The Design of the Domain Name System, Part III - Name Structure and Delegation

In the previous installments, we looked at the overall design of the DNS and the way DNS name matching works. The DNS gains considerable administrative flexibility from its delegation structure. Each zone cut, the place in the DNS name tree where one set of DNS servers hands off to another, offers the option to delegate the administration of a part of the DNS at the delegation point. more

Spamhaus Policy Block List Update

Recently, I wrote about the Spamhaus Policy Block List (PBL), suggesting senders encourage their network/connectivity service providers (whomever they lease or purchase IP addresses from) to list their illegitimate email-sending IPs as a step towards improving the overall email stream on the internet. The initial PBL was seeded with listings from the Dynablock NJABL ("Not Just Another Bogus List"), which at the time of the cut-over was at more than 1.9 million entries... more

Weaponizing the Internet Using the “End-to-end Principle” Myth

At the outset of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 100th meeting, a decidedly non-technical initial "Guide for human rights protocol considerations" was just published. Although the IETF has always remained true to its DARPA origins as a tool for developing disruptive new technical ideas, it launches into bizarre territory when dealing with non-technical matters. more

Open Ends: Civil Society and Internet Governance - Part II

This is the second part of a three-part series interview by Geert Lovink with Jeanette Hofmann, policy expert from Germany, where she talks about her experiences as a member of the ICANN's Nominating Committee and her current involvement as a civil society member of the German delegation for the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS). "So much in the current debates over global governance seems to go back to the issue what place governments and individual nation states have within global governance. What has been your ICANN experience? Ideally, what would be the place of the state? Do you believe in a federal structure? Should, for instance, bigger countries, in terms of its population, have a great say?..." more

Give Us TVoIP, Not IPTV

A buzzword in the cable/ilec world is IPTV, a plan to deliver TV over IP. Microsoft and several other companies have built IPTV offerings, to give phone and cable companies what they like to call a "triple play" (voice, video and data) and be the one-stop communications company. ...I'm at the pulver.com Von conference where people are pushing this, notably the BellSouth exec who just spoke. But they've got it wrong. We don't need IPTV. We want TVoIP or perhaps more accurately Vid-o-IP. more

Google Releases ‘Noto’, Free Font Covering Every Language and Every Character on the Web

Google has announced the release of a new open-source font called Noto that supports 800 languages and covers 110 writing systems. more

VeriSign Supports New gTLDs with Appropriate Safeguards

The introduction of new Internet domains to the global marketplace has the potential to dramatically grow the domain name marketplace, increasing the value of domain names, driving new demand for registry services and opening new markets for registrars and registries alike. Because VeriSign operates .com -- the legacy generic top-level domain (gTLD) -- many in the Internet community have assumed that we would oppose the introduction of new gTLDs. The truth is quite the opposite. more

FCC’s Stanford Hearing on Broadband Practices

About 300 people attended to the net neutrality hearing Thursday hearing which began with testimony from Larry Lessig, a Stanford Law School professor and founder of the Center for Internet and Society... The meeting was called by the FCC in reaction to the news that US net firm Comcast had been exposed as managing traffic by stopping some of its 13m customers uploading files to BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks. The FCC has started a formal investigation to see if Comcast merits a fine for its actions. more

Australian Government Issues New Guidelines to Address 5G Security Concerns in Smart Cities

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) has issued a new set of guidelines warning about the security risks posed by the use of 5G technology in so-called Smart Cities. The ASD's concerns align with those of the Five Eyes security alliance, which has warned that the interconnected nature of a fully connected city makes it vulnerable to cyberattacks. more

How to Handle an Outage Like a Pro

In just the last two weeks, there were three major DNS outages between Google, Microsoft Azure, and Fonality. But only one of these companies was able to make even bigger waves with the way they handled their blunder. Fonality, who sells VoIP services and business phone systems, offered a very rare and transparent analysis of their outage. In a detailed statement from Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Valentine, readers were given crucial insight on how to prevent the same mistakes from happening to other companies. more

2% of All Traffic to Google Now Over IPv6! (Doubling in Past Year)

This weekend brought the great news that Google's IPv6 statistics have shown that connections over IPv6 to Google's web sites hit the 2% threshold for the first time. (You can see for yourself.) While 2% sounds tiny, as I wrote in a Deploy360 post today, the important fact here is that this represents a doubling of IPv6 traffic to Google over the past year! more

How Rise in Nationalism and Industry’s Lack of Foresight Could Mean a Fragmented and Isolated Web

I have been thinking a lot lately on the topic of the free flow of information on the internet -- what kinds of tools are available now and in the future for governments (especially repressive ones) to control content, isolate their people and keep any contrary viewpoints censored. I had an interesting conversation with a Practice Lead from IFTF.org. The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is a California based independent, nonprofit research group with 40 years of experience in identifying emerging trends that will transform global society... Turns out they are quite concerned about the fragmentation and control of the Internet as well. But will it be an inevitability? more

IPv4 Prices: Supply and Demand in 2023

In early 2022 the discount that had been available for large blocks of IPv4 addresses disappeared. For the first time in years, /16 blocks and larger began to sell at an increasing premium. By Q2-2023, small and medium-sized blocks sold for a 30-35% discount to larger ones. At the same time, the tighter range of prices that had persisted for nearly a decade fractured and blocks traded in wide ranges throughout 2022 and the first half of 2023. more

Domain Enforcement in a Post-GDPR World

The implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and ICANN's conservative temporary policy, which favors privacy and limits registrar liability, has made domain enforcement against cybersquatters, cyber criminals and infringement more difficult, expensive and slow. With heightened concerns over privacy following high-profile breaches of consumer data and its subsequent illicit use and distribution, there is no question that consumer data protection practices would come under scrutiny. more

$111M Good Reasons to Cancel Your Twitter Account

Need a good reason to cancel your Twitter account? Well, Gilbert Arenas of the Washington Wizards basketball team may have about $111M reasons to do so. Last Thursday, following his indefinite suspension from the National Basketball Association in the wake of a gun-related altercation with a teammate, Arenas canceled his Twitter account. His tweeting had factored somewhat into his suspension and, under his father's advice, he canceled his account so as not to be tempted to make matters worse. more