VeriSign Leaves the Security Certificate Business

Earlier this week in a press release, VeriSign said that they are selling their SSL certificate business to Symantec. VeriSign is the dominant player in this market, having absorbed competitor Thawte in 1999, and Geotrust in 2006. Three years ago, when VeriSign decided to divest its non-core businesses, they kept the certificate business. So what's changed? more

Next gTLD Round - A Seven Year Itch?

Five years ago today, the ICANN Board committed to opening a second application window for the New gTLD Program as expeditiously as possible. The same resolution also directed the ICANN CEO to publish a document describing the work plan required prior to initiating a second application window. Ask a Board member or ICANN staff when they expect the next application window to open, and they will inevitably suggest 2020 -- another three years away. more

Silvia Hagen: It’s Not About IPv6 Transition But Urgent Integration

As the IPv4 address pool is rapidly reaching exhaustion, Silvia Hagen, a leading expert on IPv6 and the author of O'Reilly's book, "IPv6 Essentials," stresses that a primary step towards IPv6 address space is not about "transition" but "integration". IPv4 and IPv6 are going to co-exist for many years to come and so what companies need to do, in the first place, is to look at their IPv4 landscape and identify areas of priority, Hagen said in a recent interview with CircleID. more

UDRP Does Not Apply To Bad Faith Domain Name Renewals: Part I

The purpose of the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy, known as the UDRP (hereafter the "Policy"), is to determine disputes relating to the registration or acquisition of domain names in bad faith. To succeed in a UDRP action (i.e. to obtain cancellation or transfer of the disputed domain name) it is necessary for the party bringing the complaint (the complainant) to show that (i) the disputed domain name is identical with or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; (ii) the domain name holder (known as the respondent) has no right or legitimate interest in respect of the domain name; and (iii) the domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith. Each of the aforesaid three elements must be proved by the complainant to warrant relief.
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Revisiting Apple and IPv6

A few weeks ago I wrote about Apple's IPv6 announcements at the Apple Developers Conference. While I thought that in IPv6 terms Apple gets it, the story was not complete and there were a number of aspects of Apple's systems that were not quite there with IPv6. So I gave them a 7/10 for their IPv6 efforts. Time to reassess that score in the light of a few recent posts from Apple. more

Loving and Hating Starlink

I'm such an industry nerd that I sometimes read customer reviews of large ISPs just to see how the public perceives them. Most ISPs have more negative reviews than positive ones, and that's to be expected since people are more likely to complain when things go wrong than give praise when things are working as promised. more

Pew Internet Reports Latest Online Video Stats

According to a report released today, 69% of adult internet users, or roughly half of all U.S. adults (52%), have used the internet to watch or download video, with 18-29 year-olds leading the way. "We are seeing a surge in online video watching that is driven by a combination of broadband access, the increasing use of social networking sites, and the popularity of video-sharing sites," explains Kristen Purcell, Associate Director for Research at the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and author of the report. "To tap into these trends, untold numbers of websites now showcase online video as part of their content." more

Why Foldering Adds Very Little Security

I keep hearing stories of people using "foldering" for covert communications. Foldering is the process of composing a message for another party, but instead of sending it as an email, you leave it in the Drafts folder. The other party then logs in to the same email account and reads the message; they can then reply via the same technique. Foldering has been used for a long time, most famously by then-CIA director David Petraeus and his biographer/lover Paula Broadwell. Why is foldering used? more

Unlicensed Wireless Broadcasting Spectrum in the USA

New developments that have been announced by the FCC in the United States have rekindled the decade-old debate on the use of the so-called 'white spaces' in broadcast spectrum that are to be used for telecoms purposes. In September 2010, the FCC adopted a Second Memorandum Opinion and Order that updated the rules for unlicensed wireless devices that can operate in broadcast television spectrum at locations where that spectrum is unused by licensed services. This unused TV spectrum is commonly referred to as television 'white spaces'. The rules allow for the use of unlicensed TV devices in the unused spectrum to provide broadband data and other services for consumers and businesses. more

A Confession About The ICANN WHOIS Data Reminder Policy

With all the recent attention to WHOIS, it's time for a confession: I'm somewhat guilty for the infamous WHOIS Data Reminder Policy. With hindsight, it's a bad policy, and it needs to die. The year was 2002. ICANN's DNSO (soon to be renamed as the GNSO) had a WHOIS Task Force, and was trying to extract policy choices from an ill-conceived and worse-executed survey of assorted self-selected stakeholders. more

April 22, 1993 - A Day The Internet Fundamentally Changed

25 years ago, on April 22, 1993, a software release happened that fundamentally changed the user experience of the Internet. On that day, version 1.0 of "NCSA Mosaic for the X Window System" was released. You could now have (gasp!) text MIXED WITH IMAGES on the same page! Reading the Mosaic 1.0 release notes from Marc Andreessen is a bit of fun, as it includes gems like "Fixed mysterious stupid coredump that only hits Suns." more

Upcoming Latin America and Caribbean DNS Forum

The Latin America and Caribbean Domain Name System (LAC DNS) Forum will be held on November 15, 2013 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This follows on a similar initiative that took place at ICANN 47 in Durban, South Africa. The event's global, regional and local organizers plan to address key online issues, including more regional involvement with Internet governance. more

Vint Cerf’s Keynote at Domain Roundtable

I had the pleasure of eating breakfast with Vint Cerf, chairman of ICANN's board and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, prior to his keynote address this morning. It was great to discuss some of the issues domainers are facing with regards to registrar practices, expiring domains, etc. directly with Cerf. Cerf's keynote kept the crowd engaged. I've summarized the topics he covered... Some people have misunderstood Cerf's position with regards to adding new domains. He said he is not opposed to adding new TLDs. What he advocates, however, is having a solid rationale for adding new TLDs. Cerf believes the processes and outcomes of the first two rounds of TLD adds were not satisfactory... more

Top 10 Biggest Domain Stories of 2012 and Predictions for 2013

So my prediction from last year that "ICANN will open the new gTLD application period without any glitches" could not have been more wrong. And yes - I actually used the word 'glitches'... Regardless of my crystal-ball gazing skills, it's been another incredibly eventful year, and below are the Top 10 Domain Stories from 2012. more

The Philosophical Case for Expanding the Domain Name Space

At the December 2004 ICANN meeting in Cape Town, Vint Cerf said this to the Public Forum: "I want to go on record as saying... that I am no longer sure that I have a strong understanding of why I would be motivated to create a new TLD..." Dr. Cerf posed a question that has yet to be answered or even discussed by the DNS stakeholder community. While the technical and business cases for the introduction of new TLDs have been successfully made, what is the philosophical case for adding new TLDs? What semantics are encoded in TLDs, and how could those semantics be expanded in a consistent way? more