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Supporting Rural Cell Towers

I work with a lot of ISPs that own rural fiber. Some rural network owners have been successful in providing fiber to cell sites near their networks over the last decade. A few sell directly to a cellular carrier, but most of these connections are sold to an intermediate carrier that bundles together cellular connections across a large geographic area. more

Internet Governance Calendar During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The Internet has become an integral part of our lives. Its growth is dependent upon the interaction of engineers, researchers, and network operators to advance networking technologies, policies, governance mechanisms, and deployment. In this undertaking, the Internet's multi-stakeholder governance has relied heavily upon regular face-to-face meetings and conferences to gather individuals and organizations from numerous participating communities. more

NTAG Chair Blog: The Road Ahead

The next six months will be a pivotal period in ICANN & New gTLD applicant relations. April 2014 will mark one year since the Governmental Advisory Committee - better known as the GAC - issued advice that put nearly 400 applications on hold. The Name Collision issue, while no longer a gate for many applicants, currently puts thousands of second level domain names on hold. March will be a key inflection point for this issue as well. more

Are Big Tech CFOs (Inadvertently) Stealing From Shareholders?

When valuing a stock, analysts and shareholders evaluate always revenue and profit. Big tech COFs are sitting on assets worth tens of millions of dollars of annual profit (not just revenue, but true profit) in the form of unallocated IPv4 addresses. By not selling or leasing these out, they are incurring expenses to hold them and missing out on tremendous profits. At a 20X multiple (for context, Cisco is trading at nearly 18X earnings, Google at just over 33X earnings, Shopify at well over 700X earnings), big tech CFOs are actively preventing over $250 billion in market capitalization for their shareholders. more

Kaspersky Loses Appeal Against US Government Ban of Its Security Software

A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. has upheld the federal government’s ban on anti-virus software from the Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab. more

Multi-Stakeholder Internet Governance Is Captured and Presumed Dead

Technical management of the Internet was delegated to ICANN by the U.S. government because it was believed that the private sector would be more agile and responsive to the needs of globally distributed stakeholders. However, this optimism and the faith it has produced has proven to be misplaced since ICANN's multi-stakeholder governance continues falling far short of the basic expectations set when it was created. more

Russian Internet Pioneer Sentenced to Two Years in Prison

Last month, Russian Internet pioneer Alexey Soldatov was sentenced to two years in a labor colony on charges of "abuse of power." Soldatov, the co-founder of Russia's first Internet service provider, Relcom, was convicted for his role as a co-founder and director of the Russian Institute for Development of Public Networks (RIPN). RIPN was founded in 1992 to support research and education networking. more

The Need for Sustainable Open Source Projects

As a long-standing contributor to open standards, and someone trying to become more involved in the open source world (I really need to find an extra ten hours a day!), I am always thinking about these ecosystems, and how they relate to the network engineering world. This article on RedisDB, and in particular this quote, caught my attention. more

The 2024 IPv4 Market in North America

Between 2021 and 2023, the IPv4 market was a roller coaster ride - prices shot up in 2021, peaked in 2022, and plummeted in 2023. Those who expected a recovery in 2024 were sadly disappointed. Prices for IP addresses continued to decline, leveling out during the second half of the year. And yet, market activity remained remarkably unaffected - a sign, perhaps, that the market is settling into a new normal. more

U.S. Federal Communications Commission Votes 2-1 for Net Neutrality Rollback

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 on Thursday to advance a Republican plan to reverse the Obama administration's 2015 'net neutrality' order. more

Carriers Are No Longer Operators

The classic view of a wireline or mobile carrier is that it was an "operator", it ran out cables, raised poles, installed switches, constructed central offices and base stations and the like. However, the figures from Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) show that firm is making 45% of its sales from services, meaning it is constructing and managing networks on behalf of "carriers". NSN is "carrying" a lot of telecoms traffic. This has been accelerated by the global financial crisis... more

The Operationalization of Norms and Principles on Cybersecurity

With two simultaneous processes getting underway in the UN General Assembly's First Committee, the UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) and the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on Cybersecurity, and several technology and multi-stakeholder initiatives pushing cybersecurity improvement, the world of cyber norms has become both more interesting and more complicated. more

.ORG Registry Stays With Current Backend Operator, But Will Save Millions in New Deal

"The non-profit that runs all .org domains and provides the bulk of the funding for the Internet Society and Internet Engineering Task Force has just saved itself millions of dollars a year," reports Kieren McCarthy in The Register. more

Practical Pointers for Paring Domain Name Portfolios

As we enter the new normal, many legal departments have already begun looking for ways to reduce spend even as they are being asked to register COVID-19 domains. IP maintenance fees for patents, trademarks and domains are a natural place to start. While paring back patent and trademark portfolios can yield some significant savings, it's well-known that most corporate domain name portfolios contain registrations that are no longer needed. more

Global Internet Traffic Falls by Around 40% Due to a Google Outage

Worldwide internet traffic plunged by around 40% as Google services suffered a complete black-out, according to web analytics experts. The tech company said all of its services from Google Search to Gmail to YouTube to Google Drive went down for between one and five minutes on Friday. more