Networks

RIPE at 59!

RIPE, or Réseaux IP Européens, is a collaborative forum open to all parties interested in wide area IP networks in Europe and beyond... RIPE has been a feature of the European Internet landscape for some twenty years now, and it continues to be a progressive and engaged forum. These days RIPE meets twice a year, and the most recent meeting was held at Lisbon, Portugal, from the 5th to the 9th of October 2009. In this column I'd like to share some of my impressions of this meeting.

Getting a Handle on IDNs

Internationalized Domain Names or IDNs are back in the news. ICANN recently released a document entitled "Proposed Final Implementation for IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process"... In a nutshell, ICANN has now offered a path toward authorizing the adoption of ccTLDs in many countries' native languages. This marks a welcome advance for millions of Internet users who do not speak English or who do not use another language covered by ASCII. But with this advance comes some concerns.

Ambient Connectivity: An Introduction

"Ambient Connectivity" is the ability to assume connectivity anywhere and anytime. Ambient Connectivity is the future of the Internet once we've removed the barriers we associate with today's telecom and extend the reach beyond the narrow confines of "broadband". The nuanced definition of Ambient Connectivity is that we can view connectivity as infrastructure but we need to take responsibility if we find ourselves disconnected.

Download Speeds of GSM and 3GSM Networks

ARCchart is selling a new report entitled Mobile Broadband Performance of Carrier Networks. I can't personally justify the purchase, but I notice this wonderful graph in their sample. ARCchart gave mobile users free speed test applications...

Cutting Through the Twitter DDoS Hype

There are a lot of theories flying around about why Twitter and other social media services got knocked offline yesterday. I've heard rumors about it being linked to political tension between Georgia and Russia. Others blame Iran for the outages. I'm not a political commentator, therefore I cannot comment on anyone's political views -- but I have some logic and common sense, and I can draw some objective conclusions.

More on Networks and Nationalization With Respect to Cyberwar

As a follow up to Susan Brenner's Networks and Nationalization and my comment there, I will go further in this post and talk about the "cyberwar" and "offense" aspects of her article. I think I made this point elsewhere as well... but before getting into a war, it'd be a brilliant idea to actually know that you can win. Cyberwarfare is the sort of game where you don't really need to be a huge government with the largest standing army in the world and sophisticated weaponry in order to win...

A Closer Look at Iran’s State of Internet, Strange Transit Changes in Wake of Controversial Election

Many media sources have reported outages in Iranian mobile networks and Internet services in the wake of Friday's controversial elections. We took a look at the state of Iranian Internet transit, as seen in the aggregated global routing tables, and found that the story is not as clear-cut as has been reported. There's no question that something large happened in the Iranian telecom space, and that the timing aligns with the close of voting and the emerging controversy...

Verizon Mandates IPv6 Support for Next-Gen Cell Phones

Cell phone carriers have seen a huge growth in wireless data usage. The iPhone is selling like hotcakes, and its users generate large amounts of traffic. Not surprisingly, as cellular providers deploy faster network technologies, users generate even more data...

IPv6 and LTE, the Not So Long Term Evolution?

The Wall Street Journal reported that AT&T saw wireless networks about to drown under a deluge of data. To see YouTube content uploaded form an iPhone or Slingbox rerouting a favourite television program to your smart phone gives mobile network operators the shivers. Skype over 3G in the meantime gives sleepless nights, not because of surging megabyte floods but due to nightmares of considerable voice and roaming revenues washing away. Not easy to plan and engineer "managed transitions" under those circumstances.

Thoughts on IPv6 Security, Take Two

A few months ago, I made a post about IPv6 security. I've caught some flak for saying that IPv6 isn't a security issue. I still stand by this position. This is not to say that you should ignore security considerations when deploying IPv6. All I claim is that deploying IPv6 in and of itself does not make an organization any more or less secure. This point was made by Dr. Joe St. Sauver, of the University of Oregon...