Top Ten List of Needed FCC Regulatory Reforms

Honesty is the best policy. At the risk of anthromorphizing a regulatory agency, at the very least the FCC has not told the complete truth, or put itself in a position not to know the truth. The FCC has contributed to debates about what constitutes credible facts and statistics, and what this data means. For example, soon-to-be former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin asserted as the gospel truth his factual conclusion that cable television operators collectively have a 70% market share... The FCC should acknowledge that it may not know all the facts. more

Google Unleashes Domain Name Registration Service

Kieren McCarthy reporting in the Register: "Google has launched its new domain-name management system, providing a clean and simple interface that will put it in direct competition with market leader GoDaddy." more

Privacy Getting a Reboot

Anyone old enough to remember when cross-border data flows were limited to what could be put in a DHL box in New York and sent directly to Milan for the next day? Or when MIPS were so costly and centralized that batch processing was the norm? The world has changed, but the rules governing data protection and privacy haven't (much). Today technology allows and users demand that data flow without the drag of political boundaries or national borders, yet we still want assurances that our information will be protected and respected.  more

Meltdown and Spectre: Security is a Systems Property

I don't (and probably won't) have anything substantive to say about the technical details of the just-announced Meltdown and Spectre attacks. What I do want to stress is that these show, yet again, that security is a systems property: being secure requires that every component, including ones you've never heard of, be secure. These attacks depend on hardware features... and no, many computer programmers don't know what those are, either. more

Why SDN is Not Enough

A hot topic in telecoms at the moment is 'software-defined networking' (SDN). This term covers a range of technologies that put networks under the control of centralised management software. But what if SDN misses the point of why broadband networks exist in the first place? Network equipment vendors are busy pushing operator CTOs to adopt a 'software telco' approach. A small army of analysts and consultants cheer this process on. more

A Look at Why Businesses Buy Cloud Services?

If you are a cloud provider, whether you are pure play or an internal IT department, it is very interesting to know who is buying cloud services, and why. In a recent survey by PB7 sponsored by EuroCloud Netherlands and others, a group of Dutch companies was interviewed about their motivations and hesitations around cloud computing. The survey's results were quite a bit more interesting than the usual lot. In this article I have cherry picked a few observations from the larger survey. more

Sharing: The First Step to Structural Change in Mobile

The arrival of the iPhone, Android and iPad will raise the stakes higher in the mobile broadband market. The fact that iPhone alone has over 140,000 Apps over sort of open networks, not portals, shows the demand for mobile applications. This will put an enormous strain on the infrastructure of the mobile operators and will require them to build fibre networks to all mobile stations, as well as invest in more spectrum and new technologies such as LTE. At the same time the mobile subscriber markets are becoming saturated and competition is driving margins down. more

M3AAWG & i2Coalition Collaborate on Best Practices on Anti-Abuse in Hosting & Cloud Environments

I am excited to announce the recent release of the industry first Best Common Practices document for Cloud and Hosting providers for addressing abuse issues that was created by M3AAWG and the i2Coalition. M3AAWG has been collaborating with the Best Practices Working Group of the i2Coalition over the past 2 years to discuss ways to solve malicious activity within hosting and cloud ecosystems.  more

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in the Google-Verizon Legislative Framework

Google and Verizon have developed a "Proposal" on Internet access which I am sure they expect to serve as a template, starting point and frame of reference going forward. In light of the FCC's judicial reversal in the Comcast case, the absence of substantive progress at the FCC and the unlikelihood of congressional action, two major stakeholder can and have taken the lead. It should come as no surprise that Verizon and Google have emphasized and begrudgingly compromised on their corporate interests. more

DoT and DoH Guidance: Provisioning Resolvers

As part of a larger effort to make the internet more private, the IETF defined two protocols to encrypt DNS queries between clients (stub resolvers) and resolvers: DNS over TLS in RFC 7858 (DoT) and DNS over HTTPS in RFC 8484 (DoH). As with all new internet protocols, DoT and DoH will continue to evolve as deployment experience is gained, and they're applied to more use cases. more

Can Trademarks and Brands Help Save the Internet From Itself?

Trademarks and brands are often among a company's most valued assets. Customers associate trademarks and brands with producer integrity. They engender consumer trust. Without TMs and Brands, companies struggle for attention and find it more difficult to link the company's integrity and trustworthiness in the marketing of its goods and services. Representing company promise and customer expectations, they are uniquely positioned to symbolize common values and aspirations. more

How Digital Asset Management May Change Due to COVID-19

One of the "fathers of the internet," Vint Cerf, in a September 2019 article he published, said: "Today, hackers routinely break into online accounts and divert users to fake or compromised websites. We constantly need to create new security measures to address them. To date, much of the internet security innovation we've seen revolves around verifying and securing the identities of people and organizations online. more

5G Dementia at the FCC

Like the Coronavirus, 5G Dementia seems to be spreading around Washington. The latest manifestation has appeared at the FCC -- which is trying its best to make U.S. 5G infrastructure as insecure and primitive as possible. But first, an explanation of how 5G Dementia begins at the top and spreads in the U.S. capitol. 5G Dementia begins with "The Genius" who lounges around White House quarters and emits spontaneous tweets on whatever motivates him at the moment. more

Final Day to Give Input on “Future of the Internet” Survey

Today, June 26, is the final day that you can help the Internet Society with its "Future of the Internet" survey. It takes about 20-25 minutes and will help my colleagues at the Internet Society develop a number of scenarios about the possible future of the Internet. These scenarios can help all of us in talking to policy makers, leaders, media and the general user population about the choices we have before us for the future of the Internet. more

United Arab Emirates TRA Investigating High Level Speculative Interests in Recently Liberalized .AE

Domain names registered under United Arab Emirates' recently liberalized county code Top-Level Domain (.ae) have attracted such high level speculative interests that red flags have been raised within the country's regulatory agency. Domain names such as 'vip.ae' and 'vips.ae' registered only a little over a year ago are currently receiving multi-million dollar offers according to reports. Abu Dhabi's newspaper, The National, reported last week that the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), the .ae administrator, has stated "registering a UAE domain with no intention other than to resell it could hurt the registrants if they are later accused of registering the site in bad faith, something forbidden by its rules." more