IPv6 Floating on the Ethernet

Remarkable how Ethernet has evolved and been widely adopted over this quarter of a century period extending its reach from LAN to MAN to WAN and from 10meg to 10gigE. One has to credit the IEEE for quite an efficient job as a standards body. Over in the IP world, this month of March will see IETF 74 meet in San Francisco and continue to ponder transitions, address translations, double translations, even carrier grade translations... more

The DNSSEC Groundswell

It's been 15 long years since the standard for DNSSEC was developed and sadly adoption has been painfully low until recently, thanks to Dan Kaminsky, the infamous Internet Researcher who indentified that gaping hole in the DNS. The discovery of the fundamental flaw in DNS sparked industry wide attention! Every day, we move a little closer to widespread DNSSEC adoption, so I thought I'd take a moment and highlight some of the most notable milestones... more

Survey: Cloud Computing ‘No Hype’, But Fear of Security and Control Slowing Adoption

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the vast majority of business and IT executives report that cloud computing is a viable technology option that can improve a company's bottom-line results according to a new global survey conducted by an independent market research firm. However, despite growing evidence that cloud-based systems have the potential to lower costs, the majority of companies report no plans to integrate cloud computing in the next 12 months... more

Internet Control Without “Firewalls”

Open Society Fellow Evgeny Morozov and I have written an Op-Ed for Project Syndicate about how the future of Internet control is not "firewall" censorship but more subtle forms of manipulation and pressure. Recognizing that censorship is too heavy handed and imperfect to be successful on its own, the Chinese government's Internet strategy is placing increasing emphasis on corporate self-censorship... more

Distributed Reporting of Web Filtering

Today the Berkman Center announced a new project that might be of interest to readers. Since 2002 I've studied Internet filtering around the world, most recently as part of the OpenNet Initiative. Last year with support of the MacArthur Foundation we published "Access Denied," a study of filtering in about 40 states. Our work so far has been centralized... We're now complementing that effort with a distributed reporting system... more

WiMAX Has Early Lead Over LTE, Says New Report

Mobile WiMAX will outpace LTE over the next few years due to its head start on deployments, reports In-Stat. While WiMAX and LTE will take very different paths, the report suggests Mobile WiMAX already has commercial deployments where as LTE won't be commercially available until late 2009. more

IRMA Threatens Irish ISPs

I don't want to get into the entire Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) vs Eircom and IRMA vs ISPs debacle. The only reason I'm even writing this is because I'm getting a bit tired of all the "quotes" of "quotes" and other unclear and misleading things that people have been saying about ISPs over the last few weeks. more

Another Look at the Latest Domain Name Numbers and Trends

There are now 177 million domain names across all top-level domains, which is an increase by 16% (24 million domain names) compared to a year ago. These numbers are from the latest Domain Name Industry Brief, a quarterly report from VeriSign about the growth of the domain name industry. In this review, Royal Pingdom has broken down the numbers in order to demonstrate the growth of both gTLDs (generic TLDs, such as .com and .net) and ccTLDs (country-code TLDs, such as .cn, .se, .uk and .us). more

C-SPAN Interview: Internet and Cybersecurity

C-SPAN interviews professor Gene Spafford from Purdue University on the topic of cybersecurity and how the current Internet is a conduit for all types of "cybercrime". He also talks about the much discussed article "A New Internet?" by John Markoff in the February 14, 2009, New York Times in which he was quoted. The piece argued for a new type of Internet that is more secure with the trade-off of users giving up more of their anonymity. Professor Spafford talks about alternative solutions and he responded to questions via telephone calls and email. more

New Internet Study Finds Web and Streaming Higher Than P2P Traffic

ipoque, a European deep packet inspection hardware provider has published an Internet study for 2008/2009 providing an overview of the Internet's current state based on analyzing 1.3 petabytes of Internet traffic -- "the amount of data equal to 300,000 DVDs" -- in eight regions of the world (Northern Africa, Southern Africa, South America, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Southwestern Europe, Germany). The study includes the use of about 100 of the most popular Internet protocols including P2P, VoIP, media streaming, instant messaging. more

Designing Secure Networks with Cisco Technology, Part 3

In this multipart series I will be presenting some of the leading industry-standard best practices for enterprise network security using Cisco technologies. Each article in the series will cover a different aspect of security technologies and designs and how each can be deployed in the enterprise to provide the best security posture at the lowest possible budgetary and administrative cost. In Part 2 of this series I discussed security risks and vulnerability. In this article we begin to focus on the role Cisco network and security technologies play in ensuring the safety and security of network data. more

24 Million Domain Names Registered in 2008, Total Reaching 177 Million Worldwide

According to a new report, the number of domain names increased by 24 million globally in 2008 increasing the total to 177 million domain name registrations across all of the Top Level Domains (TLDs). This represents 16% growth over the previous year, reports the latest Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign. It is also noted that the last quarter of 2008 saw more than 10.1 million new domain names registered across all TLDs. This reflects a slower growth in new registrations with a decline of 12% from the third quarter 2008 and 17% from the same quarter in the previous year. more

Dumb When They Want To Be…

David Akin pointed me to this article in the Ottawa Citizen which describes CRTC initiatives aimed at getting the cablecos to pay into a fund that would support, "the creation of high-quality, high-cost, scripted Canadian broadcasting content in the new media." In it, Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory [affairs?] for Rogers Corp. is quoted saying... more

FttH Boom in North Asia

In the mid-year 2008 rankings by the Fibre-to-the-Home (FttH) Council, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan occupy the top four positions in terms of household penetration percentage. Asia Pacific now accounts for more than 27 million of the world’s 32 million FttH connections. more

What Would You Like to Ask at the ICANN Public Fora in Mexico City?

ICANN has its 34th international public meeting in Mexico City on 1-6 March i.e. in just over a fortnight. One of the consistent concerns I hear in my role as general manager of public participation for the organization is that there is not a way for people to ask questions to the staff and the Board. I don't think that's really true but I do accept that the formats used are not liked by a large number of people... more