IGF 2015 Takes Action, Developing Best Practices to Address Internet Issues

After many months of hard work and preparation, the IGF community has published draft Best Practices on a range of key issues, complementing other intersessional efforts such as Policy Options for Connecting the Next Billion, and Dynamic Coalitions. Best Practices Forums (BPFs) offer the Internet governance community tangible ways to address Internet issues. more

Internet Society Releases Internet of Things (IoT) Overview: Understanding the Issues and Challenges

Near the end of the first decade of this century, the world reached an Internet milestone. The number of Internet-connected devices surpassed the number of people alive on planet Earth. At the time, seven billion devices had already been connected to the Internet, and this went completely unnoticed by most people. This moment represented an important sign of the rapid pace in which we are adopting technology and embracing Internet connectivity. more

Experts Propose Plan for More Secure Wi-Fi Devices

Over 260 global network and security experts have collectively responded to the newly proposed FCC rules laid out in ET Docket No. 15-170 for RF Devices such as Wi-Fi routers by proposing a new approach to improve the security of these devices. The letter warns FCC ruling will cause more harm than good and risk a significant overreach of the Commission's authority. more

Rx for Dublin Progress: Board Transparency, Specificity, and Community Acknowledgement

In just a few days the ICANN 54 meeting will be up and running in Dublin, and schedule revisions are being implemented to devote even more time to discussion of accountability measures to accompany the transition of IANA stewardship. These developments come in the wake of the ICANN's Board pronouncement that it will not support either the "sole member" model (SMM) devise by the CCWG-ACCT (CCWG) after ten months of intensive labor, or even the "designator" model that it was considering as a possible fallback. more

Application for .gay TLD Rejected for the Second Time

ICANN has rejected the application from dotgay LLC for a second time, saying the .gay string does not match the community that dotgay claims to represent. more

NANOG 65 Report

NANOG 65 was once again your typical NANOG meeting: a set of operators, vendors, researchers and others for 3 days, this time in Montreal in October. Here's my impressions of the meeting... The opening keynote was from Jack Waters from Level 3, which looked back over the past 25 years of the Internet, was interesting to me in its reference to the "Kingsbury Letter". more

China Calls on the United Nations to Impose an International Code of Conduct on the Internet

A Chinese official on Friday called on the United Nations to impose an international code of conduct on the Internet. "It is highly necessary and pressing for the international community to jointly bring about an international code of conduct on cyberspace at an early date," said Wang Qun.. more

IGF 2015 Tackling the Next Billion Online Challenge

Just two weeks ago, the United Nations hosted the Sustainable Development Summit (SDS) where the international community embraced a new global agenda. I was very pleased that ICTs were recognized as a crucial platform for the implementation of this agenda, which sets an ambitious goal to "significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020" (paragraph 9c of the text for the new Sustainable Development Goals). more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 6: Final Thoughts

Today we just don't have an "Open" Internet. The massive proliferation of network-based middleware has resulted in an internet that has few remaining open apertures. Most of the time the packet you send is not precisely the packet I receive, and all too often if you deviate from a very narrowly set of technical constraints within this packet, then the packet you send is the packet I will never receive. more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 5: Security

Any form of public communications network necessarily exposes some information about the identity and activity of the user's of its services. The extent to which such exposure of information can be subverted and used in ways that are in stark opposition to the users' individual interests forms part of the motivation on the part of many users to reduce such open exposure to an absolute minimum. The tensions between a desire to protect the user through increasing the level of opacity of network transactions to third party surveillance, and the need to expose some level of basic information to support the functions of a network lies at the heart of many of the security issues in today's Internet. more

Mobile Broadband Penetration in Asia

The advent of mobile broadband triggered a huge change in broadband access across Asia. Following more than a decade of strong growth in almost all mobile markets in the region, an amazing transition to new generation mobile networks and services took place. By end 2014 there were a total of 1.2 billion mobile subscribers and with annual growth running at over 40% coming into 2015 the numbers were expected to hit 1.7 billion by end-2015. more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 4: Locality and Interdependence

The Internet was not originally designed as a single network that serviced much of the world's digital communications requirements. Its design was sufficiently flexible that it could be used in many contexts, including that of small network domains that were not connected to any other domain, through to large diverse systems with many tens of thousands of individual network elements. If that is indeed the case, then why is it that when networks wish to isolate themselves from the Internet, or when a natural calamity effectively isolates a network, the result is that the isolated network is often non-functional. more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 3: Local Filtering and Blocking

The public policy objectives in the area of content filtering and blocking space are intended to fulfil certain public policy objectives by preventing users within a country from accessing certain online content. The motives for such public policies vary from a desire to uphold societal values through to concessions made to copyright holders to deter the circulation of unauthorised redistribution of content. more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 2: The Where and How of “Internet Fragmentation”

In defining what is meant by "Internet Fragmentation" it is useful to briefly describe what is meant by its opposite, an "Open and Coherent Internet". As we've explored in the previous section, "coherence" implies that each of the elements of the Internet are orchestrated to work together to produce a seamless Internet which does not expose the boundaries between discrete elements. more

European Court Invalidates EU-US Data Pact

The personal data of Europeans held in the United States by Internet companies is not safe from US government snooping, the European court of justice ruled today, in a landmark verdict that hits Facebook, Google, Amazon and many others. more