Hongyun Project – China’s Low-Earth Orbit Broadband Internet Project

Last December, State-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) launched the first experimental Hongyun (rainbow cloud) Project satellite, and they began testing it in March. The 247 kg test satellite is in orbit at an altitude of around 1,100 km, and they plan to launch four more test satellites this year and begin operating with a 156-satellite constellation in 2022. more

A Brooklyn Bitcoin Mining Operation is Causing Interference to T-Mobile’s Broadband Network

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday sent a letter to an individual in Brooklyn, New York, alleging that a device in the individual's residence used to mine Bitcoin is generating spurious radiofrequency emissions, causing interference to a portion of T-Mobile's mobile telephone and broadband network. more

Cisco Speaks at FOSE on IPv6 Enterprise Architecture Transition

"The world is flattening," says Dave Rubal at the FOSE Conference and Exhibition this week in Washington, DC. "The race for IT dominance is on, and it is coming west." Mr. Rubal, Cisco's Worldwide Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) Task Force Lead, spoke of the tremendous race in IT dominance that is occurring, stating that the "mainstay technologies at the Beijing Olympics will be IPv6-powered." IPv6 is in line to replace version 4, but Rubal hinted that China and other Far East countries may be adopting the new version faster than the United States... more

The Case for Trademark Protection for Top Level Domains

The United States Patent and Trademark Office currently does not provide Trademark protection services for the Top Level Domain industry, an industry which generates almost $1 Billion in revenues annually in the United States. The Top Level Domain industry is the only legal business class in the United States that is denied constitutionally guaranteed intellectual property protections... The lack of Trademark Protection for the Top Level Domain industry has greatly increased the amount of uncertainty associated with the ICANN Application Process for new Top Level Domains. more

Massive Cyberattack Aimed at Flooding .Gov Email Inboxes With Subscription Requests

"Massive Email Bombs Target .Gov Addresses," Brian Krebs writes in Krebs on Security: "Over the weekend, unknown assailants launched a massive cyber attack aimed at flooding targeted dot-gov (.gov) email inboxes with subscription requests to thousands of email lists." more

Ongoing Internet Emergency and Domain Names

There is a current ongoing Internet emergency: a critical 0day vulnerability currently exploited in the wild threatens numerous desktop systems which are being compromised and turned into bots, and the domain names hosting it are a significant part of the reason why this attack has not yet been mitigated. This incident is currently being handled by several operational groups. This past February, I sent an email to the Reg-Ops (Registrar Operations) mailing list. The email, which is quoted below, states how DNS abuse (not the DNS infrastructure) is the biggest unmitigated current vulnerability in day-to-day Internet security operations, not to mention abuse. more

Put Free Expression on the Internet Governance Forum Agenda

The Internet Governance Project has joined free-expression advocacy organizations Reporters Without Borders and Article 19 to push for including Internet censorship and filtering problems on the agenda of the first meeting of the new Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a multistakeholder deliberation body created by the World Summit on the Information Society... more

Avoiding Low-Earth Orbit Collisions – the Clock Is Ticking

There was a recent dispute between OneWeb and SpaceX regarding the possibility of a collision between two of their low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. OneWeb's satellite (OneWeb-1078) was launched on March 25 and headed for its orbit at an altitude of 1,200 km when, in early April, it passed near a SpaceX satellite (Starlink-1546) in orbit at about 450 km. There was no collision, but subsequently, OneWeb's government affairs chief Chris McLaughlin said... more

How the Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) Makes the Mailbox Safer

Nowadays, with increasing digitalization and internet usage, email is a central communication tool. This holds true even despite the high popularity of instant messaging apps and social media. Email remains the favorite means of business communication worldwide, both in B2B and B2C. In 2019, 293.6 billion emails were sent and received. By 2025, this number will grow even more. It is predicted that we will send and receive 376.4 billion emails per day. In this scenario, implementing security features for email communications has become absolutely essential. more

Making IDN gTLDs Attractive and Safe

The primary focus of this article is to illustrate that the Applicant Guidebook is not supplying sufficient protection mechanisms, and creates too high financial barrier for those who are interested in applying for multiple Top-Level Domains (TLDs) that are translations/transliterations of each other and/or of an existing generic Top-Level Domains (tt-gTLDs). more

Over 75% of All Top-Level Domains (TLDs) Now Signed With DNSSEC

As I was entering in data for the weekly DNSSEC Deployment Maps, I was struck by the fact that we are now at the point where 617 of the 795 top-level domains (TLDs) are now signed with DNSSEC. You can see this easily at Rick Lamb's DNSSEC statistics site...Now, granted, most of that amazing growth in the chart is because all of the "new generic TLDs" (newgTLDs) are required to be signed with DNSSEC, but we are still seeing solid growth around the world. more

Update on China SatNet’s GuoWang Broadband Constellation – Can They Do It?

In 2020, China applied to operate GuoWang, a constellation of 12,992 low-Earth orbit (LEO) broadband Internet satellites, and in 2021, it became clear that it was intended to become China’s global LEO broadband constellation. Can they do it? Maybe, but it will take a long time. China does not have the capacity to launch 12,992 satellites today. I don’t know the mass of their planned satellites, but GuoWang is informally referred to as China’s answer to Starlink. more

Haste Makes Waste: Comments on ICANN CWG IANA Transition Proposal Indicate Serious Process Problems

On December 1, 2014 the Cross Community Working Group (CWG) on Naming Related Functions published a Draft Transition Proposal. The comment period on the Proposal extended for twenty-one days; due to a requirement imposed by the separate IANA Coordination Group (ICG) that a final proposal be received by mid-January, there was no provision for a follow-up reply comment period as is standard ICANN Practice for issues of far less consequence. more

Is NTIA’s Transition Decision the Right Dose of Chemotherapy to Repair Trust in Multistakeholderism

Proper, transparent, accountable U.S. NTIA's Transition of its oversight of the Internet to something other than a single country oversight is something I have always believed in and spoke and written about repeatedly for years and is long overdue. But NTIA's March 14th declared intent to transfer "Key" Internet roles is not only very ambiguous but leads to new questions and concerns that must be answered before anything starts taking place. more

A Gap in the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook?

I strongly believe there is a serious "breach" in the Applicant Guidebook: I checked the scoring, I checked the possible objections, I am aware of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) early warning but I really could not find how ICANN is going to avoid Community applications to be submitted as Standard ones. The role of ICANN is to offer a solution to launching new generic Top-Level Domains, it is no party in saying whether a new gTLD is a Community or not. more