Interstate at Rush Hour ...in the Rain ...on a Friday – AKA, Your Enterprise Traffic on the Net

Congestion. Traffic. Two words that draw a visceral response, whether you are commuting to work or managing a network. Managing data traffic used to be easy. Everything was housed in centralized data centers, and all traffic was routed through big, dedicated, effective but expensive "pipes" -- Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) links. When all the applications are at the data center, it makes sense to build private access for all traffic. more

EU Member States Release Report on Coordinated Risk Assessment on Cybersecurity in 5G Networks

European Union Member States published a report on the 'EU coordinated risk assessment on cybersecurity in Fifth Generation (5G) networks'. The report is based on the results of the national cybersecurity risk assessments by all EU Member States. It identifies the main threats and threats actors, the most sensitive assets, the main vulnerabilities, and several strategic risks. more

The Loss of a Friend

Dear colleagues and friends, it is very, very difficult to write these words. The loss of a young person is always a tragedy. The untimely loss of a friend is even worse and is always a very difficult time. The loss of a fellow Internet pioneer is like losing a brother. Tarek Kamel was a great friend of the Internet Society–Bulgaria. I remember him giving an interview for the Bulgarian public television in Yokohama during the INET 2000 meeting... more

Gartner Says SDN Has Left the Building – Say Hello to Network Automation

In their annual hype cycle on on network technologies, Gartner lists the emerging technologies and an estimate of the timeframe in which they will reach the plateau of productivity. The latest hype cycle on enterprise networking labels Software-Defined Networks (SDN) as an obsolete technology. So on the surface, it would appear that SDN is now semi-officially dead. While most natural scientists accept the Darwinian theories, the technology industry has traditionally been trying to defy evolution. more

The “Kiwi” Way of Interneting

By now, we are all exposed to the narrative of how the Internet is no longer a safe place. It is full of bots, misinformation, abuse and violence; it is a space that has been overtaken by terrorists and extremists. The Internet is weaponized to influence elections, undermine democracies, and instill fear in its users. That's the story we are told. No one can deny the swift change that is taking place in global politics. The "brave new world" that has emerged is, currently, based on isolation and fear. more

Encryption and Child Sexual Abuse Prevention

Just over one week ago, the New York Times published a major investigation into the intractable problem of illegal sexual images of minors being exchanged online. Despite flaws in the story and its companion pieces, the main take-away that Internet companies have failed to adequately address the problem has resonated widely. Prostasia Foundation too has been critical of some of the Internet platforms called out in the article. But at the same time, we need to be realistic about how much responsibility we can (or should) place on tech firms to solve this problem. more

The Crypto Wars Resume

For decades, the US government has fought against widespread, strong encryption. For about as long, privacy advocates and technologists have fought for widespread, strong encryption, to protect not just privacy but also as a tool to secure our computers and our data. The government has proposed a variety of access mechanisms and mandates to permit them to decrypt (lawfully) obtained content; technologists have asserted that "back doors" are inherently insecure. more

US Court Upholds Repeal of Net Neutrality

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the last day of September that the FCC had the authority to kill Title II regulation and to repeal net neutrality. However, the ruling wasn't entirely in the FCC's favor. The agency was ordered to look again at how the repeal of Title II regulation affects public safety. In a more important ruling, the courts said that the FCC didn't have the authority to stop states and municipalities from establishing their own rules for net neutrality. more

Unpublished Autobiographical Essay of Steve Lukasik on His Accomplishments at ARPA

Around 2014, as Stephen (Steve) J. Lukasik proceeded well into his 80s, he began to consider ways to capture the enormous sweep of activities and history in which he was a key figure. Indeed, that sweep was so broad and often compartmentalized, and his output so prolific, that even his closest associates only knew of slices of his accomplishments. So he began sorting through his career and produced this autobiographical essay on his accomplishments at ARPA that is being made posthumously available now. more

The Director

On Thursday, Stephen J. Lukasik passed away peacefully at the age of 88. He was the legend in a field with no peer. For nearly half a century, he shaped the development of national security and network technology developments at a level and extent that is unlikely ever to be matched. For a great many of us in that arena from the 1960s past the Millennium, he was the demanding visionary leader who set the policies and directions, framed the challenges, approved and funded the projects, and questioned the results. more

Dead Ends: The Achievement of Consensus in UDRP Jurisprudence

Like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) is consensus-driven; from the bottom up, not the top down. The result is a jurisprudence of domain names that develops in common-law fashion through Panel decisions that over time and through "deliberative conversations" among panelists resolve into consensus. more

More Than 500 Schools in the U.S. Hit by Ransomware in 2019, Says Report

A recent report published by the cybersecurity firm Armor says ransomware infections have hit over 500 US schools in 2019 to date. Armor warns the rate of attack seems to be picking up with 15 new ransomware victims in the last two weeks, all of them educational institutions. more

US Court Upholds FCC’s Net Neutrality Repeal But Says States Can’t Be Barred from Passing Own Rules

A U.S. court decision today determined net neutrality laws could return at the state level overruling Trump administration's effort to block states from passing their own net neutrality laws. more

Happy Birthday Wi-Fi

This year is the twentieth anniversary of the formation of the Wi-Fi Alliance and the launch of commercial Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi has become so ubiquitous in our lives that it's hard to believe that it's only been twenty years since all broadband connections came with wires. In 1999 most people were still using dial-up, and that's the year when early adapters started buying DSL. I remember having incredibly long phone cords so that I could use my laptop at different places around the house. more

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee Is Investigating Google’s Plans to Implement DNS Over HTTPS

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is investigating Google's plans to implement DNS over HTTPS (DoH) in Chrome according to a report by the Wall Street Journal over the weekend. more