ICANN LAC-i Roadshow Stirs “High Interest” in Caribbean ccTLDs

The Caribbean can create a unique flavour on the Internet by using effectively managed and financially stable Country Code Top-Level Domains. Speaking after ICANN's first Caribbean edition of its Latin American and Caribbean Internet Roadshow (LAC-i Roadshow), recently held in Turks and Caicos Islands, Albert Daniels said the event yielded "very high interest" in the management and operations of the local ccTLD, .tc. Daniels is ICANN's senior manager of stakeholder engagement in the Caribbean. more

NCUC Sends Urgent Plea to the ICANN Board Regarding Recent Changes Affecting Noncommercial Groups

An open letter from nearly 150 individual and organizational members of ICANN's Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) has been submitted to ICANN's board of directors and CEO. The letter has expresses serious concern over a recent ICANN Board decision regarding the restructuring of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO). From the letter: "We believe that the Noncommercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) chartering process has been seriously flawed on both procedural and substantive grounds. We appeal to you to address these problems before permanent damage is done to ICANN's reputation, to the GNSO reform process, and to the interests of noncommercial users of the Internet." more

ICANN’s Ultimate Demise?

ICANN's proposed overhaul of root server governance would empower a new council to revoke America's operator status, risking a clash with a resurgent Trump administration and potentially imperiling the multistakeholder model that underpins the internet's core infrastructure. more

VoIP: Beyond the Status Quo

On New Year's Eve 2008 I felt compelled to respond to the stories being written about the Death of VoIP which lead to my recent blog post: VoIP is NOT Dead!. Since then, I've enjoyed many of the conversations that have continued to take place in the comment sections of a number of blogs, including this one. My belief is the future is unwritten and if the conditions are right people will return to the space. But we need to embrace innovation and change and encourage people to be disruptive. What follows is a continuation of the conversation. more

Accountability Initiatives to Secure a Strong Future for .ORG

Last fall, when we put forth our bid to acquire the Public Interest Registry (PIR), our announcement - made jointly with PIR and its parent, the Internet Society - was met with questions. We took them seriously and made a conscious effort to engage with representative members of the .ORG community to deepen our understanding. We found that a consistent message was that the commitments made by Ethos since this fall addressed most of the community's issues, but there was a question as to whether they were enforceable and if so, how? more

The Sale of .ORG Registry: Continuing the Conversation We Should Be Having

On 11 February, I participated in a discussion about the pending sale of PIR at American University Washington College of Law, appropriately titled, The Controversial Sale of the .ORG Registry: The Conversation We Should Be Having. It was great to have a balanced discussion, free of some of the emotions that have often made it hard to discern the realities of the transaction. Certain misapprehensions arose in the discussion that we lacked the time to explore fully, so I want to take those up here. more

Google Fiber to Push Speed Limits Again

Dinni Jain, the CEO of Google Fiber, posted a blog last week that talks about dramatically increasing the top speeds available on fiber. He says the specific announcement will come in the coming months to dramatically expand Google Fiber's gigabit offerings. The blog gives a hint at what might be coming. Included in the blog is a speed test from the home of a Google Fiber employee in Kansas City who is receiving 20.2 Gbps. more

Creating a Russian No-Cyber Zone

In response to Russia's horrific invasion and war against the Ukrainian nation ordered by Dictator Putin that will live in infamy, an array of nations, organizations, and companies have responded to shun and shut off Russia in every possible manner. The actions include no-fly zones, removal from ICT network services, and essentially universal declarations of condemnation. For the first time ever, all Russian proposals to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) quadrennial standards body plenary known as the WTSA have been "bracketed"... more

Significant Uptick Reported in Targeted Internet Traffic Misdirection

Jim Cowie of Renesys reports: Traffic interception has certainly been a hot topic in 2013. The world has been focused on interception carried out the old fashioned way, by getting into the right buildings and listening to the right cables. But there's actually been a significant uptick this year in a completely different kind of attack. more

Google Announces Its Super Fast Fiber for Kansas City

Google today announced the launch of its "ultra-high speed" Internet access in Kansas City as part of its Google Fiber project... "Google Fiber is 100 times faster than today's average broadband. No more buffering. No more loading. No more waiting. Gigabit speeds will get rid of these pesky, archaic problems and open up new opportunities for the web."
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Google, US and UK Government Organizations Announce “Alliance for Affordable Internet”

Stephen Shankland reporting in CNET: "In a new effort to bring Internet access to the world's billions, Google, US and UK government organizations, and a raft of high-tech partners on Monday announced the Alliance for Affordable Internet..." more

The Diet Pill Security Model

The information security industry, lacking social inhibitions, generally rolls its eyes at anything remotely hinting to be a "silver bullet" for security. Despite that obvious hint, marketing teams remain undeterred at labeling their companies upcoming widget as the savior to the next security threat (or the last one -- depending on what's in the news today). I've joked in the past that the very concept of a silver bullet is patently wrong... more

Two Years Later the Conficker Worm Not Entirely Disappeared

In a SecurityWeek article today, Ram Mohan writes: "Just over two years ago, the Internet held its breath. The high-profile, widely proliferated Conficker worm had been in the wild from October 2008; its largest mutation was revealed in February 2009, with a widely publicized activation date of April 1, 2009. ... What we do know: Conficker could have proved much more damaging than it ultimately did, and the threat has not entirely disappeared." more

The 2022 IPv4 Market in North America

In 2021, the story was price. In 2022, the story was price and large block supply. Spurred by unprecedented unit pricing, the IPv4 market in North America experienced its second-best year ever in market history. Nearly double the number of IPv4 addresses were traded in 2022 compared to 2021, predominantly due to the increased flow of large block supply from twelve sellers, five of whom were first-time market participants. more

Bug Bounty Programs: Are You Ready? (Part 3)

The Bug Bounty movement grew out a desire to recognize independent security researcher efforts in finding and disclosing bugs to the vendor. Over time the movement split into those that demanded to be compensated for the bugs they found and third-party organizations that sought to capitalize on intercepting knowledge of bugs before alerting the vulnerable vendor. Today, on a different front, new businesses have sprouted to manage bug bounties on behalf of a growing number of organizations new to the vulnerability disclosure space. more