If Demand Is Growing, Why Is Networking World Such a Depressing Place Right Now? Let’s Dig Deeper…

Over at the ECI blog, Jonathan Homa has a nice article about the importance of network planning: In the classic movie, The Graduate (1967), the protagonist is advised on career choices, "In one word – plastics." If you were asked by a young person today, graduating with an engineering or similar degree about a career choice in telecommunications, would you think of responding, "network planning"? Well, probably not... more

Broadband Tariffs: The Significant Gap Between Residential and Business

Analysis from Point Topic's recent reports on global broadband tariffs has revealed a significant gap in residential and business tariffs worldwide. Clearly businesses are paying more for their services than residential consumers but the relative differences in the ratios is more marked than might be expected. The first thought is that they are paying for more bandwidth and that is true to an extent. more

A Chance to Tackle the Urban Digital Divide

For the first time in my career, we face the possibility of some big changes for broadband in low-income neighborhoods in cities. The recent American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) gave cities significant funding that can be used for various kinds of infrastructure, including broadband. Cities have been handed a once-in-a-lifetime chance to fix some of the broadband deserts that have grown in poor neighborhoods. I'm already working with several cities that are taking this opportunity seriously. more

More Privacy, Bit by Bit

Before the Holidays, Yahoo got a flurry of good press for the announcement that it would (as the LA Times puts it) "purge user data after 90 days." My eagle-eyed friend Julian Sanchez noticed that the "purge" was less complete than privacy advocates might have hoped. more

10 Years of ICANN

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, was officially incorporated on 30 September 1998 as a nonprofit public benefit corporation. Headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California, United States, ICANN was assigned to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks originally performed directly on behalf of the U.S. government by other organizations, such as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Back in 1998, there was only one domain name registrar; now there are over 900 ICANN-accredited registrars in the world and over 168 million domain names registered. more

ICANN Seeking Global Background Screening Services for New gTLD Applicants

ICANN is seeking a global background screening service provider in order to conduct a "thorough and timely" background check on all new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) applicants. The Request for Proposal recently issued by ICANN aims at background screening focused on general business diligence, criminal history, and cybersquatting behavior. more

Gaining Better Network Edge Visibility with Automated IPAM

Large Communication Service Providers (CSPs) that provide transit to their customers need to pay special attention to those network segments to ensure that the IPs associated to them are actually being used. What happens should that customer move on or require more (or less) IP real estate? What do communication and management processes look like to ensure that all the various departments are aligned for rapid and seamless network configuration changes with no downtime? more

Food for Thought on the “New TLD” Business Models

There is always some degree of confusion in discussions about the "new TLDs". Some points of view try to be optimistic, others on the contrary only highlight the bad news, and most refer indistinctly to the "new TLDs" as if they did not break down into different segments, each of which obeys dynamics and constraints of its own. The purpose of this post is to provide some food for thought and to shed some light on those dynamics and constraints... more

The US-China Cold War in Cyberspace

In 2019 and 2020, the economic conflict between the US and China reached a peak. There was a months-long tariff battle that is still not fully resolved. After blocking Chinese-centered equipment manufacturer Huawei from its own markets, the US pushed hard to get the Five Eyes and all of its allies to block Huawei from foreign markets, too. Then the US started blocking its own companies... more

ISOC-NY EVENT: Dot NYC - How Are We Doing?

The Internet Society - New York Chapter (ISOC-NY) has for some years been following the .nyc and ICANN process on behalf of the NYC community and will, on May 8 2010, host a symposium "dot nyc - How are we doing?" at NYU. At 1pm NYC Council Member Gale Brewer will deliver keynote remarks, then Vendor Eric Brunner-Williams of CORE Internet Council of Registrars will reveal details of their proposal to the City, and Antony Van Couvering of Minds + Machines earlier comments to the City Council concerning their proposal will be shown in video. ...there will be a discussion "What's it for?" about possible applications - civic, community, commercial, and "outside the box" - for a local top level domain. more

ICANN Begins Accepting Applications for New gTLDs

ICANN announced today that after over seven years of planning, the organization has initiated the process for accepting applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). "We believe this program will do what it's designed to do, which is open up the Internet domain-name system to further innovation," said Rod Beckstrom, ICANN chairman, during an event at the National Press Club in Washington today. More information on the Applicant Support program can be found on the ICANN New gTLD page. more

MAAWG Overview of DNS Security - Port 53 Protection

J.D. Falk writes: Last week, MAAWG quietly published a new document titled "Overview of DNS Security - Port 53 Protection." [PDF] The paper discusses cache poisoning and other attacks on the local DNS, including likely effects of such a compromise and what access providers may be able to do to prevent it. more

ICANN Planning to Set Up Hubs in Singapore and Istanbul

ICANN is looking to set up two new hubs in Singapore and Istanbul to serve the Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) markets. "Asia has not been well-embraced by ICANN in the past. We owe Asia a big apology," Fadi Chehade, CEO of the organization responsible for administrating the world's Web traffic, said in an interview with ZDNet. more

We Are Protecting the Internet, Not Giving It to the United Nations

Like many foreigners, I follow U.S. politics closely. What happens in Washington, D.C. on trade, economics, foreign policy, and security matters can often have ripple effects across the world. This is also true with respect to internet policy, and like many who work in the internet industry, I am getting increasingly concerned by some of the news coming out of Washington. more

Open Access for Apartment Buildings

San Francisco recently passed an interesting ordinance that requires that landlords of apartments and multi-tenant business buildings allow access to multiple ISPs to bring broadband. This ordinance raises all sorts of regulatory and legal questions. At the most recent FCC monthly meeting, the FCC jumped into the fray and voted on language that is intended to kill or weaken the ordinance. more