Internet i inne organizacje

Recent report says many textbooks and articles have created the myth that the Internet Protocols (IP) were designed for warfare environments, while in reality they originally focused on operational aspects of the protocol and overlooked security implications. United Kingdom's Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) has released a document raising awareness of the many security threats from attacks based on the Internet protocol.

According to this report, "producing a secure TCP/IP implementation nowadays is a very difficult task" partly because no single document provides security roadmap for the protocols.

While seeking feedback from the community, the CPNI's document offers insights and advice for secure implementation of the Internet Protocol.

More under: Internet Protocol, Security

High-speed Internet access is so important to the welfare of U.S. consumers that America can't afford not to offer it—free of charge—to anybody who wants it, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin has told USA TODAY.

Leslie Cauley reports: "Martin wants to use a block of wireless spectrum to help bridge the gap. By attaching a 'free broadband' condition to the sale of the spectrum, known as AWS-3 (for advanced wireless services-3), Martin thinks he can help drive broadband adoption in rural areas in particular. Only 25% of network capacity would have to be reserved for free broadband. The rest could be used to provide premium broadband services."

Karl Bode of DSLreports.com however, says Martin is no consumer advocate: "Still, between his rather toothless crackdown on Comcast and his new wireless broadband plan, he's doing a bang up job convincing the mainstream press otherwise as he prepares for a post-FCC political career."

More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Policy & Regulation

I recently came across a chart of the most popular top-level domains (TLDs), compiled by Stephane Van Gelder. Although I keep track of country code TLD registrations for the Country Codes of the World map (see also related CircleID post), Stephane tracks all domains, including .com, .net., etc. And when I saw it I got to thinking…

Here's the table of the figures I want to focus on:

TLDMAR 2008JUN 2008GROWTH 1.COM73,237,70676,744,686+5% 2.CN10,544,11312,400,000+18% 3.DE11,885,81212,121,707+2% 4.NET10,939,38611,622,363+6% 5.UK6,569,8116,880,775+5% 6.ORG6,560,0996,863,947+5% 7.INFO4,932,2574,902,156-1% 8.NL2,852,5132,977,191+4% 9.EU2,792,2622,818,774+1% 10.BIZ1,935,8742,000,000+3%

Source: DomainesInfo.fr

What makes this chart so interesting are the growth rates: .com is growing at 5% and .cn is growing at 18%. Granted, it's easier to grow at 18% when you've only got 12 million registrations, compared with growing at 5% when you've got 76 million registrations.

But growth is growth and .cn is clearly on a roll.

And China has a lot of headroom for growth in terms of Web users and potential domain registrants. I am confident that .cn will reach 50 million registrations over the next 3 years.

At about that point in time, .com should be around 100 million registrants—in no danger of losing its number one status.

However, if the rate of growth of .com registrations were to decrease while .cn rate of growth continues to increase, it's reasonable to wonder if we will one day see the number of .cn registrations surpass .com registrations?

I realize this is a far-fetched scenario.

After all, it's reasonable to assume that companies that register .cn may also register .com—and the majority do just that.

But it's certainly something to contemplate. And even if .cn never comes close to surpassing .com, the overall point I'd like to emphasize here is that .cn is now the world's second most popular top-level domain—and likely to remain that way for many years.

What do you think?

More under: Domain Names, Top-Level Domains

In follow up to August 1st ruling against Comcast, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in a 67 page order released today has given Comcast 30 days "to disclose the details of their unreasonable network management practices, submit a compliance plan describing how it intends to stop these unreasonable management practices by the end of the year, and disclose to both the Commission and the public the details of the network management practices that it intends to deploy following termination of its current practices."

The FCC has also said that if Comcast does not follow the timeline issued today, it will be subject to the following 3 steps:

1. Interim injunctive relief automatically will take effect requiring Comcast to suspend the network management practices within 35 days of the release of this order;
2. The Enforcement Bureau will immediately issue an order directing Comcast to show cause why a permanent cease-and-desist order should not be issued against it; and
3. A hearing will be set for thirty days after Comcast's receipt of that order.

More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Law, P2P, Policy & Regulation

A recent Infonetics press release says "WiMAX has gained such momentum across so many regions that it is no longer sensible to suggest that WiMAX growth will be flattened by the emergence of LTE [Long Term Evolution] in the next few years."

Probably true, but it's also clear WiMAX will never reach the scale of either mainstream wireless family, i.e., WiFi or GSM/3GSM. By comparison with these giants, WiMAX will be a fringe operation. The critical issue is volume, and what counts is the wireless technology brand, not the technology itself.

Both WiFi and GSM/3GSM have already evolved through multiple generations of technology while maintaining backwards compatibility and thus interoperability. Within the GSM community, there may be no commercial LTE subscribers as yet and relatively few HSPA subscribers, but more than a billion GSM/3GSM devices are manufactured each year with individual chip set product lines running multi-hundred million units per year. WiFi chipsets also run at hundred-million units per year rates. These volumes (and the guarantee of interoperability) mean GSM/3GSM and WiFi devices will always be substantially lower cost than anything WiMAX aspires to. [Note: today there are slightly less the 2 million WiMAX subscribers while optimistic projections suggest there will be more than 100 million in 2012.] WiMAX may have technology leadership, but it can't catch up. WiFi and GSM are the wireless families that will prosper, each in it's sphere—WiFi for unlicensed, GSM for licensed spectrum.

WiMAX will benefit from technology specific licensing in some emerging markets, i.e., valuable spectrum tied to specific technologies, So WiMAX will survive, even while it's more expensive than LTE or WiFi. As for market share, the optimistic parallel is "CDMA cellular", i.e. IS-95/ CDMA One/ CDMA 2000. CDMA had technology leadership and it managed to capture nearly 20% of the 2G cellular market at it's peak, but it could never overtake GSM and, today, major operators are jumping ship to join the 3GSM crowd.

There may be a decade of contention, but in the end, WiMAX will die or be absorbed into the GSM brand.

More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Mobile, Wireless

Last month a government-backed deal was struck between Britain's six biggest Internet service providers and the entertainment industry in order to send warning letters to file-sharers. Today it has been reported that thousands of people suspected of sharing music, films and games over the Internet are going to be facing legal action in UK for damages.

One law firm, according to Reuters, is going to the High Court to force ISPs to release names and addresses of 7,000 suspected file-sharers and that they have already begun proceedings against several people in Britain. One British woman has been ordered to pay 16,000 pounds for downloading pinball game for free through a file-sharing site.

More under: Law, P2P

While Apple can't single-handedly transfer the Internet to IPv6, it can provide killer apps that will drive adoption among consumers, says Prince McLean of AppleInsider. McLean continues: "That kind of thing is right up Apple's Infinite Loop alley. The company pushed for adoption of the MPEG AAC codec with iTunes and the iPod, upgrading the world from MP3 while preventing the world's music from being locked up in Sony's ATRAC or Microsoft's Windows Media DRM. Most other music players now support AAC as well… Apple's relatively small but high-impact market power has pushed a number of other open standards. So how can Apple push IPv6? One killer app for IPv6 is already being sold: Back to My Mac (BTMM ) works by tunneling IPv6 traffic between machines over the IPv4 Internet using IPSec."

More under: IPv6

29 percent of Internet users have purchased goods from spam emails, according to new research by Internet security company Marshal. The most commonly purchased items include sexual enhancement pills, software, adult material and luxury items such as watches, jewellery and clothing.

Marshal's research, which asked 'What purchases have you made from spam,' attracted 622 responses with 29.1 percent indicating that they had made purchases. The poll showed the proportion of spam purchases had risen when compared to a similar Forrester Research poll from 2004, which surveyed 6,000 active Web users and reported 20 percent had made purchases from spam.

More under: Spam

A US firm was among ISPs operating in Argentina that recently received orders from the country's Department of Justice to put a stop to all local traffic visiting a particular gambling website operating without a license. An anonymous source, according to Ian Lamont of The Industry Standard, has said that Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) was floated as a possible option to accomplish this task although later not implemented due to high costs.

Lamont reports: "The DPI approach would be troubling on a number of levels. First, any ISP using DPI is going beyond a government mandate to simply block traffic to a particular site. The ISPs would actually be peering inside their customers' Web traffic without their knowledge." Although DPI wasn't used in this particular case, "it will probably be considered in the future as a way to take offensive or illegal sites offline."

More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Net Neutrality, Privacy

In reaction to U.S. republican presidential candidate John McCain's release of his technology policy statement on August 14, Lawrence Lessig has released a video presentation criticizing the tech plan for lack of change to important issues such as broadband penetration declines in the country. Early during the video presentation, Lessig has this to say:

"...the single most important fact about internet's development in last decade has been the extraordinary decline United States has faced with respect to our competitive partners. We started the Bush administration at no. 5, we will end at no. 22. And the question anybody should be asking about internet policy here, is why we did so poorly and what change there might be to reverse that decline. How will we change this decline and in particular in evaluating John McCain's technology platform, we should be asking whether in his platform there is something new or something different from what he has be espousing to this date. Something that might actually reverse the consequences of policies which he himself has been largely responsible for supporting. Now as I evaluate his policy in light of this question, I just don't see it. I don't see what in his policy will affect a reverse in this decline."

Listen to the rest of Lessig's response in the video below:

More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Net Neutrality, Policy & Regulation

The attacks against websites in Georgia are most likely populist in nature rather than state sponsored says Gary Warner, director of computer forensics research at UAB. In a blog post today, Warner has provided some evidence regarding his speculations including scripts from Russian language websites. He writes: "This script was copied from one of more than forty Russian language sites where I found copies of an 'attack script' that people were being encouraged to run on their own computers..."

More under: Cyberattack, Security

Though often thought to be the power tool of the business road warrior, wireless data cards that allow laptop and PC users to connect to the Internet over a wireless carrier's cellular network, are quickly becoming a popular means of home Internet access, says new report by Nielsen Mobile.

According to the study, 43% of mobile data card users report they most often use their data card at home, while 15 percent say they typically use the card at work. Additionally, one in five (21 percent) data card subscribers take advantage of ubiquitous access by heading outdoors and 9 percent use their card while commuting.

More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Mobile, Wireless

In follow to an earlier report this month about Dell seeking a "cloud computing" trademark, latest updates indicate that the company has been denied a trademark because of the generic nature of the term which describes services offered by numerous other companies.

In an initial ruling, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), included dozens of news stories and other material supporting its contention that cloud computing is a widely-used term of art for the technology industry. Dell is given six months to file a response or the USPTO will abandon the application.

More under: Law, Web Hosting

Experts agree that the U.S. is probably more Internet-dependent than any place in the world and hence more vulnerable than any other country. However in a CNN report today, Scott Borg, director of the United States Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit research institute, says that U.S. "can command so much bandwidth that it's hard to overwhelm our servers," in light of last week's, and still ongoing, cyberattacks against Georgia. "We are vulnerable to more sophisticated attacks, but right now most of the people who want to do us harm don't have those capabilities," says Borg.

Websites of key government security agencies, such as the Pentagon and the CIA, as well as large banks are difficult to bring down, according to experts. However successful, large-scale attack on U.S. computer systems could shutdown electric-power grids, transportation networks and industrial-supply chains.

More under: Cyberattack, Security

Security and network management company, Arbor Networks, in partnership with more than ninety network services and content providers from around the world, has published an extensive study of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) traffic on the Internet. The results of a year-long research project provide, for the first time according to the report, a global perspective on the amount of IPv6 traffic on the Internet. There are "exactly 900 days remaining until the end of the Internet, or at least the exhaustion of IPv4 registry allocations," says Craig Labovitz Arbor Networks chief scientist in a related blog post today.

"So what happened to IPv6? Well, it has been a strange, long year… The year began with fears over the 'end of the Internet' (due to lack of IPv6 adoption) and ends this month with renewed IPv6 enthusiasm centered around the Olympics and a successful US government IPv6 mandate," says Labovitz. "In between these two extremes of IPv6 despair and enthusiasm, IPv6 generated a surge of news coverage. At its peak this past June, print media around the world published nearly 3,000 articles a month on IPv6 (almost twice as much as the comparatively uninteresting IPv4)."

Other findings include:

Percentage of ASN with IPv6 BGP announcements: 3%
Percentage of Internet2 sites with passing IPv6 grade: 1%
Percentage of Alexa Top 500 websites using IPv6: 0.4%
IPv6 DNS queries as percentage of IPv4 DNS load: 0.2%
IPv6 as a percentage of all Internet traffic: 0.002%

More under: IPv6

Google has announced today the launch of a new website promoting the unlicensed use of "white space" spectrum. The initiative is called "Free The Airwaves” which encourages Internet users to get proactive on the white spaces issue, if they "care about the future of the Internet." Minnie Ingersoll, Google Product Manager, explains in a related blog post:

"For quite some time we've been talking about the potential of the unused airwaves between broadcast TV channels ("white spaces") to provide affordable, high-speed wireless Internet connectivity nationwide. For this to happen, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must allow unlicensed use of this spectrum… The FCC has completed its field testing and is expected to make a ruling in the coming months. With this in mind, today we're launching Free The Airwaves, a new effort to bring users together around this important issue."

More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Policy & Regulation, Wireless

I look at this as the ideas of Mike Powell and Meg Whitman, and a lot of unimportant wordsmithing. Before the Dublin (Erie) IETF I wrote one for one of the top three DCCC targeted races. You, or One, or I (isn't voice fun) tries for ideas that matter, and then try to connect the dots, for the semi-literate staff of a candidate who needs clue, e.g., to make effective calls to the DNC's major contributor lists for area codes 415, 408, 650 and 831. I mention Dublin because ages ago Scott Bradner's plan for Harvard, decent bandwidth everywhere and location transparency was, in just a few pages, a revolutionary policy document then, and now, and I was happy to see Scott again and let him know that two decades later I still remembered seeing policy stated with confidence and clarity.

The ideas in Mike Powell's and Meg Whitman's tech policy piece are surprising ... in their absence.

In my "Clue for Call-Times" for the DCCC targeted race for the Columbus, Ohio seat currently held by Deborah Pryce (R-Abramoff), I wrote Dublin votes Republican, and they had the sense to put dark fiber down city right-of-ways and data-driven tech is more present in Dublin now than anywhere else in the OH-15/OH-12/OH-07. In a nutshell, Dublin will be richer than its surroundings forever because of some exotic glass and a backhoe. Public intervention does work, we just need to pick what we want. Dublin wanted Dublin, the United States may want to fiber-up Appalachia, and the Navajo Nation.

Mike and Meg could have just said they like Dublin a lot, and plan to pass on Appalachia and the Navajo Nation. I wouldn't agree, but at least it would be comprehensible, and rational within its assumptions, and we could then work on the policy for rural (and urban core) narrow-band provisioning.

Western Union Telegraph Company v. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 128 U.S. 39[3] contains an idea that matters—that states may not tax interstate telegraph messages. Of course, credit for that idea goes to Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who wrote the decision in 1888, and "policy" is a cognate for "tax". This is about where the McCain Campaign's center of force (the candidate as an opinion leader, the "transactional" industry contributors, and the larger campaign policy staff) is located—affirmative public policy is deprecated, public data dumps and public data pipes will wither, and some will die, no taxes will be collected, no matter how great the profits, and some defense money will be thrown in the air as confetti.

It is an interesting piece of political writing, and it may achieve the probable political goal of making technology a non-issue in the campaign. (h/t David Isenberg)

More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Net Neutrality, Regional Registries

According to reports, Google's Android mobile phone operating system (OS) to be launching in few weeks might actually be indented to be more than just a mobile OS. Google may be aiming at expanding Android as a universal operating system spanning set-top boxes for televisions, mp3 players and other communication and media devices and services.

According to Eric Eldon of VentureBeat, rumors about this plan have actually been circulating since last year. Google chief internet evangelist and Internet co-creator Vint Cerf hinted at Google's larger focus during a talk on innovation journalism in 2006, before Android existed..."

More under: Mobile