ICANN Releases 5th Round of Initial Evaluation Results - 169 TLDs Pass

Mary Iqbal writes to report that ICANN has released the fifth round of Initial Evaluation results, bringing the total number of applications that have passed the Initial Evaluation phase to 169. ICANN is targeting completing Initial Evaluation for all applicants by August 2013. more

Duqu Reported as Precursor to a Future Stuxnet-Like Attack

Virus researchers at Symantec Corp. have revealed a variant of the Stuxnet worm, named Duqu, that is found to be stealing information about industrial control systems. Symantec reports: "Duqu's purpose is to gather intelligence data and assets from entities, such as industrial control system manufacturers, in order to more easily conduct a future attack against another third party. The attackers are looking for information such as design documents that could help them mount a future attack on an industrial control facility... Parts of Duqu are nearly identical to Stuxnet, but with a completely different purpose." more

Broadband Tariffs: The Significant Gap Between Residential and Business

Analysis from Point Topic's recent reports on global broadband tariffs has revealed a significant gap in residential and business tariffs worldwide. Clearly businesses are paying more for their services than residential consumers but the relative differences in the ratios is more marked than might be expected. The first thought is that they are paying for more bandwidth and that is true to an extent. more

Kaspersky Lab to Shut Down U.S. Operations Amid Federal Ban

Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab has announced the closure of its U.S. division, resulting in layoffs for its U.S.-based employees. The decision follows a recent U.S. Commerce Department ban on the sale of Kaspersky software, effective from July 20, due to national security concerns. more

Internet Three Strikes Laws Violate International Law, Says UN Report

Michael Geist reporting in his blog: "The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression has released an important new report that examines freedom of expression on the Internet. The report is very critical of rules such as graduated response/three strikes, arguing that such laws may violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Moreover, the report expresses concerns with notice-and-takedown systems, noting that it is subject to abuse by both governments and private actors." more

Food for Thought on the “New TLD” Business Models

There is always some degree of confusion in discussions about the "new TLDs". Some points of view try to be optimistic, others on the contrary only highlight the bad news, and most refer indistinctly to the "new TLDs" as if they did not break down into different segments, each of which obeys dynamics and constraints of its own. The purpose of this post is to provide some food for thought and to shed some light on those dynamics and constraints... more

Not Another Yearly Recap: What 2018 Tells Us About .brand Domains

It's that special time again! Time to unwind, spend time with loved ones -- and to reflect on another 12 months of progress across the .brand movement. Over the last few years, we've used this end of year assessment and our efforts with MakeWay.World to show you how the industry is being embraced globally -- through a range of examples, statistics and predictions about how the year ahead will be our best ever. more

Will Electronically Steered Antennas Replace Parabolic Antennas in Satellite Ground Stations? (ChatGPT-Assisted Version)

In a previous post, I asked whether electronically steered antennas (ESAs) would replace parabolic antennas in satellite ground stations. I read a few articles suggested by others and by Google search, used some common sense, produced a list of advantages of ESAs, and concluded that it was likely they would eventually replace parabolic antennas for many applications. more

An Economic Perspective on Internet Centrality

The IETF met in November 2022 in London. Among the many sessions that were held in that meeting was a session of the Decentralised Internet Infrastructure Research Group, (DINRG). The research group's ambitions are lofty: DINRG will investigate open research issues in decentralizing infrastructure services such as trust management, identity management, name resolution, resource/asset ownership management, and resource discovery. more

Google Fiber Expanding to Four More Cities

According to news sources Google's fiber-to-the-home service is expanding to four additional cities: Atlanta; Nashville, Tennessee; Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Google Fiber currently is available in Kansas City, Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah. At a price tag of $80 per month, the service offers speeds around 10 times greater than that of the average Internet connection. more

Reaching Google via Asia?

Across the Internet, yesterday, Google users twittered, blogged and emailed that Google search and mail were not usable. And, yesterday afternoon, on Google’s official blog, Urs Hoelzle reported that Google “direct[ed] some […] web traffic through Asia”... Even though Google is very well-connected to a diverse set of other networks, two of these relationships predominate. It is through these relationships that much of the Internet reaches Google... more

Gall’s Law and the Network

In Systemantics: How Systems Really Work and How They Fail, John Gall says: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system." In the software development world, this is called Gall's Law... more

ITU Secretary-General Elect Doreen Bogdan-Martin

This morning in Bucharest, Doreen Bogdan-Martin was elected by the member nations of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as its 12th Secretary-General. Of the 164 votes cast, she received 139 -- an overwhelming majority of 85 percent. Only 15 countries voted for her opponent, Rashid Ismailov of Russia, who sought to implement a divisive techno-political agenda. more

Once Again, Why Internet Voting Doesn’t Work

An acquaintance said, "We trust our electronic systems to transfer millions of dollars of value; I suspect we will eventually develop schemes we will trust to record and count votes." Unfortunately, this is one of the chronic fallacies that make voting security experts tear their remaining hair out. The security models are entirely different, so what banks do is completely irrelevant to voting. more

FCC Drops Every Major Item from the Agenda

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has taken all rulemakings off agenda a day after the Republican Party lawmakers' request. more