The Commonest Domain Features: Constructing Look-Up Tables for Use as Part of a Domain Risk Scoring System

Many previous pieces of research have focused on the desirability of a comprehensive scoring system, to be used for ranking results identified as part of a brand-protection solution, according to their potential level of threat. Such scoring systems offer the capability for identifying prioritised targets for further analysis, content tracking or enforcement actions. more

ICANN Warns of Governance Crisis at AFRINIC Amid Allegations and Legal Challenges

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has issued a stern open letter to the Government of Mauritius and the court-appointed receiver of AFRINIC, the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Africa and the Indian Ocean. The letter, dated July 16th, expresses grave concern over AFRINIC’s governance failures, opaque election practices, and recent attempts by a controversial resource member to dissolve the organization. more

Disconnecting Finance: The EU’s Risky Use of Domain Takedowns as Regulatory Weapon

The European Union is increasingly wielding domain name deletions as a tool of financial enforcement - a trend sparked by the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and now spreading across other legislative efforts such as the Financial Data Access Framework (FiDA) and the Payment Services Regulation (PSR).  more

Cloud-Edge Collaboration: The Inevitable Future of AI Computing

Over the past decade, cloud computing has experienced explosive growth, evolving from its nascent stage to widespread adoption and fundamentally changing how businesses and individuals use information technology. At the same time, traditional on-premise computing, while still having its use cases, has been progressively integrated with, and often even controlled by, Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) in many aspects. more

Global Domain Name Market Reaches 372 Million Domains, 1.5% Growth in 2024

Afnic, the French association in charge of the .fr domain and several other Internet Top Level Domains, has published the 2024 edition of its annual analysis "The Global Domain Name Market". Here is a summary of the overarching trends and key figures. more

An Internet Infrastructure Perspective on AI Service Provision

This study analyzes the differences in domain name and IP address strategies among a number of current mainstream artificial intelligence (AI) service providers. We find that these technical choices not only reflect deployment decisions but also deep-seated corporate knowledge and capabilities in Internet infrastructure service provision, as well as brand positioning and market strategies. more

Implications of Satellite Being Broadband

We've had a quiet policy change in the United States over the last year, where satellite broadband is starting to be considered broadband by the federal government. Any rural household that subscribes to and loves Starlink would wonder why this is news, but from a policy perspective, it is a big deal. I've been considering what this shift might mean in the future. The FCC decided that Starlink wasn't broadband when it rejected Starlink's long-form filing in August 2022, where Starlink wanted to claim the funding it had won in the RDOF reverse auction.  more

Have LLMs Broken Fair Use?

Two sets of authors sued Anthropic and Meta in San Francisco for copyright infringement, arguing that the companies had pirated their works to train their LLMs. Everyone agreed that a key question was whether fair use allowed it, and in both cases, the courts looked at the fair use issue before dealing with other aspects of the cases. Even though the facts in both cases were very similar, last week, two judges in the same court wrote opinions, coming to very different conclusions. How can that happen? Is fair use broken? more

Starlink Accelerates IPv6 Adoption in Eight Nations

A wave of new entrants has joined the so-called "majority IPv6 club," with eight countries surpassing 50% adoption of the modern internet protocol, according to recent data from the Internet Society. Among the most dramatic changes was in Tuvalu, where the arrival of Starlink - a satellite internet service offered by Elon Musk's SpaceX -- catapulted IPv6 usage from zero to 59% in just a few months. more

Ignorance of History

An international institutional battle of sorts has been playing out in a segment of the trade press over the past couple of weeks over the venue of the Oct 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-27). The treaty conference held under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Radiocommunication Sector is part of a continuum of intergovernmental activities that began in Berlin in 1903. more

ICANN Warns of Possible Sanctions Over AFRINIC Election Irregularities

Mounting governance woes at the African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC) have drawn a sharp rebuke from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which has issued a stern warning of a potential compliance review. more

OneWeb Can’t Come Close to Replacing Starlink in Ukraine, but It Could Complement It

Elon Musk assured us that he would not stop the Starlink service in Ukraine. But, given his feud with Trump, his criticism of President Zelensky, and his rash actions with DOGE, can he be trusted? (His termination of USAID is estimated to have resulted in 340,000 deaths so far.) When askedabout Musk's influence, Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, said he declined to comment on "the internal politics of the United States and who should influence these decisions" but added "If changes happen and if our US partners and friends are changing their plans, of course we will be ready for plan B. more

The WSIS+20 Roadmap: Baby Steps in the Right Direction

The final phase of the WSIS+20 review has started. The two co-facilitators, Ambassador Suela Janina from Albania and Ambassador Ekitela Lokaale from Kenia, published on May, 21, 2025, their road map. The WSIS+20 Roadmap will lead us to the WSIS High-Level Meeting of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), scheduled for New York at the UN HQ on December 16-17, 2025. The first intergovernmental consultations were held on May 30, 2025, in New York. Two online stakeholder consultations followed on June 9 & 10, 2025. more

The Growing Risk of Space Debris: How Satellite Proliferation Is Polluting Low-Earth Orbit

Low-orbit space is growing increasingly crowded. Starlink has over 7,100 satellites in orbit and has plans to grow to 30,000. Project Kuiper has plans for a constellation of 3,232 satellites. One Web's first-generation constellation has 648 satellites, with plans to grow to over 6,300 satellites. The Thousand Sails (Qianfan) constellation is planning for up to 15,000 satellites. Numerous countries and businesses are launching or planning for smaller constellations for a wide variety of purposes.
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ICANN Demands Fairness in AFRINIC Board Elections Amid Governance Concerns

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has issued a formal call for greater transparency and procedural integrity in the ongoing board elections of the African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC). more