Google’s .App TLD Application Under Fire

I've written about "closed generic" new TLD applications several times over the last year. I'm opposed to them, as I've said in the past and continue to say today. However I've generally been supportive of "restricted" TLDs. The Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) has serious concerns about Google's application for .app and want ICANN's board of directors to treat as a "closed generic". more

North American Broadband Trends

The broadband sector, like the wireless sector, is one of the strongest growth areas of telecommunications. Unlike most OECD countries, where DSL tends to dominate, the majority of subscribers in the US fixed broadband market are cable subscribers. During 2010 the gap continued to widen as the cable companies accounted for 70% of new broadband subscribers compared to the telcos' 30%. Although new broadband networks such as FttH and WiMAX are being widely deployed, broadband competition in each region is still generally limited to one DSL and one cable operator. more

IBM Predicts the Future for 2016 and It Includes No Spam

IBM published a video where it predicts what the world will look like in 2016 (see bottom of this post for the link). It includes the following five predictions. I want to start with the last one -- that junk mail (i.e., spam) will disappear. You'll need to watch the video to get the nuances of the prediction, but IBM says that in five years, Junk Mail will become a thing of the past. more

LeoSat Satellite Internet Project

I've been tracking Greg Wyler and Elon Musk's plans to launch low-Earth orbit satellites to provide Internet connectivity. Musk's SpaceX and Wyler's OneWeb have been joined by a would-be low-Earth connectivity provider, Leosat. Leosat will not be marketing to individual end users but will target government and business - maritime applications, oil and gas exploration and productions, telecom back-haul and trunking, enterprise VSAT, etc. more

Do You Know Who Your Domain Name Registrar Is?

A guy I know passed along this e-mail sent to one of his customers. They assumed it was a phish, since they didn't recognize the domain name in the link, but couldn't figure out what the goal of the phish was. They even checked the list of ICANN registrars, and nope, registrar.eu wasn't on the list. Nonetheless, this mail was real, and if the recipient had ignored it, his domain would have been suspended. What's going on? 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

ICANN’s New gTLD Double Standard?

Over the last two days I have sat in a room and watched a rather interesting dynamic unfold between the ICANN Board and its Government Advisory Committee (GAC). While I remain optimistic of there being a responsible closure to the new gTLD implementation process within the next six months, an apparent double standard being used by the ICANN Board could be a potential stumbling block. more

Commercial Incentives Behind IPv6 Deployment

The Best Practice Forum (BPF) on IPv6 at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) explored what economic and commercial incentives drive providers, companies and organizations to deploy IPv6 on their networks and for their services. The BPF collected case studies, held open discussions online and at the 2016 IGF meeting, and produced a comprehensive output report. This article gives a high-level overview. more

Colorado Has a New Spam Law

The governor of Colorado recently signed a new anti-spam law [PDF] into effect. Since CAN SPAM draws a tight line around what states can do, this law is mostly interesting for the way that it pushes as firmly against that line as it can. Other observers have already done a legal analysis of the way it's worded to avoid being tossed out as the Oklahoma law was in Mummagraphics, and to make it as easy as possible for suits to meet the falsity or deception limits in CAN SPAM. To me the most interesting part of this law is its one-way fee recovery language... more

Country Internet Registries: One African Perspective

Paul Wilson, Secretary-General of APNIC, was correct when he reminded the panelists of the IGF2009 workshop "Adopting IPv6: What You Need To Know" that "countries don't typically get IP address allocations, network service providers do". The ITU stills seems to cling to the notion that countries get IP blocks... more

How a Security Specialist Fell Victim to Attack

Our systems are protected by state of the art security systems. Our SPAM filter is a hardware device that is nearly 100% effective. It also helps in protecting against Spyware and other malicious code. Our Firewall is similar to those you would find in large corporations. Our Anti-Virus system has served us well and we've not had problems with virus for years. ...Two weeks ago, I received approximately twenty e-mails requesting the review and approval of Defending The Net articles published on other sites. I thoroughly review the e-mails to make sure they seem legitimate... more

DNS Amplification Attacks: Out of Sight, Out of Mind? (Part 1)

Geoff Huston's recent post about the rise of DNS amplification attacks offers excellent perspective on the issue. Major incidents like the Spamhaus attack Geoff mentions at the beginning of his post make headlines, but even small attacks create noticeable floods of traffic. These attacks are easy to launch and effective even with relatively modest resources and we see evidence they're occurring regularly. Although DNS servers are not usually the target of these attacks the increase in traffic and larger response sizes typically stress DNS infrastructure and require attention from operation teams. more

The Evolution of the ITU’s Views on Internet Governance (2006-2012)

Someone was talking the other day about the ITU and what they think about the issue of Internet Governance. I know what the ITU Secretariat wrote in a paper some years ago (Bulgaria was one of the governments heavily criticizing the errors and flaws in the ITU paper), but also decided it might be interesting to show how this question has evolved in the words of the ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure, by finding out how his positions on that issue, and on the role of the ITU have changed through the years. more

Delayed Enforcement Blocks Domain Name Lawsuit: Southern Grouts v. 3M

I'm often baffled by lawsuits over domain names and keywords because they just don't seem to make any economic sense. This lawsuit is especially perplexing given the plaintiff's delays and the seeming impossibility of the plaintiff reaching a profitable outcome, even if it won in court. What was the plaintiff thinking? more

The Rising Technical Challenges of Networking at Home

For me, one of the more interesting sessions at the recent IETF 81 meeting in July was the first meeting of the recently established Homenet Working Group. What's so interesting about networking the home? Well, if you regard challenges as "interesting", then just about everything is interesting when you look at networking in the home! more