Unbundling the Social Media Stack - Could a Decentralized Protocol Bring Real Choice and Control?

Project Liberty's Institute sat down with Wendy Seltzer, an advisor to the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP). Wendy was counsel to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and has served on the boards of The Tor Project, Open Source Hardware Association and ICANN. more

Using AM Radio Towers in Designing Wireless Networks

One existing resource that is often overlooked in designing wireless networks is AM radio towers. For the most part, companies deploying fixed wireless and microwave antenna have avoided these towers. This is due to the nature of AM radio, which transmits at such a low frequency that the entire tower is effectively used as the transmitting antenna. The entire tower is energized with the AM signal, and the typical AM tower sits on a base insulator that blocks the tower from being grounded.  more

ICANN 56 in Helsinki - Schedule of DNSSEC Activities

The ICANN 56 meeting takes place in Helsinki, Finland, from June 27-30 and while it is a smaller "policy forum" style of meeting, there will still be some activities related to DNSSEC, DANE and DNS security in general. DNSSEC Workshop The DNSSEC Workshop will take place on the morning of Monday, 27 June 2016. All times are Eastern European Summer Time (EEST), which is UTC+3. more

San Francisco is the Best Place to Kick Off the New gTLD Program

With the ICANN Silicon Valley in San Francisco meeting just six short weeks away, the Internet community's hopes of seeing the launch of the new generic top-level domains (gTLD) program have been once again reinvigorated. A meeting of the ICANN Board of Directors last week produced encouraging resolutions that have given hopeful gTLD applicants the clearest indication yet that San Francisco will be the venue for the final approval of the Applicant Guidebook and the beginning of the Internet's next extraordinary phase of evolution. more

Call for Participation – ICANN DNSSEC and Security Workshop at ICANN68 Virtual Policy Forum

If you are interested in speaking at the ICANN 68 DNSSEC Workshop, please send a brief (1-2 sentence) description of your proposed presentation to [email protected] by 29 May 2020. This online workshop will be Monday, 22 June 2020, from 02:00 – 04:30 UTC (10:00 – 12:30 Kuala Lumpur) We are doing something new this time and would like to get a feel for attendance for this virtual meeting. more

If It Doesn’t Exist, It Can’t Be Abused

A number of outlets have reported that the U.S. Post Service was hacked, apparently by the Chinese government. The big question, of course, is why. It probably isn't for ordinary criminal reasons: The intrusion was carried out by "a sophisticated actor that appears not to be interested in identity theft or credit card fraud," USPS spokesman David Partenheimer said. ... But no customer credit card information from post offices or online purchases at usps.com was breached, they said. more

Total Domain Names Pass 252 Million Worldwide

More than six million domain names were registered in the fourth quarter of 2012, bringing the total number to more than 252 million domain names worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of Dec. 31, 2012, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief from Verisign. The increase of 6.1 million domain names globally equates to a growth rate of 2.5 percent over the third quarter of 2012, and marks the eighth straight quarter with greater than 2 percent growth. Worldwide registrations have grown by 26.6 million, or 11.8 percent, year over year. more

Better Than Best Efforts Routing of Mission Critical Traffic and the FCC

It appears that the FCC will permit exceptions to the standard, plain vanilla best efforts routing standard for Internet traffic, such as the paid peering arrangement recently negotiated between Comcast and Netflix. In both academic and applied papers I have supported this option, with several major conditions... With no opposition that I have seen, companies like Akamai offer better than best efforts routing of "mission critical" traffic from content source to last mile, "retail" Internet Service Providers. more

The IPv4 Market in 2021

Price was the story of the 2021 IPv4 market. Large and small organizations alike continue to invest in their IPv4 infrastructure causing demand for IPv4 address space to intensify. Meanwhile, supply remains constrained. These market factors drove prices up at a historic rate in 2021. more

Positive Outlook for Investments in Backbones

When talking about the problems of attracting infrastructure funds to the telecoms industry, I would make one exception; that is backbone infrastructure... We increasingly describes mobile networks as fibre networks with a wireless access component. This clearly indicates the need for fixed backbone network capacity, eventually all the way to the street. more

FTC Report on Broadband Resurrects Freedom of Service Information

The Federal Trade Commission intends to monitor the information that telecom and cable companies provide about high-speed Internet service in the service plans they offer to customers, according to a report issued last week by the agency. The FTC asserts in the report, released on June 27, that since it has jurisdiction over matters involving consumer protection, it "will continue to enforce the consumer protection laws in the area of broadband access."... The consumer protection sections of the FTC report raise this question: are broadband providers engaging in a deceptive practice when they advertise a connection speed of, for example, "up to" 768 kilobits per second (kbps) - and yet actual speeds are considerably lower? more

Enough About Apple and Encryption: Let’s Talk System Security

This week, the RightsCon Silicon Valley 2016 conference is taking place in San Francisco. Since the use of encryption in general and the Apple/FBI case in particular are likely to be debated, I want to share a perspective on system security. My phone as a system The Apple/FBI case resolves around a phone. Think of your own phone now. When I look at my own phone I have rather sensitive information on it. more

The Regulatory Arbitrage Lovefest

My day job, which includes finishing a book, updating a broadband law treatise, and trying to engage undergraduate students in the challenges of telecommunication and Internet policy, prevents me from weighing in each time I see yet another outrageous claim on such issues as network neutrality, broadband market penetration, and the competitiveness of U.S. telecoms markets. But I have to make time for this one. more

The Google Factor in the Obama Broadband Speech

Every time Google becomes involved in telecommunications it gets international media coverage; and every single time the same question is raised -- why does Google become involved in telecoms infrastructure, plus the underlying issue of it becoming a telecoms operator. This time the question is -- why does Google want to become involved in mobile telecoms and how is it going to compete with the other operators? more

The Data Divide

A report from the Center for Data Innovation warns of a new broadband gap they call the data divide, which is when some parts of society are not sharing in the big societal advantages that come from using and understanding the huge amounts of data that are being generated today. The report includes examples of the data divide that make the concept easier to understand. more