Cisco Collaboration Summit - Where Unified Communications Could Be Going

This year's Cisco Collaboration Summit was a step up from last year, and I say that for good reason. Last year's event was good -- all of Cisco's events are good -- but the venue was too small and it took away from the messaging. For 2010, Cisco went out of town to the classy and classic Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. They don't build them like this anymore, and to me, this setting did far more justice for what Cisco has to say about collaboration. more

Fast Web Performance Starts with DNS…

You wake up, make coffee, sit down by the computer and start reading your favorite web sites. You fire up your favorite browser and type 'www.site.com' on the address bar, hit enter and continue sipping on that coffee. You wait for the page to load, sipping some more coffee - a few seconds later you get the Google search results for 'www.site.com'. You scratch your head, sip some more coffee, and start wondering if you did a typo, but no it is correct - Google is not correcting your spelling. more

Russian IDN ccTLD .?? Opens for Registrations, Makes History

November 11, 2010, marked the day when the new Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) contry code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) .?? (Cyrillic for ?????????? ?????????, Russian Federation) was opened for general registration. Prior to that date the registration was open only for trademark owners and governmental institutions. ... It turned out they needed less than three hours to reach to the 100,000 domain names! Such a gold rush was not expected, and numbers continued to grow - 200,000 within 6 hours... more than 460,000 by today. more

Trust Us

Here's the question: is it meaningful or important for a federal agency to have regulatory authority over high-speed Internet access connectivity? Right now, the FCC (which is supposed to oversee "communication over wire and radio") has no clear authority to make policy about high-speed Internet connectivity. (Transport is different than content - this post is not about applications or uses of this connectivity. Be careful when you talk about the Internet "ecosystem," because transport has been historically and remains different from everything else. I'm talking about the capacity to send packets from Point A to Point B, whether provided by wired or wireless providers.) more

Average Daily Malware at All Time High, Spam Lowest Since 2008

McAfee, Inc. today unveiled its McAfee Threats Report: Third Quarter 2010, which uncovered that average daily malware growth has reached its highest levels, with an average of 60,000 new pieces of malware identified per day, almost quadrupling since 2007. At the same time, spam levels decreased in volume this quarter, both globally and in local geographies. Spam hit a two year low this quarter while malware continued to soar. More than 14 million unique pieces of malware were identified in 2010, one million more than Q3 2009. more

Facebook’s New Messaging Platform

On Monday, Facebook announced that they were introducing a new messaging platform. Facebook is careful to point out that this is not a replacement for email; it is not email, so they claim. So what is it? This messaging platform is basically a way to talk to people outside of Facebook from Facebook... Essentially, independent of the platform, you can still use the feature. It's kind of like everything Java promised in the 1990's -- it runs on Windows, the Mac or Unix. more

Russia’s Cyrillic IDN ccTLD Blasts Off, Through the 500K Mark in Under a Week

Since last Thursday's launch of Russia's Cyrillic script IDN ccTLD, registration volumes have smashed all expectations, much like a Soyuz rocket blasting off into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. At the time of writing (14:00 17/11/2010 UTC), .??, which is Cyrillic for RF (short for ?????????? ????????? - Russian Federation) has just exceeded 500,000 registrations, having passed the 100,000 mark in the first three hours. It is already among the top 30 ccTLDs worldwide and heading towards the top 20 at high speed. more

New Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about Canada’s Anti-Spam Bill C-28

From time to time, we see unenlightened comments about the efficacy of laws in the fight against spam. "Laws won't stop spam" being the most common. No, they won't. What laws do is dissuade some people from undertaking shoddy mailing practices or even outright spam campaigns. Laws don't stop murder, rape and robbery either, but for those un-dissuaded who undertake such heinous crimes, we, as a society, have laws for punitive effect. They pay the price society exacts for their actions. C-28 will attenuate spam in Canada, and help us to fight spam internationally. more

“Capacity” - The Hidden Word?

What is so secret about the word, "Capacity"? As I read and talk with people I realize the word, "capacity" is typically missing from the DNS discussion. "Capacity" and "Security" are the two cornerstones to maximizing DNS resilience; both of which are typically missing from the DNS discussion. Have you seen a single DNS node easily process over 863,000 queries per second? Have you seen a network routinely handle over 50Gbits/second in outbound traffic alone without breaking a sweat? more

Lawful Access Bills Proposed for ISPs in Canada

Michael Geist writes: "The bills contain a three-pronged approach focused on information disclosure, mandated surveillance technologies, and new police powers. The first prong mandates the disclosure of Internet provider customer information without court oversight. Under current privacy laws, providers may voluntarily disclose customer information but are not required to do so. The new system would require the disclosure of customer name, address, phone number, email address, Internet protocol address, and a series of device identification numbers." more

Will the Cloud Kill Telecom Vendors?

There are many big questions in telecom these days, and this is one that's on my mind right now. Over the past few months, I've participated in events or briefed with leading vendors in our space, namely Avaya, ShoreTel, BroadSoft, Aastra, Metaswitch, Mitel, Interactive Intelligence, and this week Cisco. Every analyst has their own core circle of vendors they stay close to, but I'd say that's a pretty fair representation of who's driving telecom. To varying degrees, all of these vendors have a cloud story, and the more I hear it, the more I start to wonder what it really means. more

Avaya’s web.alive - Another Approach for Unified Communications?

Earlier this month, Avaya held a new type of customer event in Toronto, called Evolutions. They have been looking for better ways to bring customers together, so aside from their global event, they've put together Evolutions, which has a regional focus. The first one was recently held in Mexico to great success, and my understanding is that Canada was the next trial event, and that's what I attended in downtown Toronto... I'm almost certain I was the only Canadian analyst invited, so this may well be the only place you'll hear about Evolutions. more

Why Vertical Integration Is Good for the Domain Name Industry

ICANN's decision a little over a week ago to permit the vertical integration of registries and registrars in the new top-level domain program, which now appears in the Applicant Guidebook published over the weekend, was as welcome as it was surprising. This bold, principled stance will fundamentally modernize the domain name industry and create competitive benefits that will be felt by consumers and under-served communities for years to come. more

Project Explosion in the Email Industry Today…

Funny as it may seem, today there's big news in the email industry -- 2 large internet bodies, 2 projects... Projects Phoenix and Titan, by AOL and Facebook respectively. What are key things to note about each project? Let's look at each in brief detail... more

IPv6 Inside Everything and Everybody

With the market for connected humans reaching saturation in advanced economies, mobile operators now see connected devices as the next growth opportunity. 'Everything that can benefit from being connected will be connected', according to Ericsson's CTO (source). In the meantime, Intel dreams of embedding processors into everything that can gain something from communicating. more