What COVID-19 Means for Network Security

The COVID-19 Pandemic is causing huge social and financial shifts, but so far, its impact on network security has gone under-reported. Yet with thousands of companies worldwide requiring millions of employees to work remotely, network administrators are seeing unprecedented changes in the ways that clients are using their networks and new threats that seek to leverage the current crisis. more

Trump’s Strange WRC-19 Letter

The 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-19) is underway. It is the latest in a continuum of treaty-making gatherings that began in 1903 and is devoted to the now 116-year-old art of globally carving up the radio spectrum among designated uses that is instantiated in the Radio Regulations treaty agreement. Not unexpectedly, the event includes designation of 5G spectrum that flows from the requirements long set in 3GPP and GSMA. more

Domaining Europe Becomes NamesCon Europe

After 10 years as one of the top-level European Domaining Conferences, it is our pleasure to announce the transition of Domaining Europe into NamesCon Europe! This is an exciting new chapter for the NamesCon brand that expands into the European domaining market. The agreement between Domaining Europe and NamesCon was confirmed at the beginning of 2018. The rebranding of Domaining Europe to NamesCon Europe is in effect for the upcoming June 2018 event in Valencia. more

What’s Certain About the Regulatory Uncertainty Debate

Incumbent carriers, such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, have made countless "curtains for the Free World" assertions in the Network Neutrality debate. They claim that if the FCC reclassifies as common carriage aspects of Internet access, it will create "regulatory uncertainty" and "disincentive investment." Not one of the countless sponsored researchers funded by incumbents has provided a shred of empirical evidence to support these assertions. more

The Incredible Leakyness of Commercial Mailers (Cont’d)

Last week I blogged about the way that lots of otherwise legitimate companies leak e-mail addresses to spammers. Here's a few more thoughts. One person asked how I knew that these were leaks, and not dictionary attacks, since the addresses I use are fairly obvious, the name of an often well known company @ my domain. It's a reasonable question, but the answer is simple... more

Do-It-Yourself Rural Fiber

I doubt that any elementary school in the US has fiber to the premises, but, in 2013, an elementary school in rural Bhutan was connected to the Internet using optical fiber in the "last mile." They were able to connect the school because the cabling they used, metal-packed armored cable (M-PAC), which is modeled on undersea cables, does not have to be in a protective duct. It is 4mm in diameter, light and flexible, so it can be installed by supervised volunteers or unskilled workers.
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The International Space Station’s Canadian Music Video Collaboration - and Google+ Hangout

As much as we talk here about the inner workings of the Internet's infrastructure, there are times when you have to just sit back and look at how incredibly cool some of the things are that are enabled by the Internet. For example, last week I was delighted to stumble across this excellent music video collaboration between the International Space Station's Canadian commander Chris Hadfield, the Canadian band Barenaked Ladies along with a Canadian student choir. more

Will Starlink Harm the Ozone Layer?

There was a paper published in June in the peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters titled Potential Ozone Depletion from Satellite Demise During Atmospheric Reentry in the Era of Mega-Constellations. As can be deduced by the lengthy title, scientists have uncovered a new risk coming from the reentry of low-orbit satellites through the atmosphere. more

Going Postal

When a service is constructed using diverse components, then the way in which service revenues are distributed to the various suppliers of the components of the service can follow a number of quite distinct models. There are various forms of revenue redistribution models where the revenue per transaction is distributed to the various suppliers according to their inputs to support each transaction. more

The Technical Problems of the UN’s Internet Governance Forum Will Not Simply Solve Themselves

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has, for several years, experienced technical problems that have nothing to do with the local staff or host countries of the event. In fact, the volunteers who were part of the local staff of its 17th edition, held in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, were constantly overcompensating for issues with a great deal of goodwill.  more

AFRINIC at the Crossroads: ISPA Endorses Candidates Ahead of Pivotal Board Election

After three years of turmoil, AFRINIC - the regional internet registry for Africa - has opened online voting for a new board, marking what could be a turning point for the embattled organisation. The election, running from September 10 to 12, follows a failed attempt earlier this year that was annulled amid allegations of vote manipulation and procedural irregularities. more

Registry Data Quality Assessment

Accurate registration data is essential for the global registry system. To ensure that the RIPE Registry's data is correct, up-to-date and accurate, the RIPE NCC regularly checks the Registry data to fix inconsistencies and outdated information. We recently evaluated and analysed all IP address ranges registered in the RIPE Database and were pleased to find that 96.09% of those records are considered accurate. more

ICANN Board Gets Decisive, Vertical Integration Debate Killed Off

Michele Neylon writes: "Earlier this morning ICANN made public the resolutions from the most recent board meeting of November 5th 2010. The meeting was not a "normal" meeting - it was deemed a "special meeting" and its sole topic was vertical integration and cross-ownership between registrars and registries. This topic, often simply referred to as VI, has been a subject of debate - often very heated - for the last 12 months." more

Cybersecurity Standards Practices as Cyber Threats

One of the most embarrassing and pernicious realities in the world of cybersecurity is the stark reality that some industry cybersecurity standards practices are themselves cyber threats. How so? Most industry and intergovernmental standards bodies serve as means for assembling the constantly evolving collective knowledge of participant experts and package the resulting specifications and best practices as freely available online documents to a vast, diverse universe of users. more

Seattle Restores ISP Privacy Rules. Could be First of Many Cities to Defeat FCC’s Privacy Roll Back

The city of Seattle this week will move forward with its own plan to restore broadband user privacy rules despite the recent law passed by U.S. Congress, signed by President Trump in April, which gave ISPs the green light to collect customer data. more