Washington Post: ICANN Departures After Web Suffix Vote Draws Criticism. How Damaged is ICANN?

ICANN Chairman and other departures after the board's vote to approve the New generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) in Singapore draw criticism, reports The Washington Post. Shortly after the vote, Peter Dengate Thrush joined a New gTLD Group which stands to greatly benefit directly from this vote on the program he led on for nearly 3 years. This appears to have caused grave damage to ICANN's credibility internationally drawing international Press and Governments criticism over conflict of interest. more

The Design of the Domain Name System, Part I

Over the past 30 years the Domain Name System has become an integral part of the operation of the Internet. Due to its ubiquity and good performance, many new applications over the years have used the DNS to publish information. But as the DNS and its applications have grown farther from its original use in publishing information about Internet hosts, questions have arisen about what applications are appropriate for publication in the DNS, and how one should design an application to work well with the DNS. more

Google Is NOT Moving Into the Mobile Phone Business

It might appear paradoxical for Google to buy a company for $12 billion and to then not move into that business, but I believe this is the strategy supporting that company's purchase of Motorola Mobility. As many have already pointed out, the value of Motorola resides in its patents. For more than a decade this company has been a fading star... more

The Need for Major Structural Changes

In keeping with the discussion that I have been involved in over the last decade, 'structural changes' should be today's key phrase - not just for the telecoms sector but for every sector in our economies. It has been clear for a long time that structural change is well overdue. It doesn't really matter which sector you pick, you will see that some of these reform debates go back at least a decade - and often longer -- in healthcare, education, environment, energy, finance and banking and media. more

Prediction Methods for Crime

There's a new sheriff in town and he's riding the horse of "predictive policing". Back in July the Santa Cruz Police Department began deploying police officers to places where crime is likely to occur in the future -- making use of new predictive modeling programs that are designed to provide daily forecasts of crime hotspots -- thereby allowing the Department to preempt more serious crimes before they occurred. In essence, this is another physical-world application of machine learning and clustering technologies -- applied to preempting a criminal problem. In the cyber-world we've been applying these techniques for a number of years with great success. more

ICANN Chief Announces Departure Via Twitter

ICANN's CEO and President, Rod Beckstrom, has announced that he will be stepping down in July of next year. The announcement came via Twitter of all places, with a press release, presumably with more details, due sometime soon... With the launch of the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) program scheduled to officially launch early in 2012 maybe Beckstrom feels that his job "is done", or maybe there's another motive behind his departure. more

Will Googlerola Be Able to Fight Data Caps?

"Is Google Turning Into a Mobile Phone Company?" asks the headline in Andrew Ross Sorkin's New York Times story. Wrong question, IMHO. But is Google doing the deal at least partly to give it leverage over wireless providers? I think so. The biggest threat to the growth of Smart Phones and tablets and other Google businesses like YouTube is the imposition of data caps and metered pricing by wireless providers like at&t and Verizon Wireless. more

ICANN President, CEO to Step Down July 2012

Rod Beckstrom announced today that he will be ending his work at the the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) by July of next year. Beckstrom, a former U.S. cybersecurity chief, was elected as the President and CEO of ICANN in Jun of 2009 following Paul Twomey who had been serving the position since March 2003. more

Is FttH Future-Proof Infrastructure?

Telecoms engineers from all of the major telecoms services and equipment companies around the world agree that FttH is the only future-proof telecommunications technology. So who should we trust - the technology experts or politicians with different agendas? If there had been a division of opinion among these experts it would have been necessary to investigate it; but if they are all in agreement it is safe to follow their advice. more

Broadband Speeds Will Affect Saleability of Properties in the UK

Paul Budde writes: According to the Office of National Statistics in the UK, 85% of the population are regular internet users. With advances in internet technology, individuals and businesses are becoming increasingly more reliant on having instant access to high speed broadband. Statistics show that 69% of UK internet users would be put off from purchasing a home if it did not have a high speed internet connection. more

Anonymous, LulzSec, and the Option of Internet Security

As hacking groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec continue to make headlines, many of us in the Information Security field can only sit back and shake our heads. The large number of successful system breaches, web site defacements, and the publication of confidential data is not at all surprising, and for the most part was only a matter of time. more

Authentication Methods Used in the RIPE Database

Objects in the RIPE Database can only be modified by those authorised to do so. For instance, an object representing a certain range of IP addresses assigned to an organisation by the RIPE NCC or a Local Internet Registry (LIR) can be modified by the organisation holding that address space. Each database object contains one or more attributes referencing the maintainer(s) of that object. In a maintainer (MNTNER) object, credentials are listed for those who are authorised to modify any object referencing that MNTNER object. more

Integrating the GAC More Effectively

We all may have breathed a sigh of relief when the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and the Board concluded their eleventh-hour negotiations on new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) with some measure of success, but we can all agree that panicked policymaking is, at best, less than optimal. ICANN needs to integrate GAC input more effectively. The Final Report recently issued by the Joint Working Group (JWG) of the ICANN Board and the GAC contains several thoughtful and productive recommendations. more

DDoS Attacks: Don’t Be In Denial of the Risks

Unlike traditional attacks by hackers which breach a business's security systems, resulting in defaced websites, intellectual property theft and/or customer data theft, a DDoS attack focuses on making a business's Internet connected infrastructure (e.g. web servers, email servers, database servers, FTP servers, APIs, etc.) unavailable to legitimate users. A business's brand reputation, which can take years to establish, can be swept away in just a few hours from a single DDoS attack in the same way a natural disaster like a flood or earthquake can impact a traditional brick and mortar business. more

Survey: Public Interest Representation in the Information Society

All civil society organisations and other self-identified public interest representatives in the regime of Internet governance and related areas of information and communications policy are invited to complete a survey titled Public interest representation in the information society. This survey contributes towards the development of a map of Internet governance... more