right’ Internet? (An Interview with Prof Andrew Russell)

The longer I have been in the tech industry, the more I have come to appreciate the hidden complexity and subtlety of its past. A book that caught my attention is 'Open Standards and the Digital Age' by Prof Andrew Russell of Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. This important work shines a fresh light on the process that resulted in today's Internet. For me, it places the standard 'triumphant' narrative of the rise of TCP/IP into a more nuanced context. more

Big Data’s Role in Helping Shipping Firms Weather the Supply Chain Crisis

When it comes to the economy, the global supply chain was one of the biggest casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic. Port closures and soaring infection rates hampered logistics providers' ability to schedule deliveries and predict risks. In turn, manufacturers' demand projections were challenged, leading to empty shelves worldwide. A lack of shipping containers has affected supply chains, with shippers scrambling to find usable containers before they disappear into service. more

Large BGP Leak by Google Disrupts Internet in Japan

At 03:22 UTC on Friday, 25 August 2017, the Internet experienced the effects of another massive BGP routing leak. This time it was Google who leaked over 160,000 prefixes to Verizon, who in turn accepted these routes and passed them on. Despite the fact that the leak took place in Chicago, Illinois, it had devastating consequences for the internet in Japan, half a world away. Two of Japan's major telecoms (KDDI and NTT's OCN) were severely affected, posting outage notices (KDDI / OCN pictured below). more

The “Pact for the Future”: A Bold Vision for Global Cooperation with Lingering Doubts on SDGs Progress

Global leaders gathered in New York at the Summit of the Future and adopted the "Pact for the Future" on Sunday 22nd September. This is a historic milestone as the Pact is the first international agreement aimed at securing a better digital future for all, grounded in human rights. The recent adoption of the "Pact for the Future" at the United Nations General Assembly marks a significant step toward revitalizing multilateral cooperation in an increasingly fragmented world. more

US Court Upholds FCC’s Net Neutrality Repeal But Says States Can’t Be Barred from Passing Own Rules

A U.S. court decision today determined net neutrality laws could return at the state level overruling Trump administration's effort to block states from passing their own net neutrality laws. more

Annual Internet Traffic to Grow More Than 20 Percent, Reaching 1.6 Zettabytes by 2018

Global IP traffic for fixed and mobile connections is expected to reach an annual run rate of 1.6 zettabytes -- more than one and a half trillion gigabytes per year by 2018, according to the Cisco's Visual Networking Index. more

Another Day in Court for CFIT vs. VeriSign and ICANN

The CFIT vs. VeriSign et. al. lawsuit had another day in court today. ...The key point coming out of a hearing today (Friday, June 09, 2006) in front of U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte in San Jose, California is that the arguments made by CFIT against the .com deal between ICANN and VeriSign will continue. ...There was one moment of some drama. After lawyers for VeriSign and ICANN both argued that the 7 percent price increases without the need for justification would not be a violation of anti-trust law, Judge Whyte asked the lawyer for ICANN if it would be an anti-trust violation if VeriSign had been granted an annual 100 percent increase. The lawyer said, "no." Other lawyers for other matters sitting in the audience seemed to shift uneasily... more

Congress Must Approve Transfer of IANA Function to ICANN

Earlier this year, the Obama Administration announced its plans to turn over the very heart of the Internet to the control of ICANN. On Monday, Republican leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees sent a letter asking the Government Accountability Office to study whether a Congressional vote on the transfer is required under the Constitution's Property Clause because administration of the root zone file is a government asset, created under government contract. Some will no doubt dismiss the letter as Republican obstructionism. more

Network Design: If You Haven’t Found the Tradeoff…

This week, I ran into an interesting article over at Free Code Camp about design tradeoffs... If you think you've found a design with no tradeoffs, well... Guess what? You've not looked hard enough. This is something I say often enough, of course, so what's the point? The point is this: We still don't really think about this in network design. This shows up in many different places; it's worth taking a look at just a few. more

EFF and 26 Other Organizations Send Letter to Internet Society Urging It to Stop Sale of .ORG

EFF and 26 other organizations, including Wikimedia Foundation, Public Knowledge, National Council of Nonprofits, YWCA and YMCA, sent a letter today to the Internet Society (ISOC), urging it to stop the sale of the Public Interest Registry (PIR) -- operator of .ORG top-level domain -- to private equity firm Ethos Capital. more

A 60% Rise Reported on Malware Designed to Harvest Consumers’ Digital Data, aka Password Stealers

A significant rise has been detected in the use of malware aimed at harvesting consumer data, known as password stealers. more

The Limits of Notice and Takedown

In The Limits of Filtering, Evan Engstrom and Nick Feamster argue eloquently that the costs of a "takedown-staydown" system to defend against copyright infringement would be prohibitive for online service providers (OSPs) and therefore deprive OSPs of otherwise interested investors. I agree that Engstrom and Feamster raise some valid points, particularly including that content recognition technologies are not perfect... However, we must also remember that the current DMCA regime imposes significant costs... more

Hyper-Volumetric DDoS Attack Sets New Benchmark at 22.2 Tbps

A record-shattering DDoS attack peaking at 22.2 Tbps signals a new era of cyber aggression, driven by weaponized IoT botnets and raising urgent questions about global internet resilience. more