Where are the Gigabit Applications?

I remember that soon after the City of Chattanooga launched its citywide fiber network, the company held a competition seeking web applications that would benefit from gigabit speeds. I don't recall if anything useful came out of that effort, but I know that there are still today almost no big bandwidth applications on the web online aimed at the average household. more

The Evolution of the ITU’s Views on Internet Governance (2006-2012)

Someone was talking the other day about the ITU and what they think about the issue of Internet Governance. I know what the ITU Secretariat wrote in a paper some years ago (Bulgaria was one of the governments heavily criticizing the errors and flaws in the ITU paper), but also decided it might be interesting to show how this question has evolved in the words of the ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure, by finding out how his positions on that issue, and on the role of the ITU have changed through the years. more

.US Hosts its Annual Town Hall Meeting

Neustar, a leading provider of registry services, is hosting a Town Hall meeting this month for the United States' country code Top-Level Domain, .US. Neustar introduced the .US Town Hall last year to reflect our commitment -- and the Commerce Department commitment to the bottom-up, multistakeholder model of DNS management. The public forum is an important part of ensuring that .US continues to be a vibrant namespace that reflects America's diversity, creativity, and innovative spirit. more

DoH Creates More Problems Than It Solves

Unlike most new IETF standards, DNS over HTTPS has been a magnet for controversy since the DoH working group was chartered on 2017. The proposed standard was intended to improve the performance of address resolutions while also improving their privacy and integrity, but it's unclear that it accomplishes these goals. On the performance front, testing indicates DoH is faster than one of the alternatives, DNS over TLS (DoT). more

Caribbean Nationals Victorious in ARIN Elections

Three Caribbean candidates -- Peter Harrison, Alicia Trotman and Kerrie-Ann Richards -- have been elected to leadership roles at the American Registry of Internet Numbers (ARIN). ARIN is one of five Internet registries worldwide that coordinate the distribution and administration of number resources. The registry serves the United States, Canada and several territories in the Caribbean. more

ICA Questions ICANN on RegisterFly

The Internet Commerce Association sent this letter to ICANN yesterday in regard to the RegisterFly situation: "I am writing to you in my capacity as Counsel to the Internet Commerce Association (ICA), a non-profit trade association dedicated to promoting and protecting the rights of domain name (DN) owners... It has come to our attention that an ICANN-accredited registrar is in the midst of what appears to be a near-complete operational breakdown, and that its ongoing failure to carry out its responsibilities is causing substantial economic loss to tens of thousands of DN registrants in both the United States and multiple foreign jurisdictions." more

Verisign iDefense Analysis of XcodeGhost

At Verisign we take our Internet stewardship mission very seriously, so when details emerged over the past week concerning the XcodeGhost infection, researchers at Verisign iDefense wanted to help advance community research efforts related to the XcodeGhost issue, and leveraging our unique capabilities, offer a level of public service to help readers determine their current and historical level of exposure to the infection. more

Open Ends: Civil Society and Internet Governance - Part III

This is the final 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). "You have been visiting WSIS as a member of the German delegation. Could you share some of your personal impressions with us? Did you primarily look at WSIS as an ICT circus for governmental officials and development experts or was there something, no matter how futile, at stake there?..." more

How to .DOWNLOAD Banging Tunes, Sick Movies and Nasty Apps

TeenSpeak is being rivalled by GeekSpeak: most Internet Geeks know what "the cloud" is. They know because they are "Internet Geeks", most Internet users don't profess to the same level of 'Geekdom'. Now while I don't claim to be an Internet Geek, I do like to think of myself as an educated Internet user; and the way I think of "the Cloud" is of a computer, plugged in somewhere, and holding lots of "computer things" for the use of anyone, anywhere. You may have heard the expression: "it is hosted in the cloud". more

Preventing Future Attacks: Alternatives In DNS Security Management - Part I

The October 21 DDoS attacks against the 13 root-name servers containing the master domain list for the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS), (which reportedly took offline 9 of the 13 servers) remain a clear and daunting reminder of the vulnerabilities associated with online security. Many DNS authorities have named the most recent hit the largest DDoS attack against the root server system. Chris Morrow, network security engineer for UUNET, the service provider for two of the world's 13 root servers, recently told The Washington Post... more

Toward a Balanced ICANN Accreditation Program for Privacy and Proxy Service Providers

For the past two years a diverse group of stakeholders from the ICANN community, including myself, has been working hard to come to a consensus on a set of recommendations related to development and implementation of an ICANN accreditation program for privacy & proxy service providers. The result of this effort will replace the interim specification defined in the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) that is due to expire at the end of 2016. more

Revisiting Reverse Domain Name Hijacking

The conduct that reverse domain name hijacking (RDNH) was crafted to punish is "using the [Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy] in bad faith to attempt to deprive a registered domain-name holder of a domain name." There are several variations ranging from the plain vanilla, claims that should never have been brought – mark owners whose rights postdate the registration of the challenged domain name as in Vudu, Inc. v. WhoisGuard, Inc. / K Blacklock, D2019-2247... more

The Internet Must Remain Open - Even for Those We Disagree With

Over the past couple of weeks, following the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, there has been significant discussion in social and traditional media about various technology companies removing websites from their servers, or otherwise making them unavailable. As the operators of Canada's Internet domain, we at CIRA are getting numerous inquiries about our stance and policies on this issue. I'd like to use this opportunity to make a couple of clarifications about how CIRA works and what CIRA actually does. more

Do You Know Who Your Domain Name Registrar Is?

A guy I know passed along this e-mail sent to one of his customers. They assumed it was a phish, since they didn't recognize the domain name in the link, but couldn't figure out what the goal of the phish was. They even checked the list of ICANN registrars, and nope, registrar.eu wasn't on the list. Nonetheless, this mail was real, and if the recipient had ignored it, his domain would have been suspended. What's going on? more

Chinese Hackers and Cyber Realpolitik

For many people the comments made by Michael Hayden, Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, at this week's Black Hat Technical Security Conference in Abu Dhabi may have been unsettling as he commented upon the state of Chinese cyber espionage. I appreciate the candor of his observations and the distinction he made between state-level motivations. In particular, his comment... more