Securing the Core

BGP. Border Gateway Protocol. The de-facto standard routing protocol of the Internet. The nervous system of the Internet. I don't think I can overstate the importance, the criticality of BGP to the operation of the modern Internet. BGP is the glue that holds the Internet together at its core. And like so many integral pieces of the Internet, it, too, is designed and built on the principle of trust... The folks who operate the individual networks that make up the Internet are generally interested in keeping the Internet operating, in keeping the packets flowing. And they do a great job, for the most part. more

Network Complexity: Three Trends That are Contributing to a “Perfect Storm”

Most everyone who visits CircleID is familiar with Moore's Law, which stated simply holds that computing power doubles every 18 months. This has been going on since the 1960s and shows no sign of slowing. Moore's Law drives faster and faster computing, which produces more and more data and network complexity. This inexorable trend is putting immense pressure on corporate networks, and the strain is too much for many of them to handle on their own. more

Next gTLDs: 2016 or 2019?

On September 22, 2014, ICANN published an analysis of the review and assessment work that remains to be done before a new round of gTLD (generic Top Level Domain) applications can be initiated. According to the document, 2016 is the earliest a call for the next lot of applications to operate an Internet suffix could come. To many, a subsequent application window so soon after the 2012 round seems unrealistic. more

Parsing Predatory and Parasitical from Innocent and Good Faith Domain Name Registrants

When the World Intellectual Property Organization began deliberating in 1998 and 1999 about creating an arbitral regime that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers transformed into the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy the curse words of choice were "predators" and "parasites" to describe cybersquatters. (In an early UDRP decision a Respondent who had also featured as a defendant in a trademark case asserted he had "just as much right to own the Domain Names [with typographic variations of the mark] as the person who owns the correct spelling of [the mark]" more

Innovation Today is IN the Network

The largest and most important global information infrastructure today by any measure is clearly the global mobile network and all of its gateways, services, and connected devices. That network is standardized, managed, and energized by a combination of the 3GPP and GSMA. The level of 3GPP industry involvement and collaboration today probably exceeds all other telecom, internet, and assorted other bodies put together... and then some. more

When No Action Is the Wisest Action (ICANN Does Good)

Although ICANN is now getting a lot of ridicule for the "glitch" in its TLD application System, it deserves some praise and respect for the results of its April 10 board meeting. In that meeting, the board showed the involved community - and the rest of the world - that it is no longer going to be stampeded by extra-procedural political pressure to make yet another round of hasty amendments to its new TLD program's policies and procedures. more

NORDUnet’s Brilliant Internet Peering Strategy

NORDUnet, the R&E network connecting the Nordic countries has recently undertaken a brilliant Internet peering strategy that will have global significant ramifications for supporting research and education around the world. NORDUnet is now emerging as one of the world's first "GREN"s -- Global Research and Education Network. NORDUnet is extending their network infrastructure to multiple points of presence throughout the USA and Europe to interconnect to major Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). more

UN and the Global Digital Compact: How to Strengthen the IGF?

According to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the forthcoming UN World Summit on the Future", scheduled for September 2024, should adopt a "Global Digital Compact" (GDC).1 The GDC is part of the so-called "UN Common Agenda." The compact is expected to "outline shared principles for an open, free and secure digital future for all" and to cover issues as digital connectivity, avoiding Internet fragmentation, providing people with options as to how their data is used... more

Could You Go for a Year Without Internet Access? Paul Miller Reports on His Experiment…

Could you sign off of the Internet today -- right now, in fact -- and not come back online for 12 months? If you are a reader of CircleID, odds are pretty good that the answer is probably an emphatic "No!" This is, after all, a site for "Internet Infrastructure" and for most of us visiting the site (or writing here) the "Internet" is completely woven into the fabric of our lives... and we have a hard time thinking of a life without it. more

Cyber Security Word Salad

Two months ago, the Trump White House published its National Cyber Strategy. It was followed a few days ago with the release of its draft NSTAC Cybersecurity "moonshot." The Strategy document was basically a highly nationalistic America-First exhortation that ironically bore a resemblance to China's more global two-year-old National Cybersecurity Strategy. more

LAC, the DNS, and the Importance of Comunidad

The 1st Latin American & Caribbean DNS Forum was held on 15 November 2013, before the start of the ICANN Buenos Aires meeting. Coordinated by many of the region's leading technological development and capacity building organizations, the day long event explored the opportunities and challenges for Latin America brought on by changes in the Internet landscape, including the introduction of new gTLDs such as .LAT, .NGO and others. more

The Crimeware Infection Lifecycle

The distribution and installation of malicious and unauthorized software has evolved consistently throughout the 21st Century. The evolutionary path from annoying viruses, to destructive malware and on to financially driven crimeware, is well documented and can even be conveniently traced via the parallel evolution of technologies that were designed to counter each new aspect of the then contemporary threat. more

Disputes Falling Outside the Scope of the UDRP

The UDRP is a forum of limited jurisdiction designed for trademark owners to combat a certain kind of tortious (sometimes tipping to criminal) conduct by which registrants register domain names with the bad faith intent of taking economic advantage of owner's marks and injuring consumers by beguiling them to disclose personal information. The forum is not open to trademark owners whose claims are outside its scope, even though they may include allegations of cybersquatting. more

The Internet Is Designed for Surveillance

The current implementation of the Internet is hierarchical in that we get IP addresses from providers and then use a DNS that is rooted. We go even further in requiring that we conform to conditions on our intent (AKA our use) of connectivity in order to get a temporary lease on something so fundamental as our identity in the guise of a DNS name. We go further by accepting the idea that we communicate within pipes owned by service providers who can dictate terms in order to extract a rent. more

Critical Data Belongs in the Cloud, Not Under It - Lessons Learned from Irene

"As flood waters from Tropical Storm Irene swamped the Waterbury state office complex, seven employees from the Vermont Agency of Human Services rushed inside to rescue computer servers that are critical for processing welfare checks and keeping track of paroled prisoners living around the state," according to a story by Shay Totten on the 7days blog Blurt. Two of the employees - network administrator Andrew Matt and deputy chief information officer Darin Prail - lost their cars in the parking lot as the river rose but kept on working to assure that our servers were not lost. "We didn't know how much time we had," Matt said, "and our job was to save the servers." more