Who Has Helped the Internet? May 31 Deadline for Nominations for 2013 Jonathan Postel Service Award

Do you know of a person or organization who has made a great contribution to the Internet community? If so, have you considered nominating that person or organization for the 2013 Jonathan B. Postel Service Award? The nomination deadline of May 31 is fast approaching! more

An Agreement in Geneva

For all the tranquility at the end of last week's World Technology/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF), E.B. White's words come to mind: "there is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement." One also has to wonder though what a literary stylist like White would think of the linguistic gyrations demanded by the compromises reached at the WTPF in Geneva, and what they portend. more

A Royal Opinion on Carrier Grade NATs

There are still a number of countries who have Queen Elizabeth as their titular head of state. My country, Australia, is one of those countries. It's difficult to understand what exactly her role is these days in the context of Australian governmental matters, and I suspect even in the United Kingdom many folk share my constitutional uncertainty... In the United Kingdom every year the Queen reads a speech prepared by the government of the day, which details the legislative measures that are being proposed by the government for the coming year. Earlier this month the Queen's speech included the following statement in her speech. more

Major New Funding Opportunities for Internet Researchers and R&E Networks

Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA) is a new policy program that was developed at the Bali United Nations Climate Change Conference. As opposed to the much maligned programs like CDM and other initiatives NAMA refers to a set of policies and actions that developed and developing countries undertake as part of a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Also unlike CDM, NAMA recipients are not restricted to developing countries. more

Government Advisory Committee (GAC) Beijing Communiqué Inconsistent With ICANN’s gTLD Policy

The GAC Communiqué recommends that ICANN implement a range of regulations (which the GAC calls "safeguards") for all new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) covering areas ranging from malware to piracy to trademark and copyright infringement. The GAC proposes specific safeguards for regulated and professional sectors covering areas as diverse as privacy and security, consumer protection, fair lending and organic farming. Finally, the GAC proposes a "public interest" requirement for approval of new "exclusive registry access" gTLDs. more

Joint Venture Promises Broadband Benefits with Potential Risks for Latin American, Caribbean Markets

When Columbus Networks and Cable & Wireless Communications announced the formation of their new joint venture entity at International Telecoms Week 2013, it signaled an important milestone for the telecommunications sector in Latin American and the Caribbean. The development comes at a time when the region's appetite for bandwidth is rapidly rising. The market for wholesale broadband capacity is experiencing solid growth and shows no sign of slowing anytime soon. more

ICANN and GAC: A New Role Needed?

Syracuse University professor Milton Mueller published a blog under the title "Will the GAC go away if the Board doesn't follow its advice?". Having been to a number of (very limited) ICANN meetings on behalf of law enforcement cooperation, I would like to share a few - probably thought provoking - observations. The GAC should not leave ICANN but it may be more efficient if its role changed and its efforts were aimed at a different form of output. more

Bloomberg on Netflix as World’s Biggest User of Cloud Computing

Netflix is arguable one of the world's biggest users of cloud computing, renting all its computing power from Amazon Web Services, the cloud division of Amazon.com, which runs its own video-streaming service that competes with Netflix. Ashlee Vance from Bloomberg reports. more

Hundreds of Syrian Domains Seized As a Result of Trade Sanctions

"In apparent observation of international trade sanctions against Syria, a U.S. firm that ranks as the world's fourth-largest domain name registrar has seized hundreds of domains belonging to various Syrian entities, including a prominent Syrian hacker group and sites associated with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad," reports Brian Krebs. "The apparently coordinated action ended with each of the site's registration records being changed to include Web.com's Florida address, as well as the notation 'OFAC Holding'." more

New gTLDs: Money Maker

There are fascinating ideas about how, when and more than everything: who is going to earn money from gTLDs? I think back-end registry providers will earn money, some applicants will earn money too but my experience launching Eurid, the registry for .EU, reminded me one thing: these days, just before launching, until the (first) Sunrise period is launched. more

Government Hacking: Proposed Law in the Netherlands

In 2012 I wrote a blog on CircleID called State hacking: Do's and don'ts, pros and cons. In this post I give some thoughts to the concept of a government "hacking back" at criminals. The reason for this was an announcement by the Dutch government that it contemplated law along these lines. The proposed law is now here: the Act Computer Criminality III. more

Bypassing Geo-Locked BYOD Applications

In the wake of increasingly lenient bring your own device (BYOD) policies within large corporations, there's been a growing emphasis upon restricting access to business applications (and data) to specific geographic locations. Over the last 18 months more than a dozen start-ups in North America alone have sprung up seeking to offer novel security solutions in this space - essentially looking to provide mechanisms for locking application usage to a specific location or distance from an office, and ensuring that key data or functionality becomes inaccessible outside these prescribed zones. more

Video: Have We Found the Cure for Bufferbloat?

Following up on my recent post about how solving the Bufferbloat problem could dramatically increase the speed of Internet usage, I recently learned via a Google+ post by Michael Richardson of this video of a presentation by Jesper Dangaard Brouer of Red Hat at the recent DevConf.cz Brno 2013 titled "Beyond the existences of Bufferbloat - Have we found the cure?" more

BlackBerry Z10: New Products and Old Domains Don’t Mix

Type www.z10.com into your browser and you'll arrive at an Amazon page on which "Global Mobiles" sells unlocked BlackBerry Z10 phones. What? Did you expect to be directed to a BlackBerry (formerly Research In Motion) site just because the Z10 has been touted as the phone that will help make or break the struggling company? What happened? A savvy domain speculator realized that his or her domain name had become a hot commodity... more

Could You Go for a Year Without Internet Access? Paul Miller Reports on His Experiment…

Could you sign off of the Internet today -- right now, in fact -- and not come back online for 12 months? If you are a reader of CircleID, odds are pretty good that the answer is probably an emphatic "No!" This is, after all, a site for "Internet Infrastructure" and for most of us visiting the site (or writing here) the "Internet" is completely woven into the fabric of our lives... and we have a hard time thinking of a life without it. more