Harm Caused by Typosquatting Is Still Modest, Research Suggests

Harm caused by domain name typosquatting is still modest, to both the user and the brand holder, and investment on anti-typosquatting products should be cautious, according to a paper published in Security and Privacy (SP), 2015 IEEE Symposium titled, "Every Second Counts: Quantifying the Negative Externalities of Cybercrime via Typosquatting." The paper presents a strategy for quantifying the harm caused by the cybercrime of typo squatting via an intent inference technique. more

The Maturing Domain Industry

Day one of the Digital Marketing and gTLD Strategy congress is happening in London today. As we inch ever closer to new gTLDs actually launching on the Internet, business models and marketing approaches are becoming clearer and better defined. This was evident in today's presentations and workshops, with applicants and current TLD operators alike showing much greater depth of thought into how these namespaces might actually be of use to Internet users. more

DNS: The Basis for Billions

In the midst of "Cyber Monday", the day traditionally seen as one of the year's busiest days for online shopping, it is only appropriate to examine the importance DNS plays for online economies. With DNS being at the heart of Internet connectivity it is easy to understand why DNS is important to the growing health of economies whose online health in dollars and euros rest in the billions. more

Hurricane Sandy Causes Major Impact on Internet Infrastructure in New York City and Beyond

The super storm has caused major power and Internet outages in a region that is home to more than 60 million people. Unsurprisingly, the impacts on Internet connectivity have been severe, reports Renesys. more

The Window of Opportunity for ccTLDs

The announcement that .co has already achieved over 450,000 new registrations since the opening up of the second level a month ago demonstrates that there is strong demand in the global domain name marketplace for quality new domain spaces. Though .co is the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) for Colombia, the second-level registrations (i.e. company.co) are available on a global basis and it is being pitched as a direct competitor to the dominant .com gTLD. Google has altered its algorithm to increase the relevance of search results in the .co domain by treating .co as a gTLD... more

European Commission Can Register ‘galileo.eu’, Even if It Deprives Owner of Identical Trademark

When it drafted the .eu regulation EC 874/2004, the Commission reserved for itself a (long) list of domain names. One of them was galileo.eu. For obvious reasons, Galileo Lebensmittel GmbH & Co. KG claimed before the Courf of First Instance that the Commission's decision to reserve galileo.eu should be annulled... more

IPv6 Deployment from a Different Perspective

Often when looking at IPv6 deployment statistics, the size of the organisation or the network is not taken into account. In this article, we look at IPv6 deployment of Local Internet Registries (LIRs) per country in correlation to the size of the LIR. When looking at IPv6 deployment at the LIR level, we can look at the following two metrics... more

Doug Madory Reports on Shutting Down the BGP Hijack Factory

A lengthy email to the NANOG mailing list last month concerning suspicious routing activities of a company called Bitcanal initiated a concerted effort to kick a bad actor off the Internet. more

IANA Transition Set to Disrupt ICANN Operations

The US Government's decision to transition its oversight of the IANA function to a multi-national, multi stakeholder organisation is set to impact ICANN's standard operations. On April 25, ICANN Board Chair Steve Crocker send an email to the ICANN community leaders suggesting changes to the agenda for the upcoming 50th International ICANN meeting, set to be held in London from June 22 to 26. more

Is IPv6 Wrestling Within an Unpredictable Telecommunications Industry?

The theme of the 40th International Institute of Communications (IIC) conference in Montreal this week was "Wrestling with unpredictability in Global Communications". The panel I had the pleasure to be part of was under the motto : "Broadband futures". One of the questions addressed to me : Should we be concerned about a shortage of IP addresses as more people use broadband networks for more things? more

Domain Names in 9 Indian Scripts to Be Added to the Root Servers by June

Internet root servers will soon allow domain name registrations in nine Indian scripts, according to Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG). more

Enough With Blacklisting Online Pharmacies, Isn’t It Time to Consider White Lists?

Before I go back to the beginning, let me make clear that what follows are my personal observations vis-a-vis how National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) is managing the .Pharmacy Registry relative to personal experience as founder, President and CEO of Tralliance Corporation, the original manager of the .Travel Registry. My analysis may be a little long, but I promise that if you stay with me, you will be enlightened. more

Russia’s Cyrillic IDN ccTLD Blasts Off, Through the 500K Mark in Under a Week

Since last Thursday's launch of Russia's Cyrillic script IDN ccTLD, registration volumes have smashed all expectations, much like a Soyuz rocket blasting off into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. At the time of writing (14:00 17/11/2010 UTC), .??, which is Cyrillic for RF (short for ?????????? ????????? - Russian Federation) has just exceeded 500,000 registrations, having passed the 100,000 mark in the first three hours. It is already among the top 30 ccTLDs worldwide and heading towards the top 20 at high speed. more

DNSSEC Successes, Statistics and Innovation Streaming Live from ICANN 53 on 24 June 2015

Where has DNSSEC been successful? What are some current statistics about DNSSEC deployment? What are examples of innovations that are happening with DNSSEC and DANE? All of these questions will be discussed at the DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 53 in Buenos Aires happening on Wednesday, June 24, 2015, from 09:00 – 15:15 Argentina time (UTC-3). You can watch and listen to the session live. more

Will the GNSO Review Be Pushed Back Another Year?

ICANN bylaws mandate periodic reviews of the organisation's main structures. For the body that handles gTLD policy making, the GNSO, that review was due to start in February this year. The review appears much needed. The GNSO Council is the manager of the gTLD policy process and as such, it has representatives of all GNSO groups. But according to repeated statements by many of those representatives, the Council's current bicameral structure has not lived up to expectations. more