A strange feeling came over me after I got home from ICANN 47 in Durban, something I haven't felt after an ICANN meeting before. The feeling? Optimism. I'm optimistic, albeit cautiously so, about the future of ICANN and by extension, hopefully that of Internet governance in general. If the meeting in Durban is any indication, we've come a long way in the past year. There were no indicted war criminals invited to dinner. And though it may be too soon to say for sure, I don't think a letter will be sent to the government of South Africa about the quality of the hotel. more
Are you interested in sharing lessons you've learned in deploying DNSSEC or DANE with the wider community? Have you performed new measurements related to DNSSEC deployment that you want to share publicly? Do you have a new tool or service that you think people in the DNSSEC community would find interesting? Are you seeking feedback on some ideas you have to make DNSSEC better or easier to deploy? more
ICANN has published a short paper in advance of its 65th meeting in Marrakech which starts on 23 June 2019. Entitled, "ICANN Org's Readiness to Support Future Rounds of New gTLDs," it describes ICANN's working assumptions for "policy implementation and operational readiness for a subsequent round of new gTLDs". The document is necessary for ICANN to move forward with essential preparations for the next round. more
If you can't address your customers and the people interacting with your network face to face, at least know where they are -- anywhere in the world, anytime you want to. That's possible with geolocation technology, and many businesses are keen on acquiring the best IP geolocation API for cybersecurity and other purposes. However, before committing to a particular solution, each product needs to be carefully evaluated according to the exact needs of a prospective buyer. more
On 24 August, fifteen applicants for the .corp, .home, or .mail (CHM) new gTLDs sent a letter to the ICANN Board asking for action on the stalled process of the their applications. This points to the answer for the question I asked in march of this year: Whatever happened with namespace collision issues and the gTLD Round of 2012. As the letter from the applicants indicates, ICANN has done little to deal with issues concerned with namespace collisions in the last 2 years. Is it now time for action? more
It is interesting to follow what is happening with triple and quadruple play broadband prices in competitive markets. Through triple and quadruple play, customers are increasingly getting more services for the same money. As most fixed telecoms markets are still largely monopolistic in nature, basic access charges remain high; but good prices are even available in markets with healthy wholesale competition, if one shops around. more
A total of eighteen applications for new Top Level Domains (TLDs) have been withdrawn by the applicants. Of the 18 applications that have been withdrawn so far, just five were applications for generic terms, and the remaining thirteen withdrawn applications were for branded Top Level Domains. In the case of the branded TLDs, it may be that the applicant originally only filed what has been called a "defensive application", meaning that the company applied for the Top Level Domain to prevent its falling in the hands of a competitor. more
In a joint statement released today by Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google, and Lowell McAdam, President and CEO of Verizon Wireless, the two companies have expressed their support for making existing 'net neutrality' principles enforceable. The joint statement was published as a blog post late Wednesday on both Google and Verizon policy blogs. more
After a political and administrative process of more than a month Tom Wheeler has finally been nominated by President Obama as the new chairman of the FCC with the full support of Congress. Unlike other regulators around the world the FCC is directly accountable to the American Congress, making it a far more political body than most other regulators. I have known Tom since 1983. He is an enormously energetic person and has been involved in the ICT industry for most of his working life, holding very senior positions within the American industry. more
If any of you are attending the USENIX Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference in San Diego this week, the Internet Society's "Internet ON" (ION) Conference is co-located with LISA12 and will take place tomorrow, December 11, 2012, from 1:30 - 5:00 pm US Pacific time. more
How can we make the Internet of Things (IoT) more interoperable? How can we help ensure that when you buy a light bulb from one IoT vendor it will work with the light bulb from another IoT vendor? How can we avoid getting to a place where we have to use many different apps to control all the different devices in our homes? As we said in the Internet Society's IoT Overview: Understanding the Issues and Challenges of a More Connected World, "a fragmented environment of proprietary IoT technical implementations will inhibit value for users and industry. more
Recently the relevancy of Spamhaus and whether it is still necessary has been raised in various discussions and in particular among marketers. I think this is an interesting question for a lot of reasons. One is because there's such a broad range of opinions about Spamhaus and almost none of them are ambivalent. Another is because so many people don't really know what Spamhaus does, other than publish the SBL and ROKSO. more
Google today announced an initiative called "Project Shield", aimed at using its infrastructure to protect free expression online. "The service currently combines Google's DDoS mitigation technologies and Page Speed Service (PSS), which allow websites to serve their content through Google to be better protected from DDoS attacks." Google is currently seeking "trusted testers" and people with sites that serve media, elections and human rights-related content. more
Today I released a report on 'National cyber crime and online threats reporting centres. A study into national and international cooperation'. Mitigating online threats and the subsequent enforcing of violations of laws often involves many different organisations and countries. Many countries are presently engaged in erecting national centres aimed at reporting cyber crime, spam or botnet mitigation. more
As I'm sure you've heard by now, June 8, 2011 is World IPv6 Day. On that day, several major content providers will turn on IPv6 on their public-facing services for a 24-hour period and see what happens. For some time, there's been concern that turning on IPv6 on a web site's main URL would cause unacceptable levels of breakage. Nevertheless, forward-looking organizations realized that they needed to start deploying IPv6. more