Nearly ten years ago, the Government of Canada wrote a letter to the chair of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) that set out the framework for the management of the dot-ca domain. The government articulated a vision of the dot-ca domain as a “key public resource” and called on CIRA to act in an open and transparent manner. CIRA has long sought to live up to those standards, but in recent months the organization has shown an unmistakable shift toward prioritizing commercial gain over the public interest along with a troubling move toward secret decision making... more
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend the The Emerging Communications (eComm) 2009 conference in San Francisco which was packed with 3 days of fascinating conversations about the future of communications. I absolutely enjoyed talking to various speakers and attendees giving me a deep level of appreciation and perspective on technical, commercial and political issues at hand -- and what is likely to come in the next few years. And speaking of politics, Lee Dryburgh, who founded eComm in early 2008, has generously allowed us to share with you a fascinating panel discussion which took place on day 3 of the conference called "Spectrum 2.0 - What's really happening?" more
As founder and CTO of Ellacoya Networks, a pioneer in Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), and now having spent the last year at Arbor Networks, a pioneer in network-based security, I have witnessed first hand the evolution of DPI. It has evolved from a niche traffic management technology to an integrated service delivery platform. Once relegated to the dark corners of the central office, DPI has become the network element that enables subscriber opt-in for new services, transparency of traffic usage and quotas, fairness during peak busy hours and protection from denial of service attacks, all the while protecting and maintaining the privacy of broadband users. Yet, DPI still gets a bad rap... more
Many of us are familiar with network effects within telecommunications. Fundamentally, the notion is that as the number of participants in a network increases, the value of that network increases superlinearly. Though many different theories exist about how best to value these networks, the general idea is that the more people on a network, the more benefits accrue to everyone on the network... more
From the beginning, the Internet has been viewed as something special and "unique." For example, in 1996, a judge called the Internet "a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication." The Internet's perceived novelty has prompted regulators to engage in "Internet exceptionalism," crafting Internet-specific laws that diverge from regulatory precedents in other media. Internet exceptionalism has come in three distinct waves... more
I've been posting photos and snippets during eComm 2009 this week, but composing my overall impressions has been another matter. Sitting through 3 days mostly filled with continuous 15 minute presentations is a surefire recipe to fry your brain, and most people I talked to were topped out well before things wrapped up Thursday night. It's information overload of the highest -- and best -- order... Here's my top-line takeaway, and reading the rest of this post is really just detail. But it's detail you'll probably love if you really want to know what you missed... more
In the last few weeks courts in the USA have carried on business as usual. They continue to provide the two major telcos in the USA, Verizon and AT&T, with extraordinary protection -- basically retaining the outdated regulatory system in the USA that identifies the duopoly between the telcos and the cablecos as the best way forward for the development of telecoms competition in this country. This is rather different from the position taken by the new Obama Administration, which has indicated that it will break with past regulations... more
I don't want to get into the entire Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) vs Eircom and IRMA vs ISPs debacle. The only reason I'm even writing this is because I'm getting a bit tired of all the "quotes" of "quotes" and other unclear and misleading things that people have been saying about ISPs over the last few weeks. more
David Akin pointed me to this article in the Ottawa Citizen which describes CRTC initiatives aimed at getting the cablecos to pay into a fund that would support, "the creation of high-quality, high-cost, scripted Canadian broadcasting content in the new media." In it, Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory [affairs?] for Rogers Corp. is quoted saying... more
Willis Alan Ramsey, who wrote "Muskrat Love," recorded one and only one studio album. The cognoscenti of country think it's a gem, an all time top ten. There's an apocryphal story that when Ramsey was pushed to make another record he allegedly retorted, "What's wrong with the first one?" We who use the Internet every day risk losing sight of what a miracle it is, and the openness that keeps it so miraculous... We also lose sight of the fact that even as the Internet's miracles occur, it's almost always broken or malfunctioning or threatening or worse in many places along the line. more
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