A DeLorean, 88 Miles an Hour and a Fully-Charged Flux Capacitor…

For a brief moment earlier this week, I thought my days spent dreaming of hover-boards, flying cars and Biff's elusive Sports Almanac were finally over. From reports circulating online, we had finally reached "Back to the Future Day". Those movie buffs out there will know exactly what I'm referring to... But it got me thinking. What would the Domain Name world look like if that crazy cat Doc Brown swung past in his DeLorean, with a fully-charged flux capacitor and a return ticket to October 21st 2015? more

Valuing Trademarks in Domain Names

My new essay, "Valuing Trademarks in Domain Names," outlines the various approaches to valuing trademarks, pointing out the approaches’ different strengths and weaknesses, with emphasis on domain names. Using court cases, the essay points out that there is no one right way to value intangible assets but there are wrong ways. more

Net Neutrality Again!

I had hoped to take a longer break from the theme of Net Neutrality, but a piece on Om Malik's blog by Daniel Berninger seems to be screaming for a reply. Berninger hails from Tier 1 Research; his credentials show a close association with Jeff Pulver's Free World Dialup, and hence a piece that is sympathetic to the 'Save the Internet' movement. His legalistically styled piece attempts to suggest that, in the absence of conformance to network neutrality principles, telephone companies will lose their common carrier status and therefore should lose their access to low cost rights-of-way. Good try, Dan... more

A New Definition of 6G

We now know how wireless carriers are going to continue the string of new G generations of cellular technology. 5G was originally defined to include spectrum up to 90 GHz or 100 GHz. In the last few years, international standards bodies have been developing new 6G standards in what is called the terahertz wavelengths between 100 GHz and 1 THz. more

Will Technology Solve Network Neutrality?

When I first read this post about Predictable Network Solutions on the excellent Telco 2.0 blog, I thought it was an April Fool's Day hoax. Then I remembered that it's a UK site, and some Googling confirmed that it's a real company. So my question is, will this technology -- or something like it -- eventually make network neutrality a non-issue? Or will it be the means for network operators to implement the discrimination that everyone is worried about? more

The FBI and Scotland Yard vs. Anonymous: Security Lessons

A lot of people are fascinated by the news story that Anonymous managed to listen to a conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard. Some of the interest is due to marvel that two such sophisticated organizations could be had, some is due to schadenfreude, and some is probably despair: if the bad guys can get at these folks, is anyone safe? more

Record $89B in China Means 2020 +4% Sales, $10B Profit

The US war on Huawei brought down sales internationally, but China's 700,000 5G cells and explosive cloud growth meant Huawei had an up year. The chip blockade did hurt in Q4 and will continue to hold down sales in 2021. Huawei has sufficient reserves to outlast the United States until China catches up in chip production. Perhaps the most important figure in the financial report was the $55 billion cash. Another $10 billion will come in from the sale of Honor/Glory. more

Whom Do We Regulate when the Phone Monopolies Are Gone?

Once upon a time in a universe not very long ago phone service in the US was provided by regulated monopolies. AT&T was the big one and there were (and are) hundreds of small ILECs (Independent Local Exchange Carriers) around the country. These monopolies were regulated both at the federal and state level. Then we began on the long road toward competition and deregulation. more

New gTLD Queries at the Root & Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

Since Verisign published its second SSR report a few weeks back, recently updated with revision 1.1, we've been taking a deeper look at queries to the root servers that elicit "Name Error," or NXDomain responses and figured we'd share some preliminary results. Not surprisingly, promptly after publication of the Interisle Consulting Group's Name Collision in the DNS [PDF] report, a small number of the many who are impacted are aiming to discredit the report. more

M-Commerce Market in China and Globally

M-commerce (mobile e-commerce) incorporates a range of mobile-driven applications, including payments for parking and theatre tickets (m-payments) to mobile banking (m-banking). M-commerce is a broad field incorporating a large variety of services and business models. In 2011, according to Gartner Group, over 15 billion apps are expected to be downloaded worldwide via app stores. They also estimated app store revenues alone reached over $5 billion in 2010 (incorporating revenue generated from both apps purchases and advertising). more

Is Your Router Spying on You?

If you've followed the telecom industry at all, you've heard of the effort to rip-and-replace Chinese network gear used mostly in cellular networks and in some fiber networks. The U.S. government ordered that such equipment be replaced, although it has funded the replacement in dribs and drabs. There has been heightened scrutiny of Chinese electronics since the recently discovered Beijing-sponsored cyberattacks that have been reported to have infiltrated the networks of major U.S. more

Nominet to Apply for .Wales and .Cymru Top-Level Domains

In the run up to the launch of new TLDs there were a lot of rumours about which organisations would apply for which strings. Detractors might pick holes in the entire project, but it's very hard to argue against the merits of new TLDs specifically in the context of cultural linguistic communities that fall outside the realm of ccTLDs (country code top level domains). The case of Catalonia and .cat is probably the best one and has been vaunted as the poster child for new TLDs in some circles. more

Identity, ICANN, and Public Meetings

Ok, so I had a day in Wellington that was not busy with other things so I thought I'd wander over to the ICANN venue and sit in on the PUBLIC Forum... I saw friends on the walk over and we entered the venue, chatting about several different things. They pulled out their badges. I didn't have one. They were admitted, I was denied entrance... more

Why DNS Is Broken, Part 2: DoS Target

Before we get into what DNSSEC is and the benefits of it, let's talk about some of the other potential pitfalls of DNS. One of the most significant issues we have to deal with are denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. While DoS attacks are not specific to DNS we have seen DNS be a frequent target of these attacks. more

Meeker Report: Global Internet User Growth Slowing Down

Mary Meeker delivered her Internet Trends Report, tech communities most anticipated slide deck at the Code Conference 2019 in Arizona today. more