More Petition by Google for Greater Transparency

Google reported today that it has filed an amended petition in the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The company, in a blog post, reports: "This petition [PDF] mirrors the requests made to Congress and the President by our industry and civil liberties groups in a letter [PDF] earlier this year. Namely, that Google be allowed to publish detailed statistics about the types (if any) of national security requests we receive under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including Section 702." Request has also been made by Google for the court to hold its hearing in open rather than behind closed doors. more

New gTLDs: The Registry Lock

Last week, The New York Times website domain was hacked by "the Syrian Electronic Army". Other famous websites faced the same attack in 2012 by the Hacker group "UGNazi" and, in 2011 by Turkish hackers. Basically, it seems that no Registrar on the Internet is safe from attack, but the launching of new gTLDs can offer new ways to mitigate these attacks. more

NASA Launching a Moon Satellite to Test 600 Mbps Laser Broadband

David Talbot reporting in MIT Technology Review: "A new communications technology slated for launch by NASA this Friday will provide a record-smashing 600 megabits-per-second downloads. The resulting probe will orbit the moon and send communications back to Earth via lasers. The plan hints at how lasers could give a boost to terrestrial Internet coverage, too. Within a few years, commercial Internet satellite services are expected to use optical connections -- instead of today's radio links -- providing far greater bandwidth." more

In Broadband, China Is Definitely the Middle Kingdom - 270M In 2015

With a goal of 270M fixed broadband lines in 2015 and near-universal service by 2020, the new "Broadband China" strategy is extraordinary. OFweek, a valuable site in Chinese, breaks the plan into three phases. The first is a full speed stage, ending in 2013, that deploys basic broadband and 3G widely. The second stage, 2014-2015, is dedicated to a further takeup and wider deployment. That will include 400,000+ LTE cell sites. more

OIAC Report: Views on Economic Impacts of Open Internet, Mobile Ecosystems, Specialized Services

Having been a member of the Committee for this past year, I'm pleased to share that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) "Open Internet Advisory Committee" has published its first annual report... The report is weighty - 98pp if you kill trees to print it. The OIAC was established as part of the US FCC Open Internet activity and Open Internet Report and Order from 2010. The FCC appointed expert committee members from a broad range of commercial, academic, and not-for-profit organizations. more

Examples of Where ICANN Can Be More Accountable

During the "GNSO Discussion with the CEO" at the recent ICANN meeting in Durban, I stated that ICANN talks a lot about the importance of supporting the public interest, but in reality the organization's first priority is protecting itself and therefore it avoids accountability and works very hard at transferring risks to others. In response to my comments, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé asked me to provide him examples of where ICANN can be more accountable. Copied below is my response letter to Chehadé, which provides seven examples. more

Web Performance: Real vs. Virtual Browsers

Real browsers vs. virtual browsers. It's a hot topic among Web performance testing providers and customers. Which is the better choice? Well, it depends. They're not intended for use under the same circumstances and requirements, so you aren't comparing apples to apples, instead, you are comparing apples to grapples. more

First Four TLDs Pass Pre-Delegation Testing

The first four new Top Level Domains (TLDs) have passed pre-delegation testing. Historically, it has taken most companies about 9 months after the Registry Agreement is signed before domain names go on sale to the general public. The four TLDs signed Registry agreements in April 2013. These TLDs may begin to sell domain names to the public as early as December 2013 or January 2014. more

The Next Internet Revolution Will Not Be in English

Imagine if, every time you wanted to visit a website, you were expected to type in letters from a foreign language, or worse, an entirely foreign script, such as Arabic, Cyrillic, or Chinese. For more than a billion people, this is how they experience the Internet today. The Internet was designed to be global, but it was not designed to be multilingual. For decades, this limitation was most evident in website and email addresses, which permitted only a small set of Latin characters. more

STIR Working Group Officially Formed to Work on Secure Caller ID For VoIP

Interested in working on an open standard for "secure Caller ID" for voice-over-IP (VoIP)? If so, the new "Secure Telephone Identity Revisited (STIR)" working group was just officially chartered within the IETF and the mailing list is open for all to subscribe.  more

What Are New gTLD Governance Councils?

Many generic, community and other geographic new domain name extensions (also called "gTLDs" or "generic Top Level Domains") will soon become a focal point for the industry or sector they represent. These simple denominators which define a vertical sector, profession, geographic, ethnic or other delineated group on the Internet have not existed on the Internet until now. These new domain name extensions are moving from the realm of science fiction to science fact: in fact a domain name ending in ".science" will soon exist on the Internet and will clearly contain web sites with a relationship to science. more

New gTLD Queries at the Root & Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

Since Verisign published its second SSR report a few weeks back, recently updated with revision 1.1, we've been taking a deeper look at queries to the root servers that elicit "Name Error," or NXDomain responses and figured we'd share some preliminary results. Not surprisingly, promptly after publication of the Interisle Consulting Group's Name Collision in the DNS [PDF] report, a small number of the many who are impacted are aiming to discredit the report. more

The Age of Information Ubiquity… Passed?

My first day back at the office after a summer of working remotely featured a traffic jam of the sort that reminds me why I hate commuting: one car crash, a key highway closed, and no reasonable surface road alternative routes. There's just nothing to do but suffer the consequences when that road backs up. I had an early team meeting and was already scrambling to leave the house with a buffer of half the regular commute time. It wasn't going to be enough. I dropped a note to my team, who'd all be participating from their locations (in other cities and countries), and warned them. more

9 Things You Need to Consider When Choosing a Registrar Solutions Partner for Your New gTLD

The ICANN board has passed a resolution approving the renewal of .INFO, .ORG and .BIZ Registry agreements with the clause on cross -- ownership (aka Vertical Integration) removed. What this means is that these Registries will now be allowed to own, part or whole, of a Registrar business. This will enable them to sell their TLD directly to end customers and also establish a reseller chain thus allowing much greater control and flexibility over sales channels. more

Michael Kende Joins Internet Society As Its First Chief Economist

As the first Chief Economist of the Internet Society, Michael Kende has joined the organization to provide strategic insights into the economic dynamics of Internet issues, as well as current and emerging trends impacting the Internet. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, he will be responsible for leading economic research and analyses as well as key Internet development, policy, market, and technology issues. more