ICANN says that, "the lack of ccTLD growth in africa is due to Internet penetration". However, Gideon Rop of DotConnectAfrica and an Internet Governance expert in the African landscape, expressed a different opinion during the Africa DNS forum in Nairobi. more
"The General Services Administration is analyzing what caused an outage of .gov websites for a few hours Wednesday morning," reports Federal Times. Officials said the problem involved so-called DNSSEC cybersecurity measures that affected access to certain .gov sites, according to GSA spokeswoman Mafara Hobson. more
A British teenager who hacked into the online accounts of former CIA director John Brennan, former director of intelligence James Clapper, and other high-profile US government employees, was sentenced today for to two years in prison. more
Conventional thinking or solutions will no longer work in the new era of ISIS and the 'Unprecedented' cyber and non-cyber attacks we live in today. Like it or not, everyone is impacted, and no one is immune. Whether you are an average citizen, a chairman or CEO of a multinational, or a government or academic institution leader, the questions to ponder are: Do you know what to do next? Do you know what the solution is? more
I was looking back at industry reporting a year ago after the impact of the pandemic first hit our broadband networks. Almost every big ISP issued press releases talking about how well it had weathered the pandemic and bragged about the resiliency of its networks. It turns out that these ISP press releases largely missed the point. They are right that their networks didn't crash, but once we understood the nature of the changes in broadband traffic due to the pandemic, that wasn't a big surprise. more
In a letter released on Monday, the Internet Society Board of Trustees has expressed concern with a number of U.S. legislative proposals that would mandate DNS blocking and filtering by ISPs to protect the interests of copyright holders. "Policies mandating DNS filtering undermine the open architecture of the Internet and raise human rights and freedom of expression concerns," says Internet Society (ISOC). more
I'm sure we've all heard about "the Open Internet." The expression builds upon a rich pedigree of term "open" in various contexts. For example, "open government" is the governing doctrine which holds that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight, a concept that appears to be able to trace its antecedents back to the age of enlightenment in 17th century Europe. more
On CircleID Jeremy Malcolm blogged in "Wikileaks and the Gaps in Internet Governance" that "For the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC), this highlights the need for cross-border Internet governance issues to be made subject to a due process of law, informed by sound political frameworks, including those of human rights." A reaction, in which a network of the willing is suggested. more
I don't know about you, but I am angry. I am angry with the state of the world and our incapacity to do something about it. I am angrier because, in all this, I thought that the Internet would be the place where we would see collective action at its best. But, that's not going to happen. At least, anytime soon. Is it time to admit that the Internet has turned toxic? No. But, it is time to ask ourselves the question... more
I thought "RIP" stood for "Rest In Peace". I thought it was an acronym used in English only and a TLD that would be understood by the next generation; because no one would ever register such a domain name ending in .RIP today. When you say "RIP", it makes you think of death... I have also said that such a TLD was something... typically American and that no other culture would consider buying such domain names because promoting death online is something a bit odd. more
The main reason for developing a new internet protocol was based on lack of address; however this was not the only reason. Unfortunately, many people think of IPv6 only as enormous address space, but there are a lot of other advantages, for example... authorizations and authentication function are implemented directly in the protocol and are mandatory... automatic configuration of network interfaces based on their physical address... protocol itself recognizes data streams which must be transmitted in real time, and the data must be processed with highest priority... more
Internet Society's DNSSEC Deployment Maps are now available as part of a larger set of Global Internet Maps from its annual Global Internet Report. The map is based off of the 5 stages of DNSSEC deployment that the organization tracks as part of the weekly DNSSEC deployment maps generated. more
The Federal Trade Commission is challenging the public to create an innovative tool to help protect consumers from security vulnerabilities in the software of home devices connected to the Internet of Things. more
I have written a short paper on the topic of Internet Governance. Since it includes a number of resources, it would be easier for me to just point to a link with the document itself. Below are some selected excerpts from the document. "Several myths have been spreading around the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), but especially after the first Internet Governance Forum (IGF): The critical Internet resources (CIR) consist only of the IP addresses and the domain name system... There are only 13 root servers..." more
Google has posted details on Ranking of new gTLDs (new gTLDs) in search. John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, said that new gTLD's will be treated the same as other gTLD's such as .com. He stated: "Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search." The ambiguous use of the word "overall" in the statement, may leave some doubt as to whether the 600 .brands -- new domain extensions operated by brand owners -- are included or excluded in any VIP search ranking treatment. more