IANA Stewardship Transition: Full Steam Ahead

Last week the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) met in Los Angeles to review and discuss public comments concerning the Proposal to Transition the Stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Functions. Upon review of the comments received, the ICG decided to continue advancing the proposal as planned, aiming to make as much progress as possible by the time of ICANN 54, scheduled for October 19-22. more

UN Broadband Commission: Global Broadband Growth in Decline, 4 Billion Still Offline

Broadband Internet is failing to reach those who could benefit most, with Internet access reaching near-saturation in the world's rich nations but not advancing fast enough to benefit the billions of people living in the developing world, according to the 2015 edition of the State of Broadband report. more

Lufthansa to Offer High-Speed Internet Access on Board Short and Medium-Haul Flights

Lufthansa will start offering broadband on board its short and medium-haul flights beginning early summer 2016, according to an announcement made today. more

Rio Becomes First Latin American City to Offer Its Own TLD

Rio de Janeiro has become the first Latin American city with its own dedicated top-level domain (.rio), allowing individuals and entities who want to identify themselves with the Brazilian city to register their desired domain names with the new extension. more

ICANN Turning into a FIFA-Like Organization, Says the Guardian

A story published today in the Guardian warns that the US government's plan to give up control of ICANN may create the web's answer to Fifa. more

U.S. and China Negotiating Cyeberwarfare Control Deal

United States and China are in negotiation to establish a cyberattack agreement, according to reports. If successful, it "could become the first arms control accord for cyberspace, embracing a commitment by each country that it will not be the first to use cyberweapons to cripple the other's critical infrastructure during peacetime," reports David Sanger in the New York Times. more

Global Domain Registrations Edge Closer to 300M: Verisign

The number of domain names registered around the world grew by 2.2 million, or 0.8 percent, to 296 million at the end of June according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief from Verisign. With similar growth, the 300 million mark should be reached around the end of 2015. Worldwide registrations have grown by 16.4 million, or 5.9 percent, year over year. more

Whither Passwords

The primary means of authentication on the Internet is the password -- a half-century old, shared secret mechanism that is difficult to use (especially on mobile devices) and has acknowledged security flaws including attacks at scale. Even so, passwords remain the most prevalent form of authentication with efforts to enhance security typically relying on "bolt on" solutions that increase user friction. more

Ten Years of Secure DNS at .se! (What We Learned)

Ten years ago today, and with 300,000 domains in the zone file, we introduced DNSSEC at .se. It was the end of a fairly long journey, or at least the first stage. The first Swedish workshop to test the new function according to the specifications from the Internet Engineering Task Force was arranged in 1999. At that time, I was still working in the IT Commission's Secretariat, and the standard was far from complete as it turned out. Our ambition was to change the world, at least the world that exists on the internet. more

ICANN Announces Results of New gTLD Universal Acceptance Analysis

ICANN, in conjunction with the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) announced this week the availability of a new report: An Analysis of New gTLD Universal Acceptance. The study focuses on the concept of removing all technical barriers that might hinder a user from accessing any name in any top-level domain (TLD) from any web browser, email client, or other Internet application on any computer or electronic device. more

55 Days Remain Until the 10th Internet Governance Forum in Joao Pessoa, Brazil

On behalf of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) I would like to extend the official invitation from the United Nations Secretary-General which cordially invites and encourages all stakeholders to participate in the upcoming 10th annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, being held this year in the beautiful coastal city of João Pessoa, Brazil. more

One Step Closer to an Accountable ICANN

We believe that certain updates in the latest draft that limit the scope of ICANN's Mission, as specified in paragraph 188, could explicitly prevent ICANN from actively enforcing its contracts with Registries and Registrars or use contracts as a tool to implement consensus policies in the future. We suggest in our comments that revised bylaw text be added explicitly stating that the enforcement and creation of ICANN's contracts with Registries and Registrars... more

Senior U.S. and Chinese Officials Conclude Four-Day Meeting on Cyber Security

Senior U.S. and Chinese officials concluded a four day meeting on Saturday discussing cyber security issues ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Washington later this month. more

5 Reasons Why You Should Adopt NFV for Your CPEs

Communication service providers around the world are about to embark on an epic journey. A journey which has the potential to be a major game changer for hardware and software vendors alike. The simple concept of decoupling software from hardware, referred to as network functions virtualization (NFV), promises to improve an operator's ability to differentiate themselves from the competition by moving network functions from dedicated appliances to generic commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers. more

ICANN Assigns Tor’s .Onion TLD as Special-Use Domain Name

The Internet Engineering Task Force has approved a Draft RFC for "The .onion Special-Use Domain Name" by the Tor Project, the provider of online anonymity and privacy services. more