For the past two years I've been immersed in Internet Governance, an area I knew precious little about before being tossed into the deep end of the pool. Fortunately my previous employer, Sun Microsystems, encouraged me to participate at various Internet standards organizations so I knew a bit about cat herding, a common link between Internet standards and governance.

My current employer, PayPal (eBay), recognizes the importance of cat herding, and has formed a group that I am fortunate to be part of, that specializes in Internet Standards and Governance. We "volunteer" our time, expertise, and experience at various Internet fora with the goal of enhancing security without sacrificing privacy and to ensure that the Internet remains open, transparent, and generative; attributes that contributed to our success and we believe will afford others the opportunity to succeed as well.

Given that I've avoided delivering on my blogging threat for some time now, why would I choose this particular moment to begin expressing myself publicly? My reasons largely relate to the work I am engaged in and the import and timing of certain events in the coming months. (Hubris is a factor as well no doubt.) One item high on my list is the preparations for the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), scheduled for 3-14 December in Dubai.

A this inaugural event, Member States of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) will consider a review of the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs), a treaty-level instrument signed by 178 countries. The ITRs were last revised nearly a quarter century ago, in 1988. Much has changed in the ensuing years with some significant positive change arguably directly attributed to implementation of the 1988 ITRs.

A review of, and possible changes to the ITRs is a reasonable undertaking with the proviso that benefits are retained and hindrances avoided. This is especially true given that the ITU and some Member States, in my view, would like to expand the remit of the ITU to include regulation of the Internet through changes to the ITRs. This regulation has been called "light touch" with the implication that light touch would ensure benefit or at least minimize harm.

What is missing from the argument in favor of Internet regulation, is a definitive list of the chronic problems that persist despite repeated attempts to solve them by different means. Also absent, is recognition or admission that regulation, light touch or otherwise, could have a chilling effect on the compelling social and economic benefits of the Internet. Finally, one of the arguments in favor of regulation, that the Internet is widely available, should give proponents pause. Even a light touch, when applied across the breadth of the Internet could have long-lasting, far-reaching, and possibly unintended consequences, which can be unpleasant. Consequences at scale can be very unpleasant and I hope can be avoided.

Hope is amongst my reasons for breaking my blogging silence. I sincerely hope that we can avoid the law of unintended consequences and I believe the best way to do that is for all interested parties to be aware of the potential for change from what many might consider an obscure conference on telecommunications.

I plan on providing updates on preparations for the WCIT and other Internet Governance topics on a regular basis.

Written by Bill Smith, Sr. Policy Advisor, Technology Evangelist at PayPal

If that particular geek-flash doesn't make sense to you, let me offer you this alternative insight then. The highest fidelity malware detection system is going to be signature based. The more exacting the signature (which optimally would be a unique hash value for a particular file), the greater the precision in detecting a particular malicious file — however, the precision of the signature means that other malicious files that don't meet the exacting rule of the signature will slip by. On the other hand, a set of behaviors that together could label a binary file as malicious is less exacting, but able to detect a broader spectrum of malware. The price for that flexibility and increased capability of detecting bad stuff comes at the cost of an increased probability of false positive detections.

In physics there's a variable — ?, the reduced Planck constant — that acts a bit like the fulcrum of a teeter-totter ("seesaw" for the non-American rest-of-the-world); it's also a fundamental constant of our universe — like the speed of light. In the antivirus world of Uncertainty Principles the fulcrum isn't a universal constant, instead you could probably argue that it's a function of cash. The more money you throw at the uncertainty problem, the more gravity-defying the teeter-totter would appear to become.

That may all sound a little discomforting. Yes, the more capable your antivirus detection technologies are in detecting malware, the more frequently false positives will crop up. But you should also bear in mind that, in general, the overall percentage of false positives tends to go down (if everyone is doing things properly). What does that mean in reality? If you're rarely encountering false positives with your existing antivirus defenses, you're almost certainly missing a whole lot of maliciousness. It would be nice to say that if you're getting a whole lot of false positives you must, by corollary, be detecting (and stopping) a shed-load of malware — but I don't think that's always the case; it may be because you're just doing it wrong. Or, as the French would say — C'est la vie.

Written by Gunter Ollmann, VP of Research at Damballa

Taking on an industry titan is never easy. So it was with a small upstart domain extension hoping to challenge the dominance of dot-com. Its success has now become the role model for a new generation of extensions that will forever change the way we see and use the Internet...

From the moment the Internet entered popular culture, it has been synonymous with the three-letter ending of many addresses on the global network: dot-com.

Despite literally hundreds of other Internet endings, all of which do the same basic job of providing a tangible location on an intangible computer network, the dominance of dot-com means that even now there are seven times as many Internet addresses with the "com" ending than the next most popular (dot-de, the German Internet extension).

“From 2013 onwards, the naming system for the global network of the Internet will start to reflect the diversity of its millions of users — and hence your customers.But those days are rapidly coming to a close through plans to create thousands of new extensions over the next 12 months. Starting later this year, Internet users will start to see all sorts of new names on the network. Whether it is the city where you live (dot-london, dot-paris, dot-nyc), your favourite retailer (dot-brands), even your favourite pastimes (dot-ski, dot-golf), there will soon be an Internet extension for it.

From 2013 onwards, the naming system for this global network will start to reflect the diversity of its millions of users — and hence your customers. If you want to sell your new green brand of products, you may find your target audience spends much more of its time on websites ending in dot-eco or dot-green. And your marketing team may try desperately to explain why you should rebrand an underperforming service on a new dot-earth web address.

As consumer behavior changes online, smart companies will follow — or even lead.

And lead is exactly what one company that has opened the door for these thousands of new extensions did.

.CO Internet is the company that manages the new dot-CO domain extension, which means it is able to define how, by whom, and for how much domain names ending in ".CO" are allocated. The ".CO" Internet extension is in fact assigned to the country of Colombia through an international country-naming standard (there are 255 other "ccTLDs" or country-code top-level domains on the Internet such as dot-cn for China, dot-uk for the United Kingdom and dot-de for Germany, as mentioned earlier).

Since many of these particular extensions are run or at least overseen by governments, they have been typically under-used (although there are a few notable exceptions). And that has left the "generic" top-level domains such as dot-com, dot-org, dot-info to dominate the Internet naming system.

“The magic sauce that enabled .CO Internet to succeed is the company's culture of innovation. The first thing .CO Internet did was to ignore accepted wisdom about the Internet's naming infrastructure and decided it would make domains 'sexy'.The Colombian government back in 2006 realized that its dot-CO extension had the potential for global use due to it being used to mean "company", "corporation" and even "commerce" across the world. At the time there were only a few thousand dot-CO domains in total. And so the government put the extension out for tender and chose what it felt was the most go-getting and innovative company that applied to manage the domain.

In 2010, .CO Internet was awarded the rights to manage the .CO extension and just two years later, they have gone from a few thousand dot-CO domains to well over one million, with customers from over 200 countries.

What's more, dot-CO has found the support of global brands from IBM to Starbucks, from Google to Twitter. The most valuable domains — those with just a single letter, such as "g.co" — have reportedly been sold for seven figure sums. Amazon bought three: a.co for itself, z.co for Zappos, and k.co for Kindle.

What makes the success of the .CO domain all the more remarkable is that it came after ten years of failed attempts by a range of other companies to break open the market for web addresses. Although it remains dominated by the 800 pound dot-com gorilla, with over 100-million registrations under its belt, dot-CO is being used as a template for the hundreds of new extensions who collectively threaten to turn the market for web addresses on its head.

Making domain names sexy

There has been a limited expansion of the Internet's name space in the past. In 2000, seven new "generic" extensions were approved: aero, biz, coop, info, museum, name and pro. And in 2004, a further six were approved: asia, cat, jobs, mobi, tel and travel (and seven years later, xxx). It is telling that a decade later, the average consumer is unlikely to have even heard of them.

So, what was the magic sauce that enabled .CO Internet to succeed where others had tried and failed? The company is quite open about it: innovation.

The first thing .CO Internet did was to ignore accepted wisdom. Even now, many of those comfortable with the status quo claim that new extensions are "not needed". They include well-known Internet figures such as Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. According to this logic, the Internet's naming infrastructure is no more interesting than the phone system or the road network. It does a useful job providing a foundation for other activities. As a result, previous efforts at breaking dot-com domination have been suitably low-key.

From day one, .CO Internet decided that it didn't agree with this engineer-like perspective and decided it would make domains "sexy". Dot-CO domains would appeal to those likely to find excitement in having a particular space online: namely other innovators and creative thinkers.

In order to get this message out, the company ignored another piece of conventional wisdom: leave the marketing in the hands of web domain retailers, like GoDaddy and Network Solutions. The logic was that it is in the interests of these companies to sell more domains. Plus they have long years of experience in what works and what doesn't in the domain name market.

Except to these companies domains really are more of a utility — they sell as many as possible and make a small margin on each (some sell at or under wholesale price and make their profit from tying in a more profitable service like website hosting). To this day, domain retailers like selling dot-com domains because their systems are set up to deal with them, they provide a solid income, and, crucially, they have a very high renewal rate.

The renewal rate is one factor that has enabled dot-com to stay in control for so long: with domains typically around the $10 per domain per year mark, huge numbers are bought each year and then dropped when their registration period ends. Dot-com domains have a famously high renewal rate compared to other extensions, which makes the retailers happy as customers simply renew their business every year.

Those economics are at the point of breaking however. It is increasingly difficult for individuals and businesses world wide to actually find a dot-com web address that they want. Given the scarcity of names, a booming market in the resale of dot-coms now sees companies regularly paying tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for the addresses they want. But with a flood of new, more highly focused extensions about to hit the market, this model has started looking increasingly stale. And expensive.

Market the hell out of it

.CO Internet decided long before it launched that it would work the system the other way around — by bringing modern marketing skills to a stagnant market and creating a demand for its domains.

It took out billboards in New York's Times Square and in San Francisco and started sponsoring events outside the small Internet infrastructure market, such as the hip South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas. It ran a "Create Your Opportunity" campaign with a $50,000 prize for the company with the best business plan built around a dot-CO domain.

But at the same time as working outside the existing model, it also sought out ways to make it work differently for them. Fresh thinking led to probably the company's big coup — a Superbowl ad in 2011 in partnership with the world's biggest domain retailer, that specifically highlighted dot-CO domains.

GoDaddy has run ads during the biggest TV event of the year in the United States for a number of years, each time featuring scantily clad women in a variety of entirely unrelated activities. The ads are pointless, frivolous, hugely expensive and of course massively successful. But even with low-cut tops, the company had a hard time making the act of registering an address on the Internet sexy. What dot-CO provided was something new, and so something to sell.

The commercial reached 110 million viewers and registered dot-CO domains jumped several hundred thousand as a result. It was so successful that both companies repeated the experiment in 2012.

Getting to know — and love — your customers

The other innovation that .CO Internet brought to the market was the idea of identifying a specific community and building relationships with them around their domain names.

“Dot-CO has the advantage of being immediately recognizable and suitably generic. And .CO Internet took a decision to focus on a community that reflected its own values of innovation: Internet entrepreneurs.Previous new Internet extensions had often had specific communities as a focus for its products but were restricted by their name's precision — such as dot-aero or dot-mobi. Some extensions were under strict rules only to sell to certain pre-identified groups — such as dot-pro and dot-jobs. More general domains, such as dot-info had never targeted a particular group and so seem doomed to act as an also-ran for dot-coms.

Dot-CO has the advantage of being immediately recognizable and suitably generic. And the company made a decision to focus on a community that reflected its own values of innovation: Internet entrepreneurs.

As a result, the .CO Internet team regularly visits hubs of Internet innovation to meet up with their customers, discussing ways in which they can help support and promote them. It's a win-win for both sides, and the company features many of those it has conversations with on its own "go.co" site, with its tagline: "Where big ideas belong on the web".

The company also reached out to thought leaders and leading organizations around the community — investors and startup groups. One of the first high profile dot-CO domains was Angel.co, run by Angel List, a hugely successful platform for connecting startups with investors around the world. Others groups included 500 Startups — who shifted their web presence from "500startups.com" to the shorter and instantly more recognizable "500.co". Well-known technology startup writer Om Malik moved his personal blog to "om.co".

Juan Diego Calle – CEO, .CO InternetThe result has been to spread awareness about .CO domain names within a community of frequent domain purchasers as well as to provide somewhat of a buzz around the idea that they are a little different. The hope from .CO Internet's perspective is that one of these Internet startups will go on to become the next Google or Twitter and with it, pull its domain into the spotlight.

Smart targeting

Even with mainstream marketing and community building, a significant challenge remained however: Main Street acceptance.

Before launching, .CO Internet took another innovative route within the industry: rather than taking a wait-and-see approach, it actively reached out and targeted big businesses to persuade them to register dot-CO domains.

An unexpected opportunity suddenly opened up when it realized companies had started looking for extremely short domains. This trend is epitomized by Twitter, which limits messages to 140 characters, so every character counts. It is no coincidence that Twitter wanted and won "t.co" — which is now one of the most used domains on the entire Internet (ranked 27th according to Alexa).

Other big names followed suit quickly. Google has "g.co" and uses it for official Google shortcuts to other areas of the Internet; Starbucks has sbux.co; Cisco uses cs.co. With these domains comes a new world of analytics and advertising opportunities that companies have only just started realizing.

But where now?

Of course, as with all businesses, the path of dot-CO was far from straight, nor without its mishaps and mistakes, but by keeping a focus on innovating in what had become a stagnant market, as well as recognizing that its own innovative culture is what marked the company out from its much larger competition, .CO Internet has turned into a successful business with a clear path to future growth.

Its approach is likely to be emulated by many of the companies that are now investing millions in their own extensions. Those companies are likely to aggressively target and market particular groups of people: the days of the catch-all dot-com are over.

"Within a few years, we may find that alongside age, income, interests and other indicators for identifying who your customers are, will be the Internet extensions they are most likely to associate themselves with."

What that means for everyone else is equally as striking. With more and more of all our lives moving online, it is going to be crucial for companies to find where people are gathering on the Internet.

Within just a few short years, we may find that alongside age, income, interests and the hundreds of other indicators for identifying who your customers are, will be the Internet extensions they are most likely to associate themselves with.

It's a brave new world. And the dot-CO model may prove to be the template for much of it.

Written by Kieren McCarthy (CircleID), an acknowledged authority on the Internet and Internet governance. He has written extensively about both for a wide range of national and international newspapers and magazines. An engineer by training, he has spent more than 10 years as an IT journalist and has, at some point, interviewed just about everybody in the Internet industry. The official blogger for both the inaugural Internet Governance Forum and an OECD conference on the Participative Web, and author of the book Sex.com, he was also ICANN's General Manager of Public Participation, tasked with coordinating communication between the organization and Internet users. Kieren is CEO of .Nxt. Inc, and created both the company and the conference to provide a space for positive information-sharing about the future of the Internet's infrastructure.

Faster mobile networks, explosive consumer demand, more powerful smartphones, and the influx of non-handset mobile-ready devices make mobile networks an attractive option for hackers and digital exploits, putting both the network and end users at risk. Nominum, the worldwide leader in integrated DNS-based applications and solutions for service providers, today announced its Mobile Network and User Security Solution for mobile service providers — a new addition to the recently-announced Nominum Mobile Suite.

When mobile operators consider security, there are countless options for niche security offerings that must be combined and stacked together to create a complete offering. With this announcement, Nominum now solves multiple mobile security needs in a single complete solution. Nominum is the only company to offer an integrated DNS-based architecture with solutions and applications to solve the business and operational issues faced by today's mobile service providers.

Nominum's new Mobile Security Solution leverages its carrier-grade DNS infrastructure that is already in place in the networks of many of the world's top mobile service providers. Without requiring providers to install any single purpose or "security-specific" elements, this unique offering protects everything from network assets to end users.

Nominum's Mobile Security Solution offers:

• Protection of vital network elements to provide assurances that mobile networks are always available and active
• Security of the DNS data to prevent hackers from redirecting legitimate web requests to malicious sites without any warning to impacted users
• Defense of the network from threats such as bots to enhance the user experience and protect them from threats including data and identity theft
• Prevention from virus, phishing and other user-targeted attacks on both mobile handsets and other connected devices
• As mobile networks become faster and more robust they are an increasingly attractive option for enabling PC-based access via USB dongles. In fact, according to Cisco (2011 Visual Networking Index), there were 175M laptops on the mobile network in 2011, and each laptop generated 22 times more traffic than the average smartphone. That means mobile networks are now subject to the same risks as traditional wired networks.

"As users put more and more digital information on their mobile devices and mobile networks carry an increasing amount of sensitive banking and personal information, the criminal opportunity in this space is a threat the mobile industry cannot overlook," said Doug Miller, General Manager of Mobile Solutions for Nominum. "Mobile service providers know they have to protect not only their networks, but their end users accessing these networks. We are offering mobile service providers something that didn't exist before — a complete mobile security solution to help them to deal with the new and growing security threat."

The Nominum Mobile Security Solution is built on a three-tiered, integrated architecture that leverages core DNS engines through a series of platforms and applications. As such, this solution leverages network elements that are already in the network and does not require any additional elements to be added to the mobile network. With these networks being even more sensitive to latency and single points of failure than wired networks, the ability to leverage existing infrastructure sets this wholly network-based approach apart from other competitive offerings. Due to the dynamic nature of the three-tiered architecture, this Mobile Security Solution is robust even as elements throughout the chain are upgraded or modified. Further, as Nominum builds additional applications to augment this solution, the integrated architecture ensures they can be added in short order to provide the greatest level of flexibility and agility.

The Nominum Mobile Suite helps service providers offer differentiated services to their customers while achieving efficiency and agility. For more information on the Network and User Security Solution visit www.nominum.com/mobile/security.

Neustar's Chief Privacy Officer Becky Burr.

"Becky's industry savvy, combined with her vast experience in data-technology protection and privacy, will help us to ensure that privacy by design, consumer choice and transparency continue to be the cornerstones of everything we do," said Lisa Hook, president and CEO, Neustar. "Formalizing the role of Chief Privacy Officer is a further sign of Neustar's commitment to be at the vanguard of privacy protection. Hiring Becky Burr demonstrates how seriously we take these issues."

"There is nothing more important to Neustar than protecting customer data and consumer privacy. It is the base on which our entire business is built," said Scott Blake Harris. "As we expand our business providing real-time information and analysis to companies around the globe, it is critical that we bring on board a well-respected leader in the privacy community who truly understands both technology and policy, and Becky certainly does," Mr. Harris added.

Ms. Burr is currently a partner at Wilmer Hale, practicing in the Communications, Privacy and Internet Law Practice Group. She also is a veteran of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration. At the FTC, Ms. Burr was responsible for competition and consumer protection policy in connection with information industry/electronic information infrastructure. She participated in developing the FTC's approach to competition, consumer protection, and privacy/data protection in the digital marketplace. Ms. Burr also was a founding member of the board of directors of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, and is a Certified Information Privacy Professional. She was recognized as a nationwide leader in the Privacy and Data Security field in the 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 editions of Chambers of USA: America's Leading Lawyers in Business.

In addition to her expertise in the privacy area, Ms. Burr is an internationally recognized expert on Internet governance issues. She has served as a member of ICANN's Government Advisory Committee, country-code Names Supporting Organization Council, and legal counsel to domain name registries, registrars, and business stakeholders. Ms. Burr also will play an important role for Neustar on Internet governance, ICANN and domain name registry issues.

Should the application be successful, Top Level Domain Holding's wholly owned registry services company, Minds + Machines, will provide the back-end registry services for the proposed new domain. The City of Budapest will receive a revenue share.

Budapest is the capital of Hungary and the European Union's seventh largest city. It is recognized as a major global tourist destination and the financial centre for Central Europe.

Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman of TLDH, commented:

"We are delighted that the government of another major world city has elected to work with us. We fully understand our responsibility to the City of Budapest and to its residents and businesses, and we look forward to providing them with a first-class service. We view this as an important addition to our portfolio of geographical domains."

According to ICANN rules, an applicant for a geographical gTLD must have the support of the relevant governmental authority. Only one application can be made on behalf of a city. As such, geographic applications that have the support of the relevant municipality/authority, cannot be contested by another bidding group.

In addition to .BUDAPEST, the Company has been selected by the relevant governmental authorities of London, Miami, Bavaria, and North-Rhine Westphalia for their geographic top-level domains.

The Board expects that ICANN will publish all applications which it considers complete and ready for evaluation by ICANN prior to the ICANN meeting in Prague in late June 2012, following which the Directors will provide further information on those applications submitted by the Company on its own and its clients behalf which have been approved for evaluation.

About Top Level Domain Holdings Limited

Top Level Domain Holding is a publicly traded holding company listed on the London AIM market. The company is focused on the new top-level domain space. Top-level domains, such as .com, run by VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN), and .biz, run by NeuStar (NYSE: NSR), are regulated by ICANN. ICANN has announced plans to expand the number of top-level domains. TLDH intends to make targeted investments in this space, focusing on both infrastructure technologies and specific top-level domains.

ICANN will reveal the list of new gTLD applications this Spring, a significant milestone, expected to number more than 2,000. Every brand owner needs to review this list carefully to identify problematic applications, and, if necessary, submit comments or file formal objections. While the formal objection period will run approximately seven months, comments submitted within the first 60 days will be taken under consideration by evaluators.

To simplify this process, MarkMonitor will release its New gTLD Application Database which will allow users to quickly search all new gTLD applications. The database will be available shortly after ICANN has released the list of applicants and MarkMonitor will provide access to this data at no cost.

Please join industry experts, Elisa Cooper and Matt Serlin of MarkMonitor, for your guide to preparing for the launch of New gTLDs.

During this complimentary, one-hour webinar, we'll review:

• The MarkMonitor New gTLD Application Database with a LIVE demo
• Strategies for objection filing and response
• Rights Protection Mechanisms, including updates on the Trademark Clearinghouse

The webinar will conclude with an interactive Q&A session and you can register here.

Fortunately the doom and gloom predictions about the imminent demise of the Internet if we don't move to IPv6 now have died down. That's not to say there isn't still a sense of urgency, but pragmatism reigns, and technology and operational experience continue to work their magic. Initial dismissiveness of NAT has yielded to a realization that with proper equipment, design, and best practices it can be made to work. In fact it's likely it will be made to work well.

So there's no doubt some cycles must be expended finalizing decisions on transition mechanisms. Fortunately there are some things, the DNS for instance, in the network that doesn't change as much with IPv6. It has been possible to resolve IPv6 queries for many years now on every major DNS platform (transition technologies that leverage the DNS, like DNS64, have also emerged although aren't yet widely deployed — lets save that topic for another post). Because on the surface it does not appear to be a system that will be impacted by the transition, "it just works", it's tempting to take it off the priority list.

In fact a very strong case can be made that the DNS is a logical place to start the IPv6 transition. With budget money available for IPv6 why risk any issues with the DNS, the foundation of the network? Growth in DNS traffic remains very high and that won't change with IPv6. Browser behaviors have been evolving in an effort to strike the right balance between bias toward v6 (sending AAAA queries first) and ensuring a good user experience — with implications for increasing query volumes even further. Attacks on the DNS won't stop during or after the transition, and exploits that use the DNS won't go away either. DDoS attacks have occurred over IPv6 and exploits on IPv6 are already being catalogued — attackers are agnostic about network access.

As is always the case in networking a little due diligence can pay big dividends, a few basic questions come to mind:

• How long has it been since your DNS has been resized?
• What is the average processor utilization of your servers?
• What's the current performance (queries per second) and latency?
• What's the trend?
• Have floods of queries ever brought down your DNS?
• How often is it attacked?
• How much DNS traffic is bot related (and perhaps more importantly what are the implications of that traffic on your network — but that's a separate topic!).
• How difficult is it for you to gather this kind of DNS data?

Getting the DNS right ensures the network is stable, resilient, and ready to deliver the ultimate end user experience during and after the transition to IPv6. The question to ask is not whether the DNS supports IPv6 — it does, but how well the DNS you have will support IPv6 and the next wave of devices, applications, and security exposures. Given the massive investments that will be made for the IPv6 transition it cannot be overlooked. No one wants to be the person that says "we just assumed that part of the network would be fine because it always worked before."

Learn More: IPv6 – Beyond Business Continuity Join Nominum on May 30 for a webinar. DNS and DHCP are critical elements of IPv6 network design. IPv6 creates a unique opportunity to design a new network architecture that increases efficiency and enables competitive differentiation. Moderated by Craig Sprosts, Nominum's GM of Fixed Broadband Solutions, this webinar will feature Ted Lemon, Nominum's Principal DHCP architect and co-chair of the IETF DHCP working group.

Written by Bruce Van Nice, Director of Product Marketing at Nominum

This blog explore Facebook's size in terms of its Internet traffic contribution.

As in previous posts, we use data from an ongoing research collaboration with multiple large North American Internet providers. We analyze anonymized backbone data encompassing a geographically diverse set of several million subscribers. More details on the research methodologies used in our prior work is available here. We believe this is the largest ongoing study of its kind.

On average, our analysis finds Facebook contributes nearly one percent of all Internet traffic (the actual number is 0.75%). This includes traffic both to Facebook's private data centers as well as third-party edge CDN caches (over 85% of Facebook traffic relies on CDNs).

While one percent is an awesomely huge number, the really, really impressive statistic is 45%. More specifically, we estimate 45% of all Internet subscribers send traffic to Facebook servers at least once every day. This includes traffic sent directly to www.facebook.com as well as the indirect connections made by tens of thousands of third-party web sites that include Facebook content or APIs.

Some additional detail and a nice graphic visualization is available on this blog.

Given our estimate of Facebook's traffic volume and IPO price, we can calculate a new Internet centric metric to accompany Facebook's PE ratio (an incredible 95:1). We first use data from Cisco to estimate the overall size of Internet traffic (37 Exabytes per month). At 0.75% and a $104.2B valuation, this means that Facebook uses 824,000 Mbps of bandwidth continuously. When you put their valuation in terms of this bandwidth you get a staggering $124,000 per Mbps.

So, a hearty congratulations to Facebook and my friends who work there.

Written by Craig Labovitz, Co-Founder DeepField Networks

Is Divestiture a Warranted?

Companies are always pushing the limits of rules and regulations, and Comcast is no exception in this case. If continued disregard of basic neutrality principles, using its broadband service as a vehicle to discriminate against other competitors is not enough evidence to call for divestiture; then what will it take to emphasize the implications for an OTT (Over-The-Top) video market that is being disadvantaged by prioritization from a horizontally controlled service. There must be consideration and debate as to whether Comcast, as a broadband provider and a cable provider, has undue influence in market control, being such a large and dominate provider of both services. (See: He said, she said: Is Comcast prioritizing traffic or not?)

Boundaries Must Be Set

Taking a page from the playbook in the dispute with programmers over the right to allow access to cable programming on multiple devices, represented in changes of market dynamics from set-box-box viewing to multiple device viewing, both inside and outside the home; cable operators insisted those devices were just another STB. Taking this concept a step further, Comcast is using the argument that the Xbox 360 App is just another viewing device for its customers, which under Title VI, does not fall under public Internet consumption, but viewing on a private network.

DOJ-FCC Question

The implications, however, are far reaching and may set a precedent in companies with horizontal services being allowed to manipulate competitive forces to favor themselves. If this is ultimately, the argument, then Comcast should bow out of either its broadband service or cable service to remove the inference. This is a DOJ (Department of Justice)/FCC question which should be looked into further. As companies like Comcast are allowed to grow in dominate market status, their actions can up-end market forces in an undeniable adverse way, if allowed. (See: Comcast's Xfinity app for Xbox 360: a new battleground in net neutrality)

Confidence in Past Court Appeals

Comcast has been successful in past court appeals such as the FCC Bit Torrent Throttling Case in which a DC court ruled the FCC had limited authority in Internet ruling making. Obviously companies like Comcast have the resources to fight such infringements of its actions, tying up regulators in court for months or even years. Again, we are beginning to see signs that a market-dominate Comcast can infringe its authority with somewhat impunity to unbalance competitive forces, if it wishes to do so. (See: Title VI — High Speed Access to the Internet over Cable Devices and other Facilities)

What we are left with is a company feeling confident enough in its actions to spread "fear and loathing" into anyone questioning its motives or agenda. A rule of thumb for all Internet providers wishing to expand or to dominate market forces should be; do our actions foster fair competition or hinder competitive forces? No company is going to embrace competition if left to its own devices. My point is that as companies become very large their influence becomes a market liability in itself. Being competitively fair is a simple rule and one which evidently needs to be re-enforced.

Written by Leonard Grace, Founder & Editor - Broadband Convergent

Donuts supported ICANN's decision to close TAS when it realized there was a data security risk. At a critical moment, ICANN made the right choice. The company also agrees with ICANN's offer to fully refund impacted applicants who elect to withdraw their application.

However, now that staff has communicated to affected applicants (including Donuts) and is preparing to re-open the TAS system, efficiency has grown to become a crucial element of the process. The offer to return an extra $5,000 of the application fee surely is appreciated. For many applicants, though, the real cost is continued delay.

Weeks of system interruption means continued investment of time, money, and resources. Delays on the eve of evaluation — when applicants are more fully staffed and have invested in systems, hardware, office space and, in some cases, pre-funded COIs — cost applicants far more than delays in previous years.

Or, perhaps recovery is not as hard as it might seem. ICANN could exercise reasonable discretion and make up for some of the lost time without overtaxing itself and without harming participants in the process (both applicants and non-applicants). In doing so, ICANN would probably improve a measure of its tarnished reputation.

Why this is important to everyone

This isn't important just to applicants:

• The burden on all parts of the community must be kept to a minimum, including time and resources for review and evaluation. The more efficient this process is, the more the community's full menu of work can be kept in balance.

• The higher the costs are on applicants, the higher the costs will become to end-users.

• The longer the delay, the more acute risks become. As we noted in a previous post, file and user names aren't particularly actionable — but to the extent they might have been any unfair benefit is lost when the application window closes. ICANN should move quickly to reopen and close TAS as soon as is practical.

• Crisp execution brings credibility back to the machinery and processes of TLD expansion.

• Tightening the process brings much-needed predictability to all parts of the community, including, most importantly, consumers and Internet users.

The culture of risk vs. confidence

A risk-averse culture prevails over many of ICANN's decisions and methods. This is evident in the painstaking packet-layer review of the TAS glitch. Donuts understands the Board's and staff's desire to be careful and thorough and to report the full set of facts.

However, how much more efficient and well regarded would ICANN be if it confidently relied on its significant accomplishments, rather than on obsessive war-room "what ifs"?

Such a change in culture is a tall order for an organization constantly dealing with outside choruses of "do it my way or else." The TAS glitch notwithstanding, ICANN has every right to be confident in the soundness of its efforts in the new TLD program.

How to manage the clock going forward

With the clock ticking, end-users waiting, investors marking time with thousands of dollars by the day, now is the time for ICANN to make up the time lost to the TAS glitch. Here's how:

1. Make realistic assessments of the time needed for processes and trim the excess

ICANN has mapped out timelines it anticipates it will need to complete various parts of evaluation. However, the full measure of time for many of these tasks probably isn't needed.

Further, ICANN will gain efficiency as it works through tasks. Look at technical review as an example — a large chunk of ICANN's evaluation task. Although there are several thousand applications, there are probably only 10 to 15 technical operators supporting those applications, and technical operators provide essentially the same set of answers for each client.

Verisign announced it's the back-end for about 220 applications. When evaluators look at the application for Verisign's second client, they will assess the same technical data as they did for Verisign's first client. Put another way, there will be only 10 to 15 technical evaluations — not two thousand. Efficiencies such as these should be applied to reducing the time necessary to handle evaluations.

As Kurt Pritz said in the 17 May 2012 Registry-Registrar regional meeting, "as you realize efficiencies, you should accelerate your plan." That is certainly the case here.

Another example is the Administrative Completeness Check, an eight-week phase between TAS closure and the start of Initial Evaluation. This three-step check was written into the guidebook to ensure: a) all mandatory questions are answered, b) required supporting documents are in correct format, and c) evaluation fees have been received.

However, two of those three items are checked at the time TAS closes (an application can't be submitted in TAS unless all mandatory questions are answered and the evaluation fee is received). There remains just one check — that supporting documents are in the correct format. This check is merely to ensure correct formatting and does not look at the quality of answers. Is eight weeks — the current estimated time for Administrative Completeness Check — necessary for checking file formats?

2. Think well ahead, anticipate bottlenecks early

ICANN would do well to take a few hours with a whiteboard to envision where the potential for bottlenecks exist in the pipeline, from TAS closing to delegation and beyond. It's far better to plan ahead for contingencies rather than wait until a problem is upon the community and more likely to cause another interruption.

Examples:

• How will the Board consider string approvals?

• Could ICANN conduct a test scenario for various types of string contention resolution to see what outcomes are likely and how to prepare for them?

• How will ICANN's legal team deal with finalizing and executing the registry agreements?

3. Keep GAC early warning period to 60 days only

As staff said in its advisory on 5 January 2012, "applicants should know as soon as possible if there is a governmental concern with their application. There is a significant investment in preparing to launch a new registry and ICANN should provide answers to applicants in a timely manner. That is why the GAC commitment to a 60-day window is so valuable."

It can't be better written than that. With a known number of applications, the GAC's capability to handle a preliminary review of strings and lodge early warnings within 60 days total is reasonable. Further, as Donuts has said for many years, the likelihood will be that the GAC's blood pressure will drop dramatically when members see the actual strings applied for (no doubt 99% will be a big yawn for the GAC).

4. Don't change batching method

Digital archery is a reasonable method for organizing batches; it's fair, and it will work. Arguments that it's ripe for "gaming" — whatever the definition of gaming — ring hollow. A skill that anyone can perform is a reasonable method. If an applicant were to have expertise in network operations, however, and thus a theoretical advantage in digital archery, perhaps that's not a bad qualification for a prospective registry operator.

What would introduce new delay into the system, and thus shouldn't be considered, are alternative methods to digital archery. This includes categorization of types of applications, having non-contested strings batched first, and other alternative means. We've looked at a number of alternate methods and each of them would have at least as many criticisms as digital archery does.

Further, there have been calls for changing the approach of batching contested strings together (based on the best archer in the contention set). However, there seems to be reasonable logic behind the current approach. Only one party can prevail in a contention set, but while evaluation is in progress all parties in the contention set must continue to pay salaries, office space, travel, COI, and other expenses — a significant collective sum. It's reasonable to let these parties know as soon as possible who must withdraw. Applicants for uncontested strings incur costs as well, but they will eventually have a TLD to operate. Most applicants in contention sets will not.

Finally, there should be no delay between evaluations of batches. The second batch shouldn't be delayed because, for example, one or more applications in the first are subject to extended evaluation. Similarly, if the evaluators specialize by question(s), there's no reason an evaluator who finished batch one answers couldn't start evaluating their piece of the next batch (even if some other evaluators are still on batch one). Parallel versus serial processing is far more efficient.

5. Reduce evaluation timeframes by rewarding evaluator performance

In 1994, the US state of California experienced the "Northridge" earthquake, which destroyed a section of a vital highway. The contractor awarded the repair work was incentivized to complete reconstruction as early as possible. It was in fact completed early; commuters, taxpayers, and the contractor all were winners.

A de minimis part of the application fee could be devoted to incentivizing evaluation service providers (string similarity, DNS stability, technical and operational, financial, registry service, etc.), with aggregate time savings applied toward moving delegation timelines closer.

ICANN: Manage the process more efficiently

The TAS delay hasn't caused lasting damage to ICANN's reputation yet, but further delays might.

ICANN should respect the interests of the new TLD applicants it so actively encouraged to apply. They will be an exciting and vibrant new part of the ICANN community. Don't repay applicants with a few dollars for dropping out. Demonstrate professional excellence by publishing a complete timeline now, and by completing the program on time, or even early.

Richard Tindal is Chief Operating Officer of Donuts Inc., a TLD applicant.

Written by Richard J Tindal