Tunnel vision is a rather serious medical condition and the Internet or at least a number of service providers could be at risk if not treated soon enough. Symptoms of inter AS (Autonomous System) tunnel vision are many slower connections with IPv6 compared to IPv4 with some failing all together. Reason is that tunnels, especially inter-AS tunnels, can lead to long paths and non-optimal routing. more
Here is a list of the most viewed news and blog postings that were featured on CircleID in 2008... Best wishes for 2009 and Happy New Year from all of us here at CircleID. more
VoIP remains a hot topic in the IP communications world, but it's definitely evolving. The following is my most recent article for a column that I write for TMCnet, and it's a year-end review on VoIP as well as my outlook for how it's changing for 2009. Colleague Alec Saunders posted his response to my article yesterday, and it's a good read. If you're interested in where VoIP is headed, then my article should help keep that dialog moving along within the CircleID community. Here we go... more
While this article specifically discusses the issues of E911 service in the Canadian hinterlands, I fear that the same fiscal shell game is being played by wireless providers all over North America... Grant Robertson writes in The Globe and Mail: Every month when cellphone bills arrive, Northern Canadians are forced to pay for a 911 service they can't access. more
Ed Felten has posted a nice taxonomy of the several meanings people take when they use the term Network Neutrality, briefly: End-to-End Design; Nonexclusionary Business Practice; Content Nondiscrimination ... I've been developing a taxonomy of issues that interact with and are bound with Network Neutrality. So far there are six items... more
Whistleblower website WikiLeaks has released the list of newly blacklisted websites by Thailand's Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT). The list was leaked by advisory board member CJ Hinke, director of Freedom Against Censorship Thailand, according the WikiLeaks website. From WikiLeaks' announcement: "The 1,203 blocked websites are located in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Vietnam..." more
This is a complex lawsuit by trademark owners attacking domaining and the role of the Google AdSense for Domains program in funding domaining activity. When I first blogged on the case in 2007, I wrote: "the lawsuit could effectively fall apart if the judge rejects formation of a class. Trademark class action lawsuits are rare for good reason..." Last week, the court ruled on class certification, and perhaps not surprisingly, the court denied certification -- giving Google and the other defendants an early Christmas gift. more
ICANN's authority to manage top level of the DNS comes from a two-year Joint Project Agreement (JPA) signed with the US Department of Commerce in 1997, since extended seven times, most recently until September 2009. Since the DoC can unilaterally cancel the JPA which would put ICANN out of the DNS business, when DoC speaks, ICANN listens. On Thursday, the US DoC sent a scathing letter to ICANN about the proposed plan to sell large numbers of new top-level domains (TLDs). There's a long list of issues... more
France Telecom has reported today that 3 major underwater cables were cut: “Sea Me We 4” at 7:28am, “Sea Me We3” at 7:33am and FLAG at 8:06am. The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear. Most of the B to B traffic between Europe and Asia is rerouted through the USA. Traffic from Europe to Algeria and Tunisia is not affected, but traffic from Europe to the Near East and Asia is interrupted to a greater or lesser extent (read more for country). more
Apple Computer has received high praise for the diversity of applications available for the iPhone. The company shows great willingness to accept third party software innovations. But Apple also solely decides whether to accept and make available any application. Rejected software vendors for the most part do not exist if they do not have shelf space at the Apple store. more
Virgin Media announced its intention of restricting BitTorrent traffic on its new 50Mbps service according to an article by Chris Williams in The Register. Does this mean that net neutrality is endangered in the UK? The question is important because advocates of an open Internet like me hold the UK up as a positive example of net neutrality achieved through competition rather than through regulation. more
In a post by Earl Zmijewski of Renesys, a number of observations have been made in the effort to rank all Internet service providers in the world for 2008 -- globally, geographically, as well as by market segment. Given the controversial nature of such a ranking in the industry, Zmijewski has pointed out that the changes in rank can be far more revealing than the actual rank itself. For instance it is noted that providers who are moving up in the rankings are doing so due, in large measure, to Asia. "China Telecom poised to enter the top-10 'global' providers, despite not being very global. Guess that is easy to do when you 'own' 1/6 of the world's population," says Zmijewski. Findings also include Sprint losing its long held #1 status to Level 3 and Global Crossing surging to #3, leaving their peers behind. more
In a 52 page security report released by Cisco, the company has confirmed what has been consistently been observed through out this year: "the Internet-based attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and specialized as profit-driven criminals continue to hone their approach to stealing data from businesses, employees and consumers." The 2008 edition of the report has specified the year's top security threats and offers recommendations for protecting networks against attacks that are propagating more rapidly, becoming increasingly difficult to detect, and exploiting technological and human vulnerabilities. more
A report "Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency" has just been released. While I don't agree with everything it says (and in fact I strongly disagree with some parts of it), I regard it as required reading for anyone interested in cybersecurity and public policy. The analysis of the threat environment is, in my opinion, superb; I don't think I've seen it explicated better. Briefly, the US is facing threats at all levels, from individual cybercriminals to actions perpetrated by nation-states. The report pulls no punches... more
The Pew Internet Project has just released its third report on its "The Future of the Internet" series where it has surveyed experts about the future social, political, and economic impact of the Internet. In this latest web-based survey, 578 leading Internet activists, builders, and commentators and 618 additional stakeholders (1,196 respondents) were asked to assess thought-provoking proposed scenarios for the year 2020, which include the following quantitative results... more
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