Policy Failure Enables Mass Malware: Part II (ICANN and OnlineNIC)

On Wednesday September 29th at 1PM there will be a meeting in the Old Executive Building in Washington D.C. with Registries and domain Registrars to discuss illegal Internet sales of prescription drugs. ICANN was originally invited but declined because citing "inappropriateness" . One "U.S." Registrar who definitely will not be in attendance is OnlineNIC more

Precrime Regulation of Internet Innovation

In the sci-fi movie Minority Report, a 'precrime' police unit relies on the visions of psychics to predict future crimes, then arrests the potential perpetrators before they do anything wrong. In the world of Internet governance, the future is now, as regulators want online services to predict and prevent safety threats before they actually occur. more

Facebook Outage Possibly Global

Craig Labovitz reporting from Arbor Networks: "We use ATLAS data to graph Facebook (AS32934) traffic with 80 ISPs around the world between 5pm September 22 and 5pm EDT today. You can see Facebook traffic plummet around 1:30pm and return shortly after 4pm. From a quick glance at the data, the outage appears to be global (impacting most of the 80 ISPs)." more

Policy Failure Enables Mass Malware: Part I (Rx-Partners/VIPMEDS)

This is the first in a series of releases that tie extensive code injection campaigns directly to policy failures within the Internet architecture. In this report we detail a PHP injection found on dozens of university and non-profit websites which redirected visitor's browsers to illicit pharmacies controlled by the VIPMEDS/Rx-Partners affiliate network. This is not a unique problem, however the pharmacy shop sites in question: HEALTHCUBE[DOT]US and GETPILLS[DOT]US should not even exist under the .US Nexus Policy. more

Network Complexity: Three Trends That are Contributing to a “Perfect Storm”

Most everyone who visits CircleID is familiar with Moore's Law, which stated simply holds that computing power doubles every 18 months. This has been going on since the 1960s and shows no sign of slowing. Moore's Law drives faster and faster computing, which produces more and more data and network complexity. This inexorable trend is putting immense pressure on corporate networks, and the strain is too much for many of them to handle on their own. more

New TLD Vertical Integration, Market Forces and the Path of Least Compliance

The ICANN Board will soon make many decisions, one of which is to decide whether to continue or reverse ICANN's longstanding policy of vertical separation of registries and registrars. Since new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) are supposed to benefit registrants with lower prices, choice and what we trust will be a decision for 'market-differentiated' competition, the Board will no doubt consider market forces as well as compliance and enforcement issues in choosing the path that can maximize these goals. more

Outages Never Sleep!

Not matter how much robustness and redundancy you build around your multi-tiered infrastructure you are bound to suffer outage(s). I'm not implying the failure of a single server, but a complex outage that's usually external to the operation of the infrastructure. What matters is how you communicate outage notification when things do go awry. I think the words that I'm searching for are transparency and openness. more

Could .NAME be the Killer App ENUM is Waiting For?

I'm in the camp that ICANN Top-Level Domains (TLDs) are businesses that should be allowed to evolve from their original charter to increase their viability in the marketplace. It was announced today that VeriSign is proposing to allow telephone numbers and other numeric identifiers in the .NAME top-level domain. This could be the Killer App that ENUM has been waiting for. more

ICANN CEO Warns Against Exclusive Control of the Internet by Governments

Speaking at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting in Vilnius , Lithuania, on Tuesday, Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's President and CEO, warned against the danger of placing Internet governance into the framework of intergovernmental organizations exclusively. "If governance were to become the exclusive province of nation states or captured by any other interests, we would lose the foundation of the Internet's long-term potential and transformative value. Decisions on its future should reflect the widest possible range of views and the wisdom of the entire world community -- not just governmental organizations." more

Turns out ICANN’s Beckstrom is an Inspirational Patron of the Tea Party

Friday's edition of National Public Radio's "On The Media" devoted attention to the rise of the Tea Party and its widespread use of the social media. In the report Ken Vogel of Politico noted that the movement drew inspiration from the book, "The Starfish and the Spider" co-authored by ICANN President, Rod Beckstrom. more

Why I Support Canadian Presence Requirements for .CA Domain Names

It nearly goes without saying that if ".CA" means and should continue to mean, "Canada", the registration of a .CA domain name ought to involve some tie to Canada. As Canadian Internet Registration Authority ("CIRA") CEO, Byron Holland, aptly put it, "The fundamental requirement of having a Canadian presence in order to get a dot-ca domain name make sense...because it is a country code and there is an assumption that there is some "Canadian-ness". And that is why, in a nutshell, I support a Canadian 'presence requirement' for the registration of .CA domain names. Nevertheless, the question of what constitutes an appropriate 'presence requirement' is an interesting issue... more

Competition to Regional Internet Registries (RIR) for Post-Allocation Services?

Is it time for a split between allocation and services for Internet number resources as was the case for domain name resources? Back in 1996, Network Solutions had essentially four different government granted monopolies... In 1997, Network Solutions "spun" off the 3rd and 4th monopoly into a non-stock corporation known as American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) which has continued the monopoly for its region after spinning off several other Regional Internet Registers (RIR) which are in themselves monopolies. more

Application Delivery Controllers as Safety Net for Ad Servers

Ad serving platforms drive a lot of web site revenue. These software platforms grant a site manager control over local or remote ads appearing on his web site. Over the years these platforms grew in functionality and today they offer diverse functions... Performance issues on such a platform can take down the ads on dozens of different sites, causing massive loss of revenues to the site and the platform owners. more

MOPO - The Latest Speed Bump on ICANN’s New gTLD Superhighway

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a Petri dish for acronyms. The latest one to be introduced into the ICANN lexicon is MOPO which is short for Morality and Public Order. MOPO is one of the four grounds by which a third party can challenge an application for a new generic top-level domain (gTLD). The profile of MOPO recently increased when ICANN's Government Advisory Committee (GAC) provided formal advice to the ICANN Board regarding the current MOPO procedures set forth in ICANN's Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAG) for new gTLD applicants. The resolution of this issue will largely determine whether new gTLD applications will be accepted by ICANN in 2011 as planned or sometime in the far distant future. more

Suggestions on IDN Variant Management

To some applicants, ICANN's variant management policy in DAG4 has become a big obstacle to the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) application. The policy is to delegate the string while reserving the variants, and these variants will not be delegated until a sound mechanism is developed and the desired variants are evaluated. But for some languages, Chinese for example, the so called string and its variant, namely simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese, are equivalent and must be simultaneously delegated. more