I'm writing this column in November, and that means that it is time for the traveling circus known as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to come down to earth, unpack its tents and sell tickets for its annual song and dance routine. The script for this year's show has been changed, and after being excluded from the main arena last year at the Athens gig, the headline act of "Critical Internet Resources" is taking a starring role this year in Rio. Some folk are even saying that it is the single most contentious issue to be scheduled at this year's IGF show. So what are "Critical Internet Resources" anyway? If folks are going to spend all this time, energy and carbon emissions traveling to Rio to talk on this topic, then wouldn't it be helpful to understand what it means in the first place? There are probably a number of ways to answer this question, so in this heavily opinionated column I'd like to look at the range of possible answers to this question. more
Funny how some topics seem sit on a quiet back burner for years, and then all of a sudden become matters of relatively intense attention. Over the past few weeks we've seen a number of pronouncements on the imminent exhaustion of the IP version 4 address pools. Not only have some of the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) and some national registry bodies made public statements on the topic, we've now seen ICANN also make its pronouncement on this topic... Why the sudden uptake of interest in this topic? I suspect that a small part of this may be my fault! more
Identity theft is apparently the "in thing" these days. By media accounts, hackers and evildoers lurk everywhere trying to steal your personal information. In the past few months, one company after another is being forced to admit customer data has been lost or stolen. In many cases, they have them come forth repeatedly over the next few weeks, or even months revising the estimated number of impacted customers. To date, I don't think any have ever lowered those numbers. ...Let's consider two events that didn't make the front page of C|Net or CNN. more
Chinese automobile conglomerate Geely has made significant strides since I last wrote about their Geesat LEO constellation for mobile vehicle connectivity. They launched the first nine satellites in June 2022 and a second batch of eleven satellites in February 2024. The mass of the first nine satellites was 100 kg, and the mass of the second eleven was 130 kg, so they are not identical. more
I'm such an industry nerd that I sometimes read customer reviews of large ISPs just to see how the public perceives them. Most ISPs have more negative reviews than positive ones, and that's to be expected since people are more likely to complain when things go wrong than give praise when things are working as promised. more
China’s plans for low-Earth orbit Internet service constellations began with two projects, Hongyun (156 satellites) and Hongyan (864 satellites). These were eventually sidelined for Guowang, an ambitious, 12,992 satellite constellation that is expected to begin launching satellites this year. But, that is old news. China’s five-year plan designates satellite Internet as a strategic emerging industry and two new constellations have emerged, G60 (12,000 satellites) and Honghu–3 (10,000 satellites). more
AT&T and satellite company AST SpaceMobile announced a partnership to provide satellite cellular service directly from satellites to cellphones. This will provide a service that is much needed for the billions of remote users who are not in the range of a cell tower. This is an emerging industry that is still being referred to by different acronyms. more
Many readers will have seen recent news that the aurora borealis, or northern lights, were visible deep into the South for several days. This phenomenon is caused by a geomagnetic storm that is caused by strong solar flares. Solar flares can cause problems on Earth by emitting clouds of magnetized particles and hot plasma. more
Researchers from the University of Maryland have revealed significant privacy and security concerns related to the way Apple and Starlink geo-locate devices. Their study found that Apple's Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) collects and publicly shares precise locations of Wi-Fi access points. more
Digital communications systems always represent a collection of design trade-offs. Maximizing one characteristic of a system may impair others, and various communications services may choose to optimize different performance parameters based on the intersection of these design decisions with the physical characteristics of the communications medium. more
I recently used Starlink on a cruise along the coast of Northwest Africa, and I'll summarize my experience below, but first let me explain why I put some in the title of this post. I posted the following request on the Reddit Cruise group: "What has been your experience of Starlink Internet service on Seabourn or other cruise lines? How was latency? Do video chats work smoothly? Games? etc." more
It's incredibly hard to keep things private in the new digital age. There are far too many stories circulating about people who talked to a friend on the phone or texted about something and almost instantly got hit with ads for the subject of the conversation. And that happens without malware - no telling what information you're giving out if your devices have been infected with malicious software that is spying on you. more
I've read several articles coming out of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain, and one of the common threads is that there was a lot of talk about 5.5G (or 5G Advanced) - the next iteration of 5G. My first question on reading about this was to ask what new features are being discussed that were not part of the original announced promises of 5G. I went back and read a few of my blogs and other articles that were written when 5G was first announced. more
The United States, along with key global partners, has formally committed to principles guiding the development of 6G technology, as announced by the White House. This move comes amidst a strategic contest to shape the future of wireless communication standards, driven by concerns over authoritarian regimes exerting greater control over the internet within their borders. more
China launched a notable 67 commercial rockets in a single year, marking a significant effort to catch up with the United States, which led with 116 launches, primarily for SpaceX's Starlink project. more
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