Do you recall when you were a kid and you experienced for the first time an unnatural event where some other kid "stole" your name and their parents were now calling their child by your name, causing much confusion for all on the playground? And how this all made things even more complicated - or at least unnecessarily complex when you and that kid shared a classroom and teacher, or street, or coach and team, and just perhaps that kid even had the same surname as you, amplifying the issue! What you were experiencing was a naming collision (in meatspace). more
The impact of the recently revealed US government data collection practices may go well beyond the privacy ramifications outlined in the Internet Society's statement: expect a chilling effect on global, resilient network architecture. As governments of other countries realize how much of their citizens' traffic flows through the US, whether or not it is destined for any user or service there, expect to see moves to curtail connections to and through the US. more
I recently attended RIPE 66 where Tore Anderson presented his suggested policy change 2013-03, "No Need -- Post-Depletion Reality Adjustment and Cleanup." In his presentation, Tore suggested that this policy proposal was primarily aimed at removing the requirement to complete the form(s) used to document need. There was a significant amount of discussion around bureaucracy, convenience, and "liking" (or not) the process of demonstrating need. Laziness has never been a compelling argument for me and this is no exception. more
ICANN bylaws mandate periodic reviews of the organisation's main structures. For the body that handles gTLD policy making, the GNSO, that review was due to start in February this year. The review appears much needed. The GNSO Council is the manager of the gTLD policy process and as such, it has representatives of all GNSO groups. But according to repeated statements by many of those representatives, the Council's current bicameral structure has not lived up to expectations. more
The success or failure of public cloud services can be measured by whether they deliver high levels of performance, security and reliability that are on par with, or better than, those available within enterprise-owned data centers... IDC forecasts that public cloud IT spending will increase from $40 billion in 2012 to $100 billion in 2016. To provide the performance, security and reliability needed, cloud providers are moving quickly to build a virtualized multi-data center service architecture, or a "data center without walls." more
Internet users are willing to navigate to, use, and trust new web addresses that will be flooding the Internet later this year, and brand name websites will carry more weight with Internet users than generic sites. These are among the results of a public opinion survey commissioned by FairWinds Partners. The poll also found that the owners and operators of these new addresses should be technically prepared or risk driving away or losing traffic intended for their sites. more
The U.S. Government is causing a huge disservice to protection and defense in the private sector (80%+ of CIKR) by creating an ECS that contains monetary incentive for a few large players to exert undue control over the availability, distribution, and cost of security threat indicators. While there may be a legitimate need for the federal government to share classified indicators to entities for protecting critical infrastructure, the over-classification of indicator data is a widely recognized issue that presents real problems for the private sector. ECS as currently construed creates monetary incentives for continued or even expanded over-classification. more
There is something badly broken in today's Internet. At first blush that may sound like a contradiction in terms. After all, the Internet is a modern day technical marvel. In just a couple of decades the Internet has not only transformed the global communications sector, but its reach has extended far further into our society, and it has fundamentally changed the way we do business, the nature of entertainment, the way we buy and sell, and even the structures of government and their engagement with citizens. In many ways the Internet has had a transformative effect on our society that is similar in scale and scope to that of the industrial revolution in the 19th century. How could it possibly be that this prodigious technology of the Internet is "badly broken?" more
By this time next year the allocation of the new Internet namespace will be complete. Several hundred contention sets, ranging from likely blockbusters like .WEB to somewhat less obvious money-makers like .UNICORN, will be decided by some method. One way to resolve contention is to form a joint venture... That works well when there are only two competitors and there's a good basis of trust, and it's a great solution because there are no losers. But if there are three or more competitors, or if you don't like and trust your prospective partner-to-be, this really isn't an option. more
Do "smart" parking meters really need phone numbers? Does every "smart meter" installed by electric utilities need a telephone number? Does every new car with a built-in navigation system need a phone number? Does every Amazon Kindle (and similar e-readers) really need its own phone number? In the absence of an alternative identifier, the answer seems to be a resounding "yes" to all of the above. more
The papers have been abuzz with the shutdown of Liberty Reserve, an online payments system, due to accusations of large scale money laundering via anonymous transactions. Many people have noted similarities between LR and Bitcoin and wonder whether Bitcoin is next. I doubt it, because with Bitcoin, nothing is anonymous. more
The theory put forward by the IETF was simple enough... while there were still enough IPv4 addresses, use transition technologies to migrate to dual stack and then wean IPv4 off over time. All nice and tidy. The way engineers, myself included, liked it. However those controlling the purse strings had a different idea. more
On Webwereld an article was published following a new Kaspersky malware report Q1-2013. Nothing new was mentioned here. The Netherlands remains the number 3 as far as sending malware from Dutch servers is concerned. At the same time Kaspersky writes that The Netherlands is one of the most safe countries as far as infections go. So what is going on here? more
Although this article was first published just a few days ago, on May 8th, there have been several important intervening developments. First, on May 10th ICANN released a News Alert on "NGPC Progress on GAC Advice" that provides a timetable for how the New gTLD program Committee will deal with the GAC Communique. Of particular note is that, as the last action in an initial phase consisting of "actions for soliciting input from Applicants and from the Community', the NGPC will begin to "Review and consider Applicant responses to GAC Advice and Public Comments on how Board should respond to GAC Advice... more
It's safe to say that with just a week to go before ICANN intended to sign the first contract for a new gTLD, the last thing anyone wanted was a 12-page document from the world's governments with 16 new "safeguards", six of which it wants to see applied to every new extension. But what the industry shouldn't overlook, especially in the face of the expected critical responses this week and next, is that the Governmental Advisory Committee's (GAC's) formal advice from the ICANN Beijing meeting represents an opportunity for the domain name industry to lock-in self-regulation at a critical point in its evolution. more
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