It Is Payback Time! - Government of Sweden on Internet Governance

Today is a wonderful day for us working with Internet Governance that do believe in an Open Internet and multi stakeholder model for its governance. FTTH Council is having its annual meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, and the IT Minister, Anna-Karin Hatt, made an opening speech that was among the strongest I have heard from any country. Yes, any country. And I do not even know if any organization have said such strong things. more

New Work in the Development and Management of EPP Extensions

On Dec. 12, 2013, the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) announced the formation of a new working group, Extensible Provisioning Protocol Extensions (eppext). The working group was formed to create an Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) registry of Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) extensions and to review specifications of extensions for inclusion in the registry. EPP is the standard domain name provisioning protocol for generic top-level domain (gTLD) name registries that operate under the auspices of ICANN. more

Mind the Step(-function): Are We Really Less Secure Than We Were a Year Ago?

In January 1995, the RFC Editor published RFC 1752: "The Recommendation for the IP Next Generation Protocol"... The Internet is a security officer's nightmare -- so much openness, so easy to capture packet traffic (and/or spoof it!) and send all manner of unwanted traffic. It was built as a research network, hosted by institutes that were 1/ professionally responsible and 2/ interested in working together collegially. So, in the 19 years since the publication of that statement, have we really failed to address the stated goal? more

Global M2M Connections Reached 195 Million in 2013, Expected to Reach 250 Million In 2014

Between 2010 and 2013, 120 million Machine to Machine (M2M) connections have been added globally reaching a total of 195 million in Q4 2013, according to a recent study by the GSMA. Globally, M2M connections account for 2.8% of total mobile connections in 2013, up from 1.4% in 2010. Global M2M connections will reach a quarter of a billion (250 million) in 2014, said the GSMA. more

Entrenched Decision Makers Won’t Hold Back IaaS Adoption

In an interesting article on Information Week, Jonathan Feldman makes the argument that because of entrenched attitudes and established practices among "IT infrastructure gurus," Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) will fail to gain traction, forcing developers to turn towards Platform as a service (PaaS) as the route of least resistance. Feldman is not anti-IaaS, he makes it clear that he thinks enterprise infrastructure managers are making a mistake, but believes they'll continue to make it anyway. more

Top 4 Lessons from CCTA 2014

Sun, surf, and ... service operators? It's a match made in heaven! The Caribbean cable and telecommunications industry may not be large, but it is an important and fast-growing region. The recent Caribbean Cable & Telecommunications Association (CCTA) Annual Meeting in Puerto Rico threw the spotlight on this slice of paradise and I was there to catch up on some of the trends emerging for the year ahead. more

Comcast to Buy Time Warner Cable, Making It Largest Cable Provider in U.S.

Comcast has reached an agreement to acquire Time Warner Cable, according to a tweet from CNBC reporter, Dave Faber. The new company, based on the $44 billion purchase, will be by far the largest cable provider in the U.S. with over 33 million subscribers, and is assumed to face tough review from the Federal Communications Commission. more

Audio Recording from the “Power, Privacy, and the Internet” Conference

On October 30 – 31, 2013, The New York Review of Books held a conference called "Power, Privacy, and the Internet," taking a look at the role of the Internet both as a vehicle of political and cultural dissent and, in the hands of the state, as a weapon of repression and control. The recordings from the event have recently been released where listeners can stream or download the audio. more

Court Says gTLDs Aren’t ‘Domain Names’ for Cybersquatting Purposes, Declines LRO Review of .delmonte

A Swiss Del Monte entity that had a license to use the "DEL MONTE" mark applies to operate the .delmonte generic top level domain (gTLD). Another Del Monte entity, based in Delaware, filed a "legal rights objection" (LRO) - under WIPO-established procedures - to the Swiss Del Monte's application. A three member panel sustained the Delaware company's LRO... The Swiss entity sued in federal court seeking a declaration that it had sufficient rights in the "DEL MONTE" mark to operate the TLD... more

Namecoin Decentralized DNS Research

The holidays open up a block of time to catch up on "I meant to read that" bookmarks, RSS feeds, and all the favorited and forgotten tweets. I made it through 50 before a NormanShark blog post kicked off a research project. The analysts found a malware sample which was using .bit domains in their communications infrastructure, but .bit ... what is that? .bit is a TLD operating outside of ICANN. Some would say they are TLD squatting, but I leave that opinion up to the reader. more

Turkish Parliament Approves Internet Bill, Lets Government Block Websites, Seize Personal Data

Turkey's Parliament has passed a bill that includes controversial arrangements concerning the protection of online privacy despite concerns raised by the European Union as well as Turkish NGOs and opposition parties, according to a report today by Turkey's Daily News. more

Asia Pac Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress to Be Held in Hong Kong on May 14-15

The Asia Pac Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress for first and prospective second round applicants will be held in Hong Kong and timed to take place in conjunction with the International Trademark Associations' (INTA) 136 Annual Conference at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) starting on May 10. more

Addressing 2013 - That Was the Year That Was

Time for another annual roundup from the world of IP addresses. What happened in 2013 and what is likely to happen in 2014? This is an update to the reports prepared at the same time in previous years, so let's see what has changed in the past 12 months in addressing the Internet, and look at how IP address allocation information can inform us of the changing nature of the network itself. more

Conditions for Launching your .Brand

The post addresses the factors affecting any decision to rebrand under a new Top-Level Domain (TLD). Depending on the TLDs owned by the competing companies, rebranding can be critical, merely advantageous, or a matter of wait-and-see. (This post does not address signal location/geography, strategies for expanding a brand, or the merits of defensive and offensive domain name registrations under relevant new gTLDs.) First, a simple definition... more