CircleID

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Blacklisting Under Wrong Assumptions

• Comment posted Jun 21, 2004 10:39 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Seamus, you might want to check out CAUCE Asia Pacific - http://www.apcauce.org Antispam workshops / conferences every six months, at regional network operators conferences like APRICOT and SANOG. Speakers like Dave Crocker, Meng Wong, David Harris (the author of pegasus…

80% of Spam Originating from Home PCs

• Comment posted Jun 21, 2004 10:18 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  A few ways to mitigate this - * Filter inbound mail to your servers using the spamhaus XBL (exploits block list) at http://www.spamhaus.org * ISPs - monitor XBL entries for anything in your IP space, and jump on 'em -…

Friction-Free Commerce, Spam-Free Future

• Comment posted Jun 21, 2004 9:48 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Esther, I guess the problem with the inboxevent sessions you attended was that there's a whole lot of feel good morale boosting support for spf + caller id, domainkeys and other MARID proposals, which are all really good .. except…

Email Address Forgery

• Comment posted Jun 21, 2004 10:11 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  That's a short, and really good summary of what MARID finally amounts to :) Also - my followup to Esther's article, at http://www.circleid.com/article/607_0_1_0_C/#1087811284

What the ITU WSIS Spam Meeting Accomplished

• Comment posted Aug 11, 2004 3:18 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  The syrian delegate too was, in the final analysis, concerned with getting his words into the final agenda, which is about the only thing he focused on doing. :) I sure wish a stronger plug for open source antispam filters…

How to Stop Spam

• Comment posted Apr 07, 2005 1:49 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Tonez - sure you can.  Easily. 1. Route your mail through your ISP's smtp server (instructions at http://www.hserus.net/sendmail.html - or exim.html / postfix.html / qmail.html) or 2. Get a shell on a static IP server (plenty of free shell account…

• Comment posted Apr 04, 2005 1:58 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  To Chris S - no, SPF is not a solution of any sort.  It might be promoted as a solution to everything from phishing to forged spam .. doesnt mean that it automatically becomes that way.

• Comment posted Jan 26, 2005 10:12 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  To Jeffrey Williams - <<"Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others" - Pierre Abelard>> Now, I'll ask a rather precise question.  "A lot of the spam you get is from AOL, Yahoo etc". Is that…

• Comment posted Jan 25, 2005 11:58 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  [damn, i just wish circleid had threaded posting like livejournal has] -------------- Going back to a more real-world example for SMTP, however… [description of smtp auth relay from offcampus] ---------------- Yes - and port 587 (the MSA / Submit port)…

• Comment posted Jan 25, 2005 11:51 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Michael - I realize that what you are saying is ideal, but with all due respect, running a university network or a large corporation is still a far cry from trying to drink at the firehose of large ISP abuse…

• Comment posted Jan 25, 2005 7:19 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Initial note to put some of my posts in this thread in context: I don't work for Carl or for AOL .. but I do work for a large webmail ISP with 40 million users and I can see where…

• Comment posted Jan 25, 2005 4:58 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Meta reply to several posts in this thread. Phil Karn (on why Bayesian is great): There's a communication gap here. Carl's talking about something that can be done on the server side.  While bayesian makes an excellent antispam solution on…

Spam Volume Redux

• Comment posted Feb 16, 2005 4:43 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Umm.. spam isn't levelling off. What you're seeing is more probably the start of a huge spike :) When you consider that the amount of inbound spam that attempts to be delivered is several orders of magnitude more than the…

How India's .IN Domain Rouses from its Slumber

• Comment posted Dec 01, 2006 11:24 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  eNom, Directi etc all offer .in domains now. If you see a registrar you recognize, rather than a hole in the wall outfit, then feel free to use it.

• Comment posted Apr 17, 2005 4:50 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  just adding to my comment - it would be quite useful for the registry to be proactive in that it 1. works with registrars to set up antispam acceptable use policies 2. watches for signs of fraudulent registration, and alerts…

• Comment posted Apr 17, 2005 4:48 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  ram: the policies as such seem to be driven by different registrars. godaddy has been quite proactive about stamping down on spammer registered domains, especially where they have evidence of bogus contact info. directi in india took some extensive prodding…

• Comment posted Apr 16, 2005 1:00 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Ram, here's the way you can go about it. 1. Have policies for fair and accurate reporting of information set by the registry .. *.in used to require faxes of company registrations etc, no need to go to that extent…

• Comment posted Apr 15, 2005 9:36 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I perfectly agree about sending signals - but there's a rather good, existing mechanism for that, which doesnt involve broadcast advisories asking people to block sTLDs

• Comment posted Apr 15, 2005 7:25 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  funny. i run a rather large isp's antispam operations (40 million users is large enough I hope) but so far I haven't seen 1. That .co.in is any better or worse than any other .in second level TLD 2. Not…

• Comment posted Apr 05, 2005 1:12 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  thanks, i will do this -suresh

• Comment posted Apr 04, 2005 2:33 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Ram, congratulations on doing a great job. I must say it is a relief to register .in domains without going through a huge rigmarole of form filling and assorted other bureaucracy. There is of course the problem of firms getting…

The Ultimate Solution to Internet Governance: Let ITU and ICANN compete

• Comment posted Apr 14, 2005 1:03 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  For a rather detailed overview of this situation, I would strongly recommend reading Geoff Huston's article in the latest (March) issue of the Internet Protocol Journal (www.cisco.com/ipj/) Highly recommended reading, that.

• Comment posted Apr 12, 2005 1:14 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  In order for ICANN and ITU to compete, there should be at least a common set of ground rules, to avoid two competing and subtly if not overtly different systems getting built.  Especially in the realms of domain naming and…

In Pursuit of IDN Perfection?

• Comment posted Apr 17, 2005 4:56 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  > Suresh, perhaps an even larger part of > what's needed for India is local-language > content, not only software. Chicken and egg problem there. All three are part of a complex equation .. 1. .in domains + a better…

• Comment posted Apr 16, 2005 12:00 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Thanks, Dr.Govind. In any case, the issues in the cjk area are at a level where interoperability is quite possible, given sufficient discussion At least in India, we need a lot more attention to indian language characters in unicode first.…

• Comment posted Apr 12, 2005 3:34 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Thank you for clarifying this .. it does need to be made very clear --srs (who still thinks the same as you privately did till a while back - why the hell do we need IDN)? :)

• Comment posted Apr 12, 2005 2:06 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  The chinese can use an arbitrary standard and an arbitrary browser plugin so that local people can read only chinese-only pages. Other countries can implement IDN the same ad-hoc way. But interoperability between different IDN schemes, and the fact that…

More on Story Behind .ASIA

• Comment posted Apr 18, 2005 2:38 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I think James is objecting to the role of Afilias in this (such as his statement that they funded Che-Hoo to organize support for .asia, and that he doubts if other organizations such that get tld management outsourced to them,…

Port 25 Blocking, or Fix SMTP and Leave Port 25 Alone for the Sake of Spam?

• Comment posted May 16, 2005 1:58 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  To throw some fuel in the fire, right before I shut my laptop and board my plane .. here's Miles Libbey from Yahoo on sender authentication. https://antiphishing.kavi.com/events/Conference_Notes/sender_auth_myths_and_domainkeys.pdf

• Comment posted May 16, 2005 1:49 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  a. I'm not suggesting you run anything at all that's not licensed under a FLOSS license [free/libre and open source software, a term coined by an old friend, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, btw - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOSS) b. It is a free country…

• Comment posted May 16, 2005 1:31 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Sure, it certainly doesnt require a license from Microsoft.  But I must remind you that even if it does get an RFC assigned to it, there's no MUST requirement to use SPF, as opposed to (say) domainkeys, or CSV. Right…

• Comment posted May 16, 2005 3:14 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  SMTP auth - fine. Port 587 - excellent. From and reply-to should be the same - whatever for?  And why?  I frankly cant see your logic here, or the utility of such a measure. SPF -all enforcement: your network, your…

• Comment posted May 10, 2005 1:12 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  John - interesting comments there. SPF's worst enemy is the fervent advocacy that's driving it, right now. So, Doug, what would you say to a combination of CSV and domainkeys, to kind of mutually complement each other?  How feasible is…

• Comment posted May 03, 2005 12:31 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  About Cisco IIM, it is quite similar to domainkeys (e&oe;devils in the details) that there's at least some work being done on merging the two specs CSV, based on IP address and HELO tends to make for a easier variety…

• Comment posted May 02, 2005 6:52 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  we just have to wait for all the false positives sudden and widespread deployment of this will inevitably cause sitting back and saying "i told you so" can be fun, but the consequences of doing so in this case are…

• Comment posted May 01, 2005 1:45 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  John Thanks for the recap of spf / other authentication protocols' history with the ietf A strange thing is that most of the current spf records published by people are not for the purpose of ensuring authentication .. but for…

• Comment posted Apr 18, 2005 1:48 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Along with Joe's excellent paper on zombies cited in this article I would suggest reading this - http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~joe/port25.pdf

• Comment posted Apr 18, 2005 1:34 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I must acknowledge the minor point Brett suggests - but, in any case, i typically wouldnt want to accept mail from a domain to which i couldnt deliver bounces to.  such bounces would only clutter up space on my mail…

Study Finds Spammers Use P2P Harvesting to Spam Millions

• Comment posted Apr 18, 2005 4:45 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  A few questions - first, do you seriously expect spammers - especially the trojan using sort that'd exploit p2p networks - are going to seriously look at your do not disturb list? That, and the FTC last year raised several…

Phish-Proofing URLs in Email?

• Comment posted Apr 27, 2005 4:01 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  So you think email is the only channel phishes are sent over? :)

• Comment posted Apr 19, 2005 2:47 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  oh - hsbc also has this prominent banner on their homepage that warns you not to click on URLs you get in email .. hmm.. this time they have a link to a short tutorial on basic internet security linked…

• Comment posted Apr 19, 2005 1:32 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Given all the phishing fears around, a lot of people are not very inclined to trust any email at all that says its from a bank. Some banks deal with it in different ways .. 1. My wife has a…

Could IP Addressing Benefit from the Introduction of Competitive Suppliers?

• Comment posted Apr 29, 2005 9:42 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Karl I wont comment on ICANN here. But in response to this - On another point, you mention the lack of technical expertise on the part of some WGIG participants. > It is easy to dismiss the people who are…

• Comment posted Apr 29, 2005 2:43 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Tom Vest just posted an excellent circleid article on this subject - http://www.circleid.com/article/1064_0_1_0_C/ Required reading, at least by the indian and chinese representatives at WGIG, before they continue to advocate the Zhao proposals.

• Comment posted Apr 29, 2005 1:59 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I read the session transcripts of that WGIG meeting that have been posted on www.wgig.org, and am gratified to know that Leichtenstein (on behalf of the presidency of the EU), Australia et al do understand the issues involved. Most of…

• Comment posted Apr 26, 2005 1:28 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Ram, here are a few answers, sort of - A lot of the points you raise are covered in several papers available on NRO / the apnic website's public policy section etc, but ... 1. It is a case of…

• Comment posted Apr 20, 2005 5:55 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  For some more perception on competition and adam smith's economic theories, try Tom Vest's paper "The Wealth of Networks", http://www.pch.net/resources/papers/the-wealth-of-networks/Vest-WoN@SIMS-DLS-050316.pdf > quantitative technical metrics than they > do to softer social and economic metrics. Nothing much more than "I've made…

• Comment posted Apr 20, 2005 2:19 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Brilliantly written article, there. But, on the topic of the commons, and overgrazing of them, the alternative was much worse - pastures enclosed by landlords, and let out on a share or rent basis to tenants, who were then at…

The Geography of Internet Addressing

• Comment posted Apr 26, 2005 1:31 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Paul, do you by any chance have a kind of scale model / projection of the costs involved in running IP allocation and routing the same way as a national telephone system + its numbering is run?  Compare, additionally, the…

IP Address Allocation vs. Internet Production I: Understanding the Relationship, and the Differences

• Comment posted Apr 29, 2005 2:48 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  great article, tom - i've just linked to it from that mega thread that geoff's article started off.

Do We Really Need IDN?

• Comment posted May 09, 2005 7:44 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Ebina - yes, thanks. I'm aware of the full disclosure list and its history. And I do find it useful to lurk on that list .. however that's completely besides the point here. Would "transparency" and "declaration of vested interests…

• Comment posted May 09, 2005 1:31 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  > this is not a place for praising IDN in > which any opinion against IDN is considered > PR. Oh, there are lots of ways you can express opinions against IDN, by presenting reasoned technical arguments. The arguments in…

• Comment posted May 09, 2005 12:40 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Circleid is not a place for articles without technical merit that are posted only to spread FUD or score political brownie points. "Jason S"'s commentary is totally out of place, and as he works for a large keyword provider but…

• Comment posted May 07, 2005 2:09 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  not the first time people try to use a public forum like circleid for amateurish PR efforts won't be the last either unfortunately

• Comment posted May 05, 2005 3:04 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Keywords are a fairly non standard way to go about the entire thing.  And your entire argument seems to be that IDN has some issues - which are being worked on by the way - and that people who are…

Address Policies

• Comment posted May 10, 2005 1:40 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Excellent. Though the origins of most of the opposition to the current structure can be summarized like this, is what I suspect: * Large government owned telco + ISP is not too good at managing current address space, and finds…

Actions Required by Developing Economies Against Spam

• Comment posted Nov 13, 2005 7:07 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  It is not as simple as you think it is.  However it is an interesting idea that you might want to take before arin / apnic at one of their meetings .. the best place to start with if you're…

• Comment posted Nov 13, 2005 3:28 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Damn. I wish it were that simple. Start with finding an abuse reporting format that is machine parseable (http://www.mipassoc.org/arf/ is a start but its still useful only for provider to provider aggregation of reports and not for general use) Then…

• Comment posted May 30, 2005 3:49 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Here's a direct link to the paper, in pdf format - http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/5/47/34935342.pdf

An Infrastructure TLD: Avoiding the Side Effects of Today's .Net

• Comment posted Jun 02, 2005 1:08 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Good, remove one single point of failure and introduce another - even though the chance for failure is quite less here, as you point out. Add to it the time and headache that pushing through a new TLD involves. Why…

Some Notes on the .XXX Top-Level Domain

• Comment posted Jun 03, 2005 2:00 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  > Rather, I think it will be seen as Internet > endorsement of behaviour seen by a significant > number of diverse minorities across the planet > as offensive. For what specific gain? Gives the pornographers a lobby of their…

• Comment posted Jun 03, 2005 10:19 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Well Joi, ICANN's going to get hit out at whatever it does, from several quarters. Some will rail at this apparent support for further "pollution" of the internet Others will decry - quite possibly with reason - the ostensible segregation…

ICANN, WSIS and the Making of a Global Civil Society - Part III

• Comment posted Jun 08, 2005 7:45 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  on this topic, here's an interesting UNDP/APDIP paper on i-governance.. it covers most of the issues that the wgig has raised (root server admin, IP allocation etc) in what I feel is a sensible manner. -srs This is an interesting…

The Internets

• Comment posted Jul 26, 2005 3:25 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  competition policy is one of the main concerns with the way this is moving. lots of countries have government owned majority telcos with an [un]healthy interest in preserving their monopoly, and in the position of competing with other ISPs in…

Working Group on Internet Governance Releases Report

• Comment posted Jul 15, 2005 4:28 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I envision something that falls between #2 and #3 I have no hope of a GIC succeeding where the GAC doesnt.  Option #4 is a nightmare that I'm not prepared to consider feasible. A stronger, tighter organized GAC as well…

News from the Authentication Summit in NYC

• Comment posted Jul 22, 2005 2:08 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  In the interests of setting several records straight, and making a few points clearer. "AOL's spf" is just plain wrong. SPF is by meng weng wong of pobox.com (http://spf.pobox.com). The most that AOL has done is to use it in…

A Balkanized Internet Future?

• Comment posted Jul 27, 2005 2:17 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Colin - thanks Sure they dont need to. But sometimes they'd like to, just like lots of non chinese speakers want to access everything from a recipe for peking duck to cantopop songs. > The Chinese don't need to. Some…

• Comment posted Jul 27, 2005 7:03 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  No demands there, Karl. Just a plain statement of opinion. Start as many as you like. Just see what sort of critical mass they get Then, once they achieve critical mass, see how soon they start tending towards merging again…

• Comment posted Jul 27, 2005 1:17 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  No, Karl .. you use religious terminology because after you left ICANN with extremely bad vibes about what ICANN was doing, what you do is to religiously criticize anything that can be associated with an ICANN activity. I'd almost make…

• Comment posted Jul 26, 2005 4:41 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Karl, my argument is that the internet is just too valuable to fragment. What you propose will effectively reduce it to lots of split apart and separate systems. It is not just english speakers who wont be able to access…

• Comment posted Jul 26, 2005 3:11 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  > The argument that there must and shall be > but one catholic internet DNS root is an > argument that denies both innovation and > human choice. Here's what I wrote in Joi's blog in response to just this…

• Comment posted Jul 23, 2005 2:28 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  China's advantage in controlling its internet users is not v6 or anything else like that. It is that most chinese quite naturally gravitate only to chinese sites, hosted in china. What is physically located in china is quite easy for…

Abusive Anti-Anti-Spam Scheme a Dreadful Strategy

• Comment posted Aug 01, 2005 2:17 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Here's a lovely article about bluesecurity and the mindset of its users. I'm quite happy for useless "let's spam the spammer back" schemes to auto-darwinate. Saves time having to explain to a lot of people that no, not all antispam…

IGP on Future U.S. Role in Internet Governance

• Comment posted Jul 29, 2005 4:50 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  It is a statement on the lines of "ICANN is the devil we know, so let us maintain something that is nearly like the status quo" I'm sure Karl Auerbach will absolutely hate the idea, but sometimes stating the obvious…

SPF Loses Mindshare

• Comment posted Aug 13, 2005 4:33 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Bah. HELO is a good way to go. Signing received: headers like DKIM is a good way to go. Both of them look at the sending host and validate that. Trying to validate the sender is a level of granularity…

• Comment posted Aug 10, 2005 7:05 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  More spf / sender id fun - http://news.com.com/Sender+IDs+fading+message/2100-7355_3-5824234.html?tag=nefd.lede Sender ID's fading message Published: August 9, 2005, 4:00 AM PDT By Joris Evers Staff Writer, CNET News.com At the start of last year, Bill Gates told the world's elite at an…

• Comment posted Aug 03, 2005 10:04 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Wayne - as a first step please group those domains by 1. Common NS 2. Common MX That'd give you a whole lot of clusters - large providers that do spf. And it'd likely give you lots of small sites…

• Comment posted Aug 03, 2005 5:31 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Wayne: do a bit more aggregation. Find out how many of those are "v=spf1 -all" entries published by domain squatters Find out how many -all entries are setup by a single webhost with several hundred to a few thousand small…

• Comment posted Aug 03, 2005 2:49 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  First find a good reputation service to back it. Second, convince all the twits out there who treat spf failures (or even softfails) as an excuse to hard reject email. SPF works in a limited set of use cases -…

• Comment posted Aug 03, 2005 12:37 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Well, I'm rather ahead of the curve. We removed our spf records back in february, right after the San Diego MAAWG.  This MAAWG report is after the next meeting (Dusseldorf). http://www.circleid.com/article/1039_0_1_0_C/

Objections to .XXX, Attention in High Places

• Comment posted Aug 16, 2005 5:58 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I rather suspect the sequence goes like this - Various representatives in the GAC and other quarters of ICANN where governments have representation see the issues, debate it for quite some time till there's not much left to debate And…

.XXX Puzzle Pieces Start to Come Together: And the Picture is Ugly

• Comment posted Aug 20, 2005 4:55 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  For the sake of argument, what are the right reasons, and what change in governance do you suggest out of the four options in front of the wgig? Personally I'd prefer something not too far removed from the status quo…

• Comment posted Aug 20, 2005 12:55 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  > .XXX ccTLD "ccTLD"? :( That sort of thing is what happens when you post to circleid at 6 AM in the morning before your first cup of coffee. Power outage woke me up far earlier than I usually wake…

• Comment posted Aug 20, 2005 12:48 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Milton, I'm not closing ranks around Sharil in this case.  In case I didn't make myself clear, I'm not amused by what the DOC is doing right now about .XXX. But Sharil's diplomatically phrased warning was quite right.  The USG…

• Comment posted Aug 19, 2005 3:21 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Milton - interesting article, that.  A couple of points, mostly in agreement with Mr. (not Ms. by the way) Crishna. The article, while quite accurate in itself, could have avoided the slightly strident tone that crept into it .. a…

.XXX as Proposed is Wrong for Families & Kids

• Comment posted Sep 21, 2005 5:23 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  >> Switzerland DOES want "xxx.cz". The Czech Republic on line 1 for you. And Switzerland / Confederation Helvetique / .ch on line 2 to say they dont want .cz, and the Czechs are welcome to it.

• Comment posted Sep 20, 2005 10:37 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Neither do I, neither do I - but at what age do you stop this? And what's to stop the kid from getting several dozen different ways to access regular porn?  Lots of cases where kids can just get their…

• Comment posted Sep 16, 2005 2:27 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  > and now the adult entertainment industry has a letter > writing campaign against .xxx (yes, you read that correctly) > > http://www.freespeechcoalition.com/xinfo.htm And some of the countries that recently conveyed their opposition to .xxx cannot even claim neocon lobbyist…

Whither DNS?

• Comment posted Sep 23, 2005 2:05 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  To Colin - Keywords, you mean?  AOL's been doing that for quite some time

• Comment posted Sep 16, 2005 3:04 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  >> The original point was that the world doesn't end immediately when you >> don't have access to DNS, and that governance effort is often misdirected Nor does traffic completely stop because there's been a pileup on the freeway. >>…

• Comment posted Sep 16, 2005 2:35 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  DNS was set up with a specific purpose in mind. Not as a telephone directory or yellow pages Sure you have various people overloading dns and using it for what they want to do, at the edge - and the…

• Comment posted Sep 16, 2005 2:33 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  > Whatever the truth, it is clear that private 'typed' > directories (people, places, things, ideas) and namespaces > are booming. DNS is an ubiquitous service. Like electricity, or water. Those private typed directory things are highly visible, heavily marketed,…

Sitefinder Writ Small

• Comment posted Sep 16, 2005 2:12 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Yes - running something that rejects bogus uk.com domains at least in email would be a welcome step. Without that we're going to be buried in spam forging *.uk.com domains One very large provider I know of that * Publishes…

To Meow or not to Meow: .CAT TLD approved by ICANN

• Comment posted Oct 02, 2005 12:24 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Vittorio - thanks for the note about Catalans - I got a brief idea of their long history, culture and language (rather more liquid, flowing and poetic than castellano spanish, lots of repeated ll sounds etc, almost like what welsh…

• Comment posted Sep 27, 2005 1:59 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  As I see it, that is just a sideline for .lang .. all it does is - 1. Aggregate 2. Sidestep sovereignity issues for at least some languages that span borders and/or have other politics associated with them Kind of…

• Comment posted Sep 26, 2005 2:47 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  A .lang tld is an idea that i would support, probably followed by various languages, like .cat moving to .cat.lang It also neatly sidesteps the sovereignity issue associated with ccTLDs And doesnt crowd the namespace for what is going to…

• Comment posted Sep 19, 2005 2:55 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  | The Board noted the written | communications it had | received from the | governments of Spain and | Andorra not objecting to | the .CAT application. That is actually quite noteworthy.  The catalans are an ethnic group -…

Should the Government Prepare a Preemptive Cyber-Attack?

• Comment posted Sep 28, 2005 3:29 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Comparing "Cyber attack" to the effects of a hurricane? That is such a sick analogy. The level of rhetoric at these meetings does seem to depend on how vendor driven the agenda is, I've found. Yes, there are practical, hard…

If It's About to Break, Fix It!

• Comment posted Oct 10, 2005 3:50 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Sorry if I seem dense, Peter - but whose official comments were those that you quoted? -srs

• Comment posted Oct 04, 2005 12:54 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  What, you mean the blogosphere and the ranters on how prepcom3 sucks and the ITU sucks, and that the ITU cant even run a conference wireless network properly, and they want to run the INTERNET?!?!?!? type people are all "internet…

Breaking the Internet HOWTO

• Comment posted Oct 14, 2005 11:53 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I have serious doubts whether an alternate root zone is being proposed here - but what people are moving extensively forward on is an increased oversight role for other countries' governments in ICANN. I have seen suggestions in china and…

Forgotten Principles of Internet Governance

• Comment posted Oct 25, 2005 2:14 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Fully agree with Brett - you aren't going to find copyright law very useful or applicable. I think Karl’s Principles of Internet Governance are resoundingly impractical, but at least they recognise the need for describing the end that the means…

• Comment posted Oct 24, 2005 1:59 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Karl, no hidden agenda here as such. Merely tired of your vague ranting that you like to think is technospeak. Heard much of it before too, and I'm sure I'll hear it again, in one blog or the other. But…

• Comment posted Oct 23, 2005 3:36 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Prove that alternate roots are going to meet your vaguely defined "needs" rather than lead to complete chaos and groups of people each touting their own set of TLDs, none of which the users of some competing system can reach…

When will we run out of IPv4?

• Comment posted Oct 24, 2005 2:06 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  so the RIRs * go out reclaiming IP space more aggressively * make ISPs in their region of coverage adopt better IP addressing and accounting practices, and teach these (with tools etc) more and more in their tutorials - a…

Welcome to the Root, .MOBI

• Comment posted Oct 29, 2005 7:36 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Oh what fun. And isn't .mobi meant for only mobile infrastructure? No reason to see email related traffic through it at all I'd guess?

You Paid to Join; You Can Leave Anytime

• Comment posted Nov 06, 2005 7:37 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Well Ram, you probably know this already, but for the sake of completeness, I'd attribute the reason for what you noticed to 1. Increased competition 2. The earlier complete lack of peering + static routes to upstream type of rudimentary…

• Comment posted Nov 04, 2005 4:20 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  * circleid is not moderated - it is open posting, with the circleid admins apparently maintaining a loose and reasonably hands off policy except in rare cases * circleid is not slashdot and nor is it j.random left/right wing blog…

• Comment posted Nov 04, 2005 5:07 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  The article is staggeringly naive, but does highlight one of the main grouses foreign ISPs have - almost all their traffic (even for local websites) is outgoing to the USA, for various reasons * Lack of local peering and/or incompetent…

Nom-Com Appoints Independent and Diverse Candidates to ICANN Leadership Positions

• Comment posted Nov 07, 2005 6:00 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  yup .. that's kind of my point. thanks for understanding

• Comment posted Nov 07, 2005 4:39 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I must largely agree with what Brett says, Ram. You were doing just great till that last "new and unproven" thing I think. Right now - like it or not governments are around and they feel they have a stake…

The U.N.'s Threat to the Net

• Comment posted Nov 13, 2005 3:24 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  MLATs are the "normal legal cooperation" route that's completely independent of the internet, and concluded between law enforcement agencies in different countries And at least for OECD economies there are several recommendations about how these should be applied - one…

• Comment posted Nov 09, 2005 12:57 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Virtually all free speech is a crime in some of the countries that are closely involved in the WSIS and WGIG. Do we really want Americans or the residents of any country to be internationally prosecuted for activities that are…

Questioning the Illusion of Internet Governance

• Comment posted Nov 22, 2005 1:59 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I know it is scary but it is quite possible, you'll agree. For a more detailed discussion on these please check out the articles by Geoff Huston / Paul Wilson / Tom Vest in the IP addressing and Internet Governance…

• Comment posted Nov 19, 2005 7:52 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  3. I read your post—not exactly clear what you’re saying. I had some contact with KRNIC and JPRS officials in the past re IDNs, so I do have something of an understanding of IP policy in those countries. Well -…

• Comment posted Nov 17, 2005 5:21 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Ah. So you think DNS / root servers are the only thing at issue here? :) Vixie's support for ORSN is highly qualified and he has fairly sound reasons for it. But even after reading a whole lot of discussions…

• Comment posted Nov 10, 2005 4:03 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Thanks for expanding on what i wrote in reply to Bruce Levinson at http://www.circleid.com/posts/the_un... ---------- # By Suresh Ramasubramanian | Nov 09, 2005, 04:57 am PST | Link Virtually all free speech is a crime in some of the countries…

The WSIS Deal

• Comment posted Nov 24, 2005 11:14 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  The GAC has representatives from vaious governments. And so does the proposed IGF. There is little or nothing that stops various governments from nominating representatives to GAC who will put forward the same points of view that are put forward…

• Comment posted Nov 17, 2005 2:51 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  2. Paragraph 38 provides strong support for the Regional Internet Registries with language that says “we call for the reinforcement of specialized regional Internet resource management institutions to guarantee the national interest and rights of countries in that particular region…

WSIS Deal: Oversight

• Comment posted Nov 17, 2005 2:39 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  My comments in response to Ram Mohan on circleid a few days back tend to mirror just what you said http://www.circleid.com/posts/nomcom... And let me repeat that I'm really happy that what you say tends to bear me out in what…

Five More Years! There Was No "Deal" and WSIS Resolved Nothing

• Comment posted Nov 24, 2005 11:07 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Few countries, though, have a well thought out Internet plan especially on policy angles And as evidenced by some of those countries you quote, as well as many others .. that doesnt stop them from making policies and thinking out…

• Comment posted Nov 18, 2005 2:33 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Well, I sort of expected this. What we have here is WSIS-II, or maybe "Son of WSIS". I expect at least one or two more rounds of this process before any kind of meaningful consensus gets hammered out. Or was…

Splitting the Root: It's Too Late

• Comment posted Jan 05, 2006 2:30 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  You didnt understand John too well, did you? He's saying that a lot of this is possible with the canonical set of root servers, doesnt need no steenkin' alternate roots. Extending his analogy of AAA tollfree numbers routed to the…

• Comment posted Dec 04, 2005 1:13 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  So John, does IDN development inevitably lead to a split root? Right now there's this massive split in the implementations (keywords, anyone?), and a complete lack of standardization in character set for various languages.  Makes the situation even more confusing…

The Problem With Wikis

• Comment posted Dec 21, 2005 1:39 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  paid?  probably the best way to go is to find volunteer wiki admins who can be trusted to have a free, fair attitude plus operate with a light hand. it'd build a sense of community there, something that ICANN would…

Europe is to the US Controlled GPS as Europe is to the US Controlled DNS Root?

• Comment posted Jan 09, 2006 10:56 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Very good points. But those are second or third level tld issues at best. ITU's country codes for numbering in each country might be compared to what is served by the roots - 1 for the USA, 91 for India…

• Comment posted Dec 31, 2005 5:49 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  The issue is not the tiny little zone with 250 entries. Its all the sub zones that branch off from that.  And the necessity of maintaining global uniqueness in domains so that you dont get any number of alternate roots…

• Comment posted Dec 30, 2005 9:12 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Karl, you've been around long enough to remember how this stuff started - people maintaining static hosts.txt files and ftp'ing them across. People soon realized that didnt work too well (again, mainly for the reasons people keep pointing to, for…

• Comment posted Dec 30, 2005 5:27 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  OK, two different types of positioning systems. Fine. Different encodings for TV signals (PAL, SECAM, etc).  Fine again. They can work just fine and dont interfere with each other. Now could you please stop trotting out those bad analogies to…

IPv6: Extinction, Evolution or Revolution?

• Comment posted Jan 13, 2006 4:15 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  As Ed Lewis pointed out - there's no "killer app" that's driving v6 adoption .. nothing that can't be done over existing v4 networks. High amounts of hype from IPv6 advocates make an interesting constrast to less than visible performance…

WIPO Crowing Again About "Cybersquatting"

• Comment posted Feb 03, 2006 11:19 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Wendy - thanks. Was just setting the stage for a rather more serious question.  Are the faults you see, that need fixing 1. In WIPO 2. In the UDRP 3. In WIPO's implementation of the UDRP And where would the…

• Comment posted Feb 02, 2006 4:20 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  If the WIPO wants to take stricter steps than they do on cybersquatters and typosquatters, I am all for it. How good an idea is it, though, to point at individual bad judgements, and use that to criticize this? I've…

AOL and Goodmail: Two Steps Back for Email

• Comment posted Feb 03, 2006 11:02 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  If the original post that triggered this thread was based on this rather inaccurate clickz article .. I would suggest that Returnpath talk to AOL's postmasters (Charles Stiles, who was quoted in the article, would be a good person to…

AOL and Goodmail: Two Steps Back for Email, Part II

• Comment posted Feb 04, 2006 5:49 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  OK. Two different things getting compared here, I'm afraid. Returnpath - standard "build good relationships with ISPs, and act as a mediator between senders and ISPs, help senders to improve their bulk mailing practices" etc. Goodmail - E-stamping with elements…

Challenges in Anti-Spam Efforts

• Comment posted Feb 11, 2006 4:07 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  My article in circleid on this issue - http://www.circleid.com/posts/...

• Comment posted Feb 10, 2006 3:40 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Eric, there's a minor problem here. A lack of understanding of terminology that AOL people used. Quoted well out of context, In a lobbying group where the people participating in it dont like spam filtering all that much, and see…

EFF on Goodmail: Further Confusing an Already Confused Issue

• Comment posted Feb 13, 2006 2:59 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Eric, sometimes, new IT manager or not, it's probably rather cheaper and more useful for the bank to pay a reputation vendor of some kind and possibly use a path agnostic auth system like domainkeys / dkim, or goodmail for…

• Comment posted Feb 13, 2006 2:06 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Eric, I guess you're just lucky to have a bank that's clueful enough to know how to handle email. My bank (HSBC in Hong Kong) just doesn't send me any email at all. Any communication I have with them is…

• Comment posted Feb 13, 2006 1:40 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I would stop far short of calling goodmail blackmail / extortion / goodfellas. Their current monopoly is that they're the "sole third party reputation vendor" - or in goodmail's crypto based approach, they're a CA for a trust / reputation…

• Comment posted Feb 12, 2006 1:23 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Looks like the EFF party line is that this is basically blackmail.  Now Brad Templeton is on the shakedown theme as well .. http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200602/msg00107.html Then there's cindy's followup on IP, talking about why she thinks its blackmail - http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200602/msg00091.html As…

• Comment posted Feb 12, 2006 12:57 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Domainkeys (and most likely DKIM when it comes through the IETF process) is a solid and well designed authentication mechanism. There's no element of reputation there - reputation of a sender that signs with DK is determined by the recipient…

Internet Governance: An Antispam Perspective

• Comment posted Feb 21, 2006 5:06 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Er… i'm sorry to rain on your parade, but I got news for you. PAYPAL HAS AN SPF RECORD. Does that stop you from getting paypal phishes? And what role do the rest of the non spf based rulesets in…

• Comment posted Feb 21, 2006 3:14 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  So - citibank.com has a spf record. What stops phishers from registering c1t1b4nk.com and publishing an spf record for it? "Reputation". SPF's been touted as a whole lot of things so far. Unfortunately for it, as it turns out in…

• Comment posted Feb 17, 2006 4:57 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  > Poor choice of words Or a well chosen choice of words .. if Meng was out to troll circleid. I'd say he's succeeded, brilliantly. And hooked lots of people.

• Comment posted Feb 17, 2006 2:04 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Brad—email is a long long way from default deny.  And content is - mostly - not an issue (except for truly illegal content that's internationally recognized as criminal .. child porn and warez for example) Unsolicited Bulk [and/or Commercial] Email…

• Comment posted Feb 16, 2006 4:16 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I wish it were that easy. Replacing smtp, or signing everything with s/mime - neither of these is the FUSSP (final ultimate solution to the spam problem) .. http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might-be.html Some that seem particularly applicable - knows-SMTP-4 You know that SMTP…

• Comment posted Feb 15, 2006 4:57 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  But meng, how or why do you posit that email is moving towards default deny? Some dnsbls blocking everything they can see?  Nobody with a lick of sense uses them on a truly production mail system. Or is it cisco's…

What is Anti-Spam?

• Comment posted Oct 19, 2006 6:03 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Hector, for a lot of proposed antispam solutions, particularly those that argue that smtp must be replaced, I'd strongly encourage the proposers to read http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might-be.html I've had my share of words with the EFF on their standpoint on spam filtering…

The Future of Some Email May Not Use Email

• Comment posted Mar 08, 2006 2:11 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  > Well, Goodmail’s first announcement was that it > would degrade, that the other whitelist programs > would be phased out.  They later retracted that > statement.  But surely one must wonder about the > risk when you see statements…

• Comment posted Mar 02, 2006 2:29 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I have heard from all over the place that moveon sent that petition about goodmail out to quite a few million users.  And they got what - 1500 odd people signing it? Even with a carefully written petition that adds…

China's MII Publishes New Email Regulations

• Comment posted Mar 12, 2006 1:34 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Nothing that'd interest the icann watchers, or the icann bashers in that lot. China seems to be moving towards an optin law - and that comes as a pleasant surprise. Let's see how far they carry its enforcement.

California Frets about Goodmail Email

• Comment posted Apr 09, 2006 10:03 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Esther Dyson v/s Danny O'Brien, moderated by Mitch Kapor.  Should prove "interesting". I'm sure they could do with a few alternate viewpoints, that are rather more informed than the ones they usually trot out on this or any other spam…

Finding Good ICANN Board Candidates

• Comment posted Apr 14, 2006 6:03 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Hi Ram With all due respect to the people you had in mind when you wrote that - 1. The people who expect to be invited are absolutely wrong as candidates - they'll have more hubris / arrogance, and be…

Fighting Over the Scraps from ICANN's Table

• Comment posted Apr 19, 2006 12:41 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Even reasoned views may not take, if the tone is either mildly sarcastic or stridently critical :) Yes ICANN should definitely hear from the Internet community at large.  But if the Internet community at large starts developing consensus on anything…

• Comment posted Apr 15, 2006 10:34 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Its not just that we see the same criticism and the same griping.  A lot of the commentary does seem either kooky, or edge case, or both. No surprise, given that most of the commentary is either "I'm going to…

Governments Need to Pass More Anti-Spam Laws, Says OECD

• Comment posted Apr 22, 2006 11:05 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  It is a quite well produced doc .. definitely worth a read.  I contributed a background paper to this, on Spam Problems in Developing Economies. This was in early 2005 and I am impressed with the amount of other material…

Wall Street Journal Article on Whois Privacy

• Comment posted May 05, 2006 12:19 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Sounds like a great thing for afilias to take the lead on, then.

• Comment posted May 04, 2006 3:22 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Registrar policy enforcement is probably the weakest link in trying to fight net abuse right now The problem is of course not the ISPs, registrars etc that do take action, it is those that just dont bother to do so.…

• Comment posted May 03, 2006 6:40 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  WRT your comment on Levine's post - What is interesting is that aggressive and automated domain tasting seems to occur almost exclusively through just a handful of registrars (I should know). You'll find that a handful of registrars are a…

• Comment posted May 03, 2006 6:37 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Its not rocket science.  And a substantial part of it is building automated fraud warning systems. It is not just the small shops by the way. You'll find very large registrars that have huge numbers of spammer / botnet etc…

• Comment posted Apr 30, 2006 11:38 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  And spam fighting as well - I've had it up to here with botnets being setup that cycle through a few hundred brand new domains a week. Have whois privacy if you want, but as a necessary corollary, have registrars…

EFF and Its Use of Propaganda: Could Karl Rove do better? Probably

• Comment posted Oct 28, 2006 3:31 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I note with some schadenfreude that dearaol.com is dead in the water. And AOL is still using goodmail. And Granny still isn't paying to send email. The last post on that blog (5/9/06) signed off with: > AOL's silence in…

• Comment posted Jun 01, 2006 3:50 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I will be the first man to say that bad and even grossly incompetent spam filtering exists.  That shouldnt give EFF the excuse to beat up on all spam filtering in general. regards -srs ps - I've found AOL quite…

• Comment posted May 25, 2006 5:34 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I've not got a very good opinion of moveon.org or their emailing policies .. but well, that bit about "cancer patients" is rather stupider than their usual stuff. This dearaol campaign is starting to fizzle out - so I guess…

• Comment posted May 24, 2006 3:48 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I know the people who implement AOL's antispam policy I have also seen more than 5 years worth of similar propaganda on the spam issue from the EFF For the answer to that question - poke around circleid for older…

• Comment posted May 17, 2006 4:18 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Oh I read it all right.  And I've been having a fairly longish conversation with Danny on politech about it.  Check www.politechbot.com for that lot.

Why ICANN Nominating Committee Has Difficulty Finding Directors

• Comment posted May 25, 2006 3:16 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  You missed my point, Ram.  ICANN has some great people working for it on the board, now and earlier as well. My point is simply that the entire workflow could do with some substantial amounts of improvement, including what Veni…

• Comment posted May 25, 2006 2:45 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Ram, please dont tell me this hasn't yet occured to current or former board members? Quite a few of them have years of senior management experience, some in companies that have a turnover of several million dollars, at least. What…

• Comment posted May 25, 2006 1:52 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  > Perhaps the critics should apply for the > board? And do some real work for a change? :) > Or I should go to join the staff. Ah, that's an idea.

• Comment posted May 25, 2006 1:25 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Er Veni .. I'd be interested in finding out who else can do this.  On their own time and money. You're either very rich and socially conscious, already traveling such a lot that ICANN wont make more than a small…

• Comment posted May 23, 2006 2:06 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  So given Valdis' comments about kernel development, and Veni's breakup of the time he's got to spend doing ICANN related work Is there any workflow management or optimization called for here, so that ICANN governance and day to day operational…

• Comment posted May 20, 2006 2:04 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Veni - governments are going to have a substantial role, like it or not.  It is like that old question - "where does a 800 pound gorilla sleep?".  Answer - "wherever it wants to" :) But seriously they do have…

ITU Launches IDN Survey and ccTLD Outreach

• Comment posted Jun 03, 2006 12:57 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Please read what I said earlier.  The survey does provide raw data, as do other ITU surveys before this .. but there's far more value in the analyzed and edited final output.

• Comment posted Jun 02, 2006 9:44 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  That's great.  You know something, Ram?  If you point to a survey and say you're concerned its going to be spin doctored, it just might be a good idea to say that the people doing that survey are not the…

• Comment posted Jun 02, 2006 8:42 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Ram - you said: My concern is that real data will be lost in editing, and we will end up in simply having a spin-doctored version of reality And that is a quite valid concern - but my question was,…

• Comment posted Jun 02, 2006 4:43 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  > Such a report would indeed be useful, especially if the actual > survey responses are provided “as-is” and not editorialized. My > concern is that real data will be lost in editing, and we will end > up in…

Domain Tasting Target of US Federal Cybersquatting Lawsuit

• Comment posted Jun 29, 2006 12:34 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Remind me to buy the next aussie regulator I meet a beer. Cracking down on some of the more unethical aspects of domain kiting (typosquatting, brand squatting in keywords or elsewhere) is something that needs to be done, and fast.

• Comment posted Jun 11, 2006 1:25 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  So, Karl - was pushing "add grace" through a creation of ICANN's staff?  Or ICANN's law firm?  And why fire the law firm for a staff decision that was probably made in all good faith at that time?

• Comment posted Jun 10, 2006 3:52 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  So domain kiters are handing that 600K for five days to VRSN out of the goodness of their hearts?  Or just for the pleasure of pumping up VRSN's balance sheets?  If kited domains account for over 90% of registrations, that…

• Comment posted Jun 08, 2006 1:53 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Well .. we run one of the SURBL URI blocklist zones (www.surbl.org) and we pick up something like 800..1200 brand new domains a day that are referenced in spam. I havent done a real deep study but pulling out whois…

• Comment posted Jun 08, 2006 2:47 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Spammers have been spamming using brand new domains for quite some time (months, at least) - and in some cases, in active collusion with registrars and resellers / setting themselves up as resellers.  Creating thousands of throwaway domains at a…

• Comment posted Jun 07, 2006 12:15 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Speaking of kiters and spammers .. http://www.vnunet.com/articles/print/2157582 Domain 'kiting' threat on the rise Scammers using 'disposable domains' for criminal gain Matt Chapman, vnunet.com 05 Jun 2006 The proliferation of temporary websites being set up by criminals is a growing threat,…

• Comment posted Jun 05, 2006 4:04 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  So, a website that is mostly setup to sell, say, a generic, unbranded toilet paper, is allowed to stuff words like "charmin", "kleenex" etc into the keywords for their website, whether or not they actually sell those, just so that…

• Comment posted Jun 05, 2006 3:11 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  OK - can someone produce a fact or two? The lawsuit seems to - according to the CNET article - allege that a Dotster employee "Scott Fish" tried to sell a Nieman Marcus rep one of those typo'd domains, for…

• Comment posted Jun 05, 2006 2:23 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  John - with retail advertising that advertised NM, obviously?  I am not sure if NM would have been too happy if VRSN had stuffed those sitefinder'd typo domains with ads for Macy's, or for mortgages for that matter. Ram's just…

• Comment posted Jun 04, 2006 7:42 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I wonder how far that VC $$ will go when faced with multi million dollar lawsuits from IPR lawyers. I am sure there are reputable players (for some value of reputable, at any rate) in that industry - and if…

• Comment posted Jun 04, 2006 7:32 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  :) If I've seen one thing for the decade or so that I've been looking at this stuff, have a bunch of people doing anything at all and someone will start a conference on it.

• Comment posted Jun 04, 2006 7:07 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Fighting abusive registrations is going to be easy initially, especially using "search and destroy" to terminate all domains registered by a known speculator / domain kiter in one clean sweep. The more unethical kiters will go deeper underground, probably to…

• Comment posted Jun 04, 2006 1:25 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  As John Levine pointed out in his article "In bad taste: * The grace period is being massively abused so that it is costing registries significant amounts of money to deal with this abuse * As far as I can…

Send a Message to NTIA

• Comment posted Jun 17, 2006 4:14 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I'm all for sending reasoned feedback in to NTIA.  Only thing I'm not for is to run a campaign to have people copy and paste boilerplate comments for the NTIA. 1. You aren't going to generate nearly enough critical mass…

• Comment posted Jun 15, 2006 6:45 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Just my point.  Encourage people to respond to NTIA by all means.  Don't feed them boilerplate, encourage them to click a link and paste that boilerplate in. You want responses from thinking people, not ignorant sheep, if you need these…

• Comment posted Jun 15, 2006 1:53 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Any reason why you need to get people to astroturf the NTIA when there are enough people to submit regular, quite valid comments?  And any expectation that having people astroturf NTIA with the very same boilerplate is going to produce…

Conflict of Opinion

• Comment posted Jul 29, 2006 2:18 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Edit it to suit your taste.  Let's see what the domainers have to say .. a wikipedia edit war is a fun thing when it lasts :)

• Comment posted Jul 29, 2006 2:10 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  > And finally, WTF is a “domainer”? This is a new one to me. > Can it really be a word if there’s no Wikipedia entry for it? A domainer?  Well, he's what your reader would describe as a legitimate…

• Comment posted Jul 27, 2006 2:49 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  given the complex nature of posts in this forum, as you say, you probably realize that it is a forum for discussion, not for getting work done for free.

• Comment posted Jun 22, 2006 7:35 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  What you describe - third level redirection of typo domains - is a bad idea - whoever does it. And I'm not pointing specific fingers.  I'm just pointing out one very simple thing - a lot of the domaining is…

• Comment posted Jun 22, 2006 5:45 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  But wait!  You mean I should pay scumbag cybersquatters to advertise my own stuff?  Well, I was in New York City last week, and you can’t walk two blocks without running to some scruffy character wearing a sign on his…

Microsoft Choking Domain Parking Business Practices?

• Comment posted Jan 12, 2007 2:40 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Let us examine intent here.  Is MS' intent 1. Getting into the typo monetization racket themselves and using their near monopoly on the browser market to crowd others out? or 2. Participate in what they see as brand / trademark…

• Comment posted Jan 12, 2007 6:44 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  R-o-s-e-b-u-d Whether this is a Citizen Gates move by Microsoft or not .. as long as they make typosquatting unpopular, that's quite fine This is going to turn into a very interesting way to ruin the domain monetization racket, I…

74,000 .eu Domain Names Suspended, Registrars Accused of Stockpiling

• Comment posted Jul 25, 2006 2:55 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Fantastic news.  Hope to see more such busts of squatters ..

Nominet Takes Action Against Domain Name Tasting

• Comment posted Aug 09, 2006 8:54 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  .. and action against abusive tasting seems to be in a very early stage now.  Well, it'll grow, and fast. My compliments to Nominet.

How Could the Internet be Governed: Perspective from Bulgaria

• Comment posted Aug 23, 2006 11:15 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Hi Veni Interesting article Quoting Milton Mueller - > While IGP’s official filing offered a detailed rationale for > that position, the IGP website provided a simple means for > individual Internet users to transmit that message to the USG.…

Will Splogs Kill .INFO Domains?

• Comment posted Aug 28, 2006 1:37 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Googlespamming is getting to be a nuisance - but .biz and .info are already widely enough abused by email spammers that finding those in a URL, in email, tends to get that email a fairly high score in spamassassin.  Or…

Why We Need to Find Solutions on Internet Governance As Soon As Possible

• Comment posted Aug 30, 2006 12:55 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  What you said was correct too, Ram .. [and well said, Brett] A lot of the criticism that is floating around the wgig is due to a complete misunderstanding of the way the root servers work and are run.  Some…

China Building Its Own IPv6, Reducing Country's Foreign Dependency

• Comment posted Sep 26, 2006 12:31 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  What's [also] being discussed here, besides v6, is CNGI, the Chinese version of Internet2.  CNGI is all v6. Nothing new though.  CNGI has been around for quite some time and you'll find them at apnic meetings [and nanogs too I…

ICANN and the DOC

• Comment posted Oct 02, 2006 1:13 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Brett:  Suffice to say I'm sure a balance can be struck, but there shouldn't be total anonymity in whois. Even with substantial initiatives taken by ICANN (and there are, effectively, none at present) to make registrars crack down on abusive…

• Comment posted Oct 01, 2006 6:12 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Given the turn this thread has been taking, people coming to the IGF might take a look at this session - http://info.intgovforum.org/yoppy.php?poj=20 Human Rights and the Internet: how anonymous can and should we be?, organized by the The Council of…

• Comment posted Oct 01, 2006 5:44 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Milton - do me a favor and tell me what difference (or use to an email / filtering admin) you can see between a bunch of domains with whois records M.Mouse (mickey.mouse@example.com) 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington DC and when all…

• Comment posted Sep 30, 2006 1:00 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Well said, George And Susan - if you increase whois privacy (and that is, by itself not a bad thing at all) you'll need to have enough ICANN policy and enough work done with registrars that there's a clear and…

ICANN Ordered by Illinois Court to Suspend Spamhaus.org

• Comment posted Oct 11, 2006 11:41 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  ICANN's response - as expected http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-10oct06.htm [...] Please note that ICANN is not a party to this action and no order has been issued in this matter requiring any action by ICANN. Additionally, ICANN cannot comply with any order requiring…

Spamming the News Cycle: Spamhaus Non-Story Goes Viral

• Comment posted Oct 14, 2006 8:33 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  * Spamhaus sticks people like e360 Insight on its blacklist because under UK law they are spammers [..] US law some of these spammers are not breaking the law. Spamhaus lists based on sending of unsolicited bulk email. Not based…

ICANN Board to Vote on Domain Tasting Measure

• Comment posted Oct 22, 2006 2:07 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  It is numbers you must limit then, I guess?  And/or preventing the automated creation and surrender of thousands of domains at a time?  Assuming you want to keep tasters / kiters / whatever off your registrar that is.

Release of IE7, Firefox 2.0 Will Drive Significant IDN Demand

• Comment posted Nov 19, 2006 2:57 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I just remembered something about "netpia" and "legal action against microsoft".  They've been talking about this since at least 2005. There was this post on circleid from "Jason S", who posted some really vague sounding "concerns" about IDNs, praised keywords…

• Comment posted Nov 17, 2006 7:36 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  My heart bleeds for netpia, I'm sure.  Unless netpia had some kind of contract with Microsoft where Microsoft committed itself to supporting keywords, I don't see on what grounds they can sue Microsoft for bringing out a browser version that…

Assault on State Censorship at the IGF

• Comment posted Nov 12, 2006 6:14 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  That's part of the reason why I follow up to his "position papers".  People might actually end up believing them. Which wouldn't be a very good thing at all. Ditto my responses to various EFF people, whenever they start up…

• Comment posted Nov 12, 2006 2:18 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Veni, the funny thing is .. > Let me explain to you what I wrote. Obviously you > are the only one who interpreted what I wrote the > way you did Milton likes to say what he thinks other…

• Comment posted Nov 11, 2006 7:26 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Well said, Veni. ps: Milton, I don't really recall my question in your "panel" on "dns root zone governance" (the one with a long fishing expedition into whether dnssec was a governance issue) getting answered at all. What I asked…

ITU Expressing Its Own Claim to Legitimacy

• Comment posted Nov 14, 2006 10:12 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Might be a good idea to read Utsumi-san's speech as transcribed - http://www.intgovforum.org/IGF-OpeningSession-301006.txt However, I do not share the perspective of those who argue that Internet Governance is just a developing-country problem. I disagree, because the basis of this perspective…

Domain Registrations Hit 112 Million

• Comment posted Dec 24, 2006 3:18 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Clear with the expansion of registrable characters exploding from the current 37 to something well in excess of 50,000 to many the dot com name space is suddenly going to feel an awful lot less crowded. You mean the kiters…

Europeans Moderate GAC Principles, But...

• Comment posted Dec 13, 2006 3:02 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Too bad there wasnt a consensus on it eh?  Not likely to be any consensus in Lisbon either .. till which time status quo (full whois data) is maintained. Have privacy in whois if you need to - but if…

Domain Tasting in the Spotlight

• Comment posted Dec 17, 2006 1:54 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  > These issues aside, there is growing pressure on ICANN > to do something about domain tasting. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished, and that's sure to give Moniker and other [tasters|kiters|squatters] out there some serious heartburn.  Go for…

Earthquake in Asia, Spam Plummets

• Comment posted Dec 29, 2006 4:59 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Brett's figures are way off base from being in a state with less than 2% asian population, and the total population of WY being less than that of just washington, DC .. the population of that one horse burg he…

EURid Tightens Control on .eu Domain Names

• Comment posted Jan 25, 2007 4:10 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Bah. Nothing at all to do with spam .. just a very obvious workaround to keep kiters and squatters off .eu in future

Entrepreneurs Profiting From Free Domains

• Comment posted Feb 20, 2007 4:22 pm PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Returning clothes after using them for a party - not as good an analogy as the one John Levine used in http://www.circleid.com/posts/domain_in_bad_taste/ - it is more like running a condiment business by scooping up free ketchup packets from every diner…

Why I left the ICANN At Large Advisory Committee

• Comment posted Mar 07, 2007 11:10 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Hi Adam - yes I'm aware the meetings are hosted free of charge - and certainly appreciate the gracious gesture of the governments that have agreed to host IGF. However, please consider that a "greatest good of the greatest number"…

• Comment posted Mar 07, 2007 2:44 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  IGF has a lot of commonalities with ICANN - 1. Academics with biased agendas (semipro) 2. A large "civil society" crowd - again what John calls semipros - most of which alternate slogan shouting with scarfing down spoonfuls of caviar…

Social Networking and Web 2.0 Creating DNS Performance Issues for Carriers

• Comment posted Mar 08, 2007 8:05 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Oh one other thing - does product placement (like the CEO of a DNS server vendor making statements that knock a competing product) really have a place on circleid? Quote from the original article below, with a lot of the…

• Comment posted Mar 07, 2007 7:04 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Have you actually correlated the frequency of myspace / social networking site dns queries from a particular IP with subsequent explosions in query traffic to other sites?  And since quite a lot of the content on the internet gets served…

XXX Comes to a Head

• Comment posted Mar 10, 2007 5:47 am PST — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  The way you’ve argued things, that we should not listen to affected parties (you call them “their competitors” or “those shouting the loudest”, but it’s certainly more than that), it would justify ANYONE putting forth an application over the howls…

ICANN Discussing Domain Registrar Crackdown

• Comment posted Mar 26, 2007 4:32 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I do hope they do something about registrars who seem to exclusively host spammer / botnet domains.  Having some kind of mechanism that's streamline this, make it far faster, would be a good thing to do. http://www.silicon.com/research...

When Domain Names Aren't Enough

• Comment posted Apr 03, 2007 12:44 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Hold on, are we talking about IDN keywords here?  That's very very old, in Japan / Korea.  And there's enough vendors there with enough market share that they're not the happiest of campers at IDN coming along to put them…

• Comment posted Mar 31, 2007 3:29 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  For once, the japanese are behind the curve. Pill spammers routinely send out image spam that's a screenshot of a browser, with a URL (the pill spam URL) typed in, and the URL is circled in red. There's hashbusting dots…

Vint Cerf on the Diminishing Novelty of Internet

• Comment posted May 19, 2007 4:37 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  So Kieren, did the sub editor anticipate things and is ICANN going to extend the deadline again after Friday? :)

ICANN's At-Large Process: Exit, Without Voice

• Comment posted May 23, 2007 6:10 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Well, there seems to be a new "structure" emerging to see what it can do - some people have been harping on RALOs as the new feature of the at large model, have to see how it goes.

Domain Speculation: Attack of the TechnoPinkos

• Comment posted May 27, 2007 2:36 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  But, my main question is, how do “billion dollar portfolios vanish” if domain tasting is eliminated, as you said above? You mean a billion dollars worth of domains at $10 a pop?  Or a bunch of fewer domains with a…

• Comment posted May 25, 2007 5:35 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Building up a portfolio of carefully selected domains over years .. you have naturally dropped the domains you dont need and actually paid for the rest.  And most of the random typosquats / randomly named domains go right away.  That's…

• Comment posted May 25, 2007 5:33 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Darn, where'd that last line go?  T.R.A.F.F.I.C would have to move to the peoria days inn (oh, and food from the Wendy's next door) if icann abolished add grace. Levine's http://www.circleid.com/posts/domain_in_bad_taste/ is well worth reading.

• Comment posted May 25, 2007 5:30 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  The problem I have with the kind of domaining you describe is just the same as John Levine has with it.  There's a previous post on circleid where he compared this with setting up a condiments business by grabbing the…

IGF Preparatory Meeting: A Score Draw in Geneva

• Comment posted Jun 01, 2007 4:27 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  There is a problem there.  You are approaching the IGF with an entirely divergent viewpoint to what the authoritarian governments you have cited are approaching it, wrt management of critical internet resources.  And the IGF has been structured without any…

• Comment posted May 27, 2007 2:33 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  I was in GVA for the cluster of wsis events, though I only stayed for the security workshop and then the access workshop the day after that - the IGF consultation meeting was too late in the week. There's enough…

Discussion at the Internet Governance Forum in Geneva

• Comment posted Jun 03, 2007 4:48 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  IGF?  Not by itself.  It certainly doesnt have a mandate to do anything of the sort.  However, getting all the relevant people together in the same room tends to speed up the process, if at least through backchannel contacts first. …

The New Hong Kong Anti-Spam Law, and a Small Fly in the Ointment

• Comment posted Jun 07, 2007 11:20 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Ale said: If we value the Internet, participating in mailing lists, contacting anyone in the globe directly, and publishing our email addresses are part of its value. Governments wishing to sacrifice that on the ephemeral altar of a negligible business…

• Comment posted Jun 04, 2007 4:49 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Eric Goldman said: I think this cost-accounting for spam is incomplete.  See here.  Eric. Read some more of your paper.  I must disagree with most of its conclusions.  The 7-8% of people surveyed purchased items sold in spam, and that…

• Comment posted Jun 04, 2007 4:29 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Saw. An interesting perspective. But the economic harm caused [1] is very easy to underestimate [2] Is not the only reason to regulate spam

Opt-In Permission for Mailing Lists: Is It Enough?

• Comment posted Jun 22, 2007 10:04 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Well Neil.  I am sure you have enough independent numbers to verify what is just empirical observation, but I've found that single optin lists do have an appreciably higher rate of complaints. The rate gets even higher (and moves very…

Petition Launched on YouChoose.net Against Domain Name Parking

• Comment posted Jun 22, 2007 10:00 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Right. A lot of things that combine to make T.R.A.F.F.I.C start getting hosted at a Days Inn and ordering food from Wendy's once the bottom drops out of this market.  Domain names are the tulip bulbs of this decade, looks…

Squeegee Domains

• Comment posted Jun 27, 2007 6:38 am PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Adam Strong said: Why don't you guys gather together your brain power and put together something that solves the problem To start with, perhaps, have ICANN get rid of Add Grace?

• Comment posted Jun 26, 2007 2:41 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Snoopy said: Or perhaps you missed the boat early on with domains? Am I on the right track here or is there another reason for your post? John is one of the very few people in the world where I'd…

• Comment posted Jun 25, 2007 6:39 pm PDT — by Suresh Ramasubramanian
  Notional values assigned to any good - like for example all the "ifs" in your reply ove