U.S. Government Officials Raise Concerns Over Intel’s Long Delay Informing Government on Chip Flaws

Latest reports suggest Intel Corporation did not inform U.S. cyber security officials about the so-called Meltdown and Spectre chip security flaws until they were leaked to the public six months after Intel was notified about the problem. more

U.S. House Republicans Ask CEO’s of Major Tech, Telecom Companies to Testify on Net Neutrality

U.S. House Republicans have invited CEOs of major technology and telecommunications companies to weigh in on the net neutrality debate amidst Federal Communications Commission move to repeal the Obama-era rules. more

EFF: Internet Went All Out in Support of Net Neutrality

Yesterday's "Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality," resulted in more than 3.4 million emails to U.S. Congress and more than 1.6 million comments to the Federal Communications Commission. more

Do We Need IPv4 at Home/SOHO Any More?

CLAT/NAT64 is utilized across many mobile networks globally, and I am only talking about Ethernet and Wi-Fi in home and small office/home office (SOHO) environments. I experimented by completely disabling IPv4 at home and established a SSID where my MacBook Pro operates without an actual IPv4 address. The MacBook supports CLAT (RFC 6877), and by implementing PREF64 (RFC 8781) and DHCP Option 108 (RFC 8925) in my network, I was able to achieve a 100% IPv6 environment. more

Keys to Successful Collaboration and Solving Wicked Internet Problems

The incredible pace of change of the Internet -- from research laboratory inception to global telecommunication necessity -- is due to the continuing pursuit, development and deployment of technology and practices adopted to make the Internet better. This has required continuous attention to a wide variety of problems ranging from "simple" to so-called "wicked problems". Problems in the latter category have been addressed through collaboration. This post outlines key characteristics of successful collaboration activities. more

Transition of Oversight of the IANA Functions: What is at Stake

As the expiry date of the current IANA Functions contract approaches (October 1st, 2016), some in the US Congress are challenging the validity of the proposal to transfer (or "transition") the ovesight role currently exercised by the US Administration, to a multistakeholder system equipped with checks and balances. A letter was sent to the President of the United States of America. Similar letters were sent to the Speaker and Leadership of the House of Representatives, as well as to the President pro tempore and Leadership of the Senate. more

Rodney Joffe on Security Vulnerabilities of Modern Automobiles

Rodney Joffe, Senior Technologist at Neustar, explaines that vehicles (beginning with 1998 models) are vulnerable to hacking, but manufacturers have been unable to fix the problem. In the video below, Joffe explains the challenge to cars and the possible threats that exist for other machines connected to a network. more

Digital Activist Aaron Swartz Found Dead

Aaron H. Swartz, a computer activist, co-founder of Reddit and co-author of the "RSS 1.0" specification, died in New York on Friday. Swartz, 26 years of age, committed suicide in New York City on Jan. 11, according to his uncle. more

Interoperability Testing Event for DMARC Email Anti-Spoofing Specification

At the end of January, the DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) specification was publicly announced and resulted in widespread media coverage, blog posts and discussion. Since that time various individuals and organizations have been working on writing code for DMARC validators and report parsers. The dmarc-discuss list has been fairly active as various questions and issues have been raised and clarified. Now it is time to see how well the various implementations play together in live testing. more

Have We Reached ‘Peak Telecom’ and What Does This Mean for 5G

"Peak telecom" is described as the maximum point of expansion reached by the traditional telecommunications industry before the internet commoditized the industry to a utility pipe. I had to think of this when I read the recent outcomes of the famous Ericsson Consumer Lab survey. The company used the result of the survey to counteract market criticism regarding the viability of the telco business models in the deployment of 5G. more

Will Broadband Go Wireless?

For years it's been impossible to go to any industry forum without meeting a few folks who predict that residential broadband will go wireless. This buzz has accelerated with the exaggerated claims that fast 5G broadband is right around the corner. I've seen even more talk about this due to a recent Pew poll that shows that the number of people that only use their cellphones for data has climbed significantly over the last few years – I'm going to discuss that poll in another upcoming blog. more

SpaceX Launches 1st Batch of New “V2 Mini” Starlink Satellites to Orbit With Four Times More Capacity

SpaceX is continuing to launch more Starlink satellites in an effort to increase the speed of its internet service. The tech company recently announced the launch of the V2 Mini satellites, which are designed to provide four times more per-satellite capacity than earlier versions more

Broadband and Presidential Politics

For the first time in my memory, broadband has entered into U.S. presidential politics. This is an important milestone for rural broadband – not because of the proposals being made by candidates, but because it indicates that the voices of those without rural broadband have reached upward to the top of the political system. I'm sure that when the presidential candidates go to rural areas, they are asked if they can help find a solution for the lack of broadband in many rural counties. more

Internet Goes Down for Parts of the US Due to a Misconfiguration

Monday saw a nationwide series of outages due to a misconfiguration at Level 3, an internet backbone company. more

The Need for Sustainable Open Source Projects

As a long-standing contributor to open standards, and someone trying to become more involved in the open source world (I really need to find an extra ten hours a day!), I am always thinking about these ecosystems, and how they relate to the network engineering world. This article on RedisDB, and in particular this quote, caught my attention. more