HBO GO: Forced to Rethink Delivery Method

The granddaddy of Pay TV programmers continues to create ground-breaking content especially with its new series "Veep". The edgy new sitcom produces uninterrupted and raunchy situations for a fictional Vice President who cannot get out of her own way, making it hilarious and award-winning. Yet, HBO GO is tied to Cable TV/Satellite economics by an umbilical cord that will be hard to break. more

Restricting Anti-Virus Won’t Work

In a blog post, Stewart Baker proposed restricting access to sophisticated anti-virus software as a way to limit the development of sophisticated malware. It won't work, for many different and independent reasons. To understand why, though, it's necessary to understand how AV programs work. The most important technology used today is the "signature" - a set of patterns of bytes - of each virus. Every commercial AV program on the market operates on a subscription model... more

Why CDNs Are Critical to Future of R&E Networks, Big Data and the Internet

Netflix has announced that they are deploying their own Content Delivery Network (CDN) for delivery of their video streams to Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) around the world. More importantly they are making the hardware and software design of their CDN servers freely available. That means any network can deploy Netflix CDN boxes deep into their network to significantly reduce traffic volumes and improve performance for users. more

Taking Stock of New gTLDs in the Public Markets

A woman on the radio talks about revolution, though it's already passed. The window is now closed. A snapshot can be taken. A baseline can be set. How have the public markets valued the new gTLD program? And more importantly, how will public markets value it going forward? Until a few months ago, the new gTLD program was arcane policy discussion among a very narrow technical population of the Internet community. more

How Many of the New gTLDs Will Fail?

I was just asked the question: How many of the new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) will fail? This poor listener might have hoped for one sentence as response, but that subject is too interesting to be brief. In this scenario you can't look to historical data to measure or predict the success rate of the new TLDs because past new TLDs have been largely managed by big businesses who have strong revenue streams from other business lines that they could use to support a slacking TLD. more

Vint Cerf: The Launch of a New Larger Internet

In preparation for the World IPv6 Launch tomorrow, Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, and a founding father of the Internet, discusses the next version of the Internet, and why we need it.  more

Best Practices for Implementing IPv6 and Avoiding Traffic Exposures

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the potential for IPv6 to create security issues. While there are definitely some security risks of IPv6 deployment, a carefully considered implementation plan can help mitigate against security risks. As we approach World IPv6 Launch tomorrow, I thought it prudent to share the below described incident that iDefense recently observed. more

Flame On!

Here we go again; another instance of really sophisticated spyware has been reported, a system that is "so complex and sophisticated that it's probably an advanced cyber-weapon unleashed by a wealthy country to wage a protracted espionage campaign on Iran". I won't get into the debate about whether or not it's really more impressive than Stuxnet, whether or not it's groundbreaking, or whether or not Israel launched it; let it suffice to say that there are dissenting views. I'm more interested in the implications. more

Google Applies for New TLDs Including .google, .docs, .youtube, .lol

In a blog post today, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, Vint Cerf, has revealed various new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) which the company has submitted applications to ICANN for. Vint Cerf writes: "Given this [TLD] expansion process, we decided to submit applications for new TLDs, which generally fall into four categories..." more

New Generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) Application Reveal Targets June 13, But Many Questions Remain

Even though ICANN is moving full steam ahead with the New gTLD Program, many of the program's specifics are still being finalized. Many important questions related to the Trademark Clearinghouse and the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) still remain unanswered at this point. However, ICANN has recently provided additional details around Application Reveal and Batching and selected the Independent Objector. more

ICANN TAS Window Closes - What’s Next for Applicants?

It's official. After more than six grueling years of work for ICANN and the wider community, the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) application process finally closed a few hours ago. ICANN's Chief Operating Officer later advised the community in a release that just over 1900 applications had been submitted in the TAS with one hour remaining before the system closed (final numbers will be released on reveal day). This number of applicants falls within most industry estimates and shows significant demand as expected from across the globe. more

A Closer Look at the Flame/Flamer/sKyWIper Malware

The world is abuzz this week with some flaming malware - well "Flame" is the family name if you want to be precise. The malware package itself is considerably larger than what you'll typically bump into on average, but the interest it is garnering with the media and antivirus vendors has more to do with the kinds of victims that have sprung up - victims mostly in the Middle East, including Iran - and a couple of vendors claiming the malware as being related to Stuxnet and Duku. more

3 Things You Should Be Doing This Spring and Summer ... If You’re a New TLD Applicant

It would have been difficult to plan for this no-man's-land period we find ourselves in this spring as ICANN rectifies, resets and finally closes their new TLD application window. But for those of us with applications in the black-box hopper, we soldier on. From a marketing standpoint, there are three things we are working on with our partner clients with applications submitted, and if you're in the game too, you might want to consider similar actions. more

National Infrastructure Crisis: Improving Distribution Metrics

Not understanding the need for a newer, more economically sound, eco-friendly, and secure utilities infrastructure can be a (socio-economic disaster in the making), if top leaders of U.S. industry and government do not seek a solution to our historically aged telecommunications, power, and water delivery systems. The legacy systems in place are expensive, un-reliable, publically unsafe, and vulnerable to sabotage on both a large and small scale. more

The Antivirus Uncertainty Principle

The antivirus industry has been trying to deal with false positive detection issues for a long, long time - and it's not going to be fixed anytime soon. To better understand why, the physicist in me draws an analogy with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle - where, in its simplest distillation, the better you know where an atom is, the less likely you'll know it's momentum (and vice versa) - aka the "observer effect". more