Netflix Has Buyer’s Remorse Over Its Paid Peering Deal With Comcast

Soon after capitulating to Comcast's surcharge demand for improved treatment of its traffic, Netflix got better downstream delivery speeds. Apparently Comcast did not have to undertake a major bandwidth expansion program. Much to the immediate relief of Netflix, Comcast merely needed to allocate more ports for Netflix traffic. So with a reallocation of available bandwidth, Comcast solved Netflix's quality of service dilemma apparently without degrading service to anyone else, upstream or downstream. more

Robert Soloway Pleads Guilty

Large scale spammer Robert Soloway, whose criminal trial was scheduled to start in a week and a half pled guilty to most of the charges against him. The indictment made three categories of charges. Counts 1-10 were mail fraud, due to Soloway delivering his spamware through the mail, and the product egregiously failing to be what he said it was, notably including 30 million addresses purported to be opt-in. Counts 11-17 seven were wire fraud, sending spam making false claims about the product, support, guarantee... more

Governments Changing Censorship Tactics as More Websites Adopt HTTPS

With websites and social media platforms moving from HTTP to secure HTTPs connections in recent years, a new degree of complication is affecting Internet censorship efforts around the world. more

Mac Hit by Another Wave of Malware… Users in Denial?

In case you haven't been watching cyber news recently, last week various security researchers published that Macs were infected by the Flashback Trojan and that the total number of infections worldwide was 600,000. This number was published by a couple of blogs. I debated writing about this topic since we had a previous Mac outbreak last year that initially spiked up, caused Apple to go into denial about the affair before issuing a fix, and then the malware kind of went away. Will this follow the same pattern? more

Maslow’s Hammer Meets the Software Defined Data Center

In my previous post, I talked about the significance of DNS in connection with the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) and Software Defined Networking. Although the second generation DNS provisioning model I outlined should have seemed straight-forward enough, in real life it is anything but. In my view, the real-world complications of a seemingly trivial issue are largely related to how the network industry approaches IP addressing. more

First Square Mile is not the Last or First Mile: Discovery not Just Choices!

The term "last mile" highlights the fact that we are the consumers at the end of a broadband "pipe". Saying "first mile" is a little better but the Internet is not a pipe to or from somewhere else. It's about what we can do locally and then what we can do when we interconnect with other neighborhoods. It's better to describe our neighborhood as the first square mile. Telecom is about selling us services; the Internet is about what we can do ourselves locally and then interconnecting with others everywhere. In writing the First Square Mile - Our Neighborhood essay which I just posted I came to better understand the fundamental difference between the world of telecom which is about giving you choices and the Internet which provides opportunity to discover what we can't anticipate... more

RIPE NCC is Reaching the Last /8 of IPv4

In an earlier article, IPv4 - Business As Usual, we pointed out that the RIPE NCC will reach the last /8 of IPv4 address space (16,777,216 addresses) sometime later this year. On Friday, 14 September 2012 we reached this important milestone; we allocated the last IPv4 addresses from the unallocated pool. From now on, the RIPE NCC can only distribute IPv6 addresses and a one-time /22 IPv4 allocation from the last /8 to those Local Internet Registries (LIRs) that meet the requirements. more

Wow, That’s a Lot of Applications

ICANN unveiled all the applications for new top level domains today, all 1,930 of them. Most of them were fairly predictable, big companies applying for their own names like .IBM, .DUPONT, .AUDI, and .HSBC. The most applications for the same name were 13 for .APP, 11 for .INC and .HOME, 10 for .ART, 9 for .SHOP, .LLC, .BOOK, and .BLOG. None of those claim community support so they'll have to slug it out in the contention process. more

Cuba’s Odd Emphasis on the National Intranet

In 2014, Cuba embarked on a program for the "informatization" of society and "advances in the informatization of society" was the theme of the short videos by ETECSA president Mayra Arevich Marín and Vice Minister of Communications Wilfredo González... I was struck by the emphasis on the Cuban national intranet, as opposed to the global Internet... This emphasis is reflected in the relatively low price of intranet access and the continued development of Cuban content and services. more

Global Payments Breach Confirmation

This morning, Global Payments held a conference call with investors and analysts covering their earlier breach announcement and projected earnings. Global Payments had also released an update advisory yesterday stating that "the company believes that the affected portion of its processing system is confined to North America and less than 1,500,000 card numbers have been exported" and that only Track 2 card data may have been stolen. more

The Battle for “.nyc”: Is RFP the Answer?

New York City government officials announced that they will be applying for the ".nyc" top-level domain (TLD) extension and are looking to choose a qualified vendor to operate the TLD on their behalf. New York City's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) recently issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to try to find a qualified vendor to manage and market the city TLD in hope that they can raise more revenues for the city, to help local small businesses, promote tourism and help extend the branding image of NYC. more

Satellite Companies Fighting Over RDOF

There has been an interesting public fight going on at the FCC as Viasat has been telling the FCC that Elon Musk's Starlink should not be eligible for funding from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). At stake is the $886 million that Starlink won in December's RDOF auction that is still under review at the FCC. Viasat had originally filed comments at the FCC stating that the company did not believe that Starlink could fulfill the RDOF requirements in some of the grant award areas. more

Nominet Rolls Out DNSSEC for 9.4 Million .UK Domains

UK registry Nominet has enabled the deployment of domain name system security extensions (DNSSEC) for 9.4 million second level .uk domains. Completing the rollout represents over a year's work and marks an important milestone in making the web a more trusted environment for UK consumers and businesses, says Nominet, which is responsible for running the .uk internet infrastructure. more

Appearing Respondents Called Out as Cybersquatters

UDRP complainants prevail in the range of 85% to 90% which approximately correlates with the percentage that respondents default in responding to complaints. The annual number of complaints administered by ICANN providers has been hovering around 4,000 +. Astonishingly, the number has remained steady for a good number of years despite the phenomenal increase... Compared to the whole, there are a relatively small number of contested disputes, perhaps in the annual range of 400 to 500, and of those a larger percentage are called out as cybersquatters. more

Domain Transfers… Domain Hijacking… Make Your Voice Heard

ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organisation (GNSO) has formed a working group to consider changes to the domain transfer process to enhance security and reduce hijacking. The working group consists of registrars, aftermarket players, domainers and other members of the ICANN Community. The group published its preliminary recommendations at the ICANN meeting in Brussels two weeks ago and the 20-day comment period has just begun. more