Proceedings of Name Collisions Workshop Available by Burt Kaliski
Presentations, papers and video recordings from the name collisions workshop held earlier this month in London are now available at the workshop web site, namecollisions.net.
The goal for the workshop, described in my “colloquium on collisions” post, was that researchers and practitioners would “speak together” to keep name spaces from “striking together.” The program committee put together an excellent set of talks toward this purpose, providing a strong, objective technical foundation for dialogue. I’m grateful to the committee, speakers, attendees and organizers for their contributions to a successful two-day event, which I am hopeful will have benefit toward the security and stability of Internet naming for many days to come.
Keynote speaker, and noted security industry commentator, Bruce Schneier (Co3 Systems ) set the tone for the two days with a discussion on how humans name things and the shortcomings of computers in doing the same. Names require context, he observed, and “computers are really bad at this” because “everything defaults to global.” Referring to the potential that new gTLDs could conflict with internal names in installed systems, he commented, “It would be great if we could go back 20 years and say ‘Don’t do that’,” but concluded that policymakers have to work with DNS the way it is today.
Bruce said he remains optimistic about long-term prospects as name collisions and other naming challenges are resolved: “I truly expect computers to adapt to us as humans,” to provide the same kind of trustworthy interactions that humans have developed in their communications with one another.
This article by Verisign’s Burt Kaliski was sourced from the Verisign blog here.
Historic Singapore Meeting Marks the Beginning a New Phase for ICANN
[news release] The President and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ( ICANN ) says the organization’s 49th meeting that just concluded in Singapore marked the beginning of a new era for the organization and the future of Internet governance.
“ICANN49 will be remembered as a meeting that, in many ways, ended the early phase of ICANN and brought the organization into a new phase of maturity and responsibility,” said Fadi Chehadé. “It is exemplified by the recent decision of the United States Government to hand us the very ominous responsibility to facilitate and convene the world toward determining how ICANN will be providing assurances of accountability across the board.”
Chehadé made the comments during a video interview at the conclusion of the Singapore meeting, for which more 1,940 people registered from 150 countries.
“People from all over the world, from all segments of the Internet community are here, interacting not just with ICANN , but also interacting with each other,” said Dr. Stephen Crocker, ICANN ‘s Board Chair.
The Singapore meeting was dominated by discussions stemming from the recent announcement by the U.S. Government that it wants to transfer stewardship of some vital Internet technical functions to provide for global accountability. It has reached out to ICANN , which will continue to manage those functions as it has for more than 15 years, to help determine the best process for transferring that stewardship.
“These are important times,” said Chehadé. “The U.S. Government has modulated its stewardship over time, it has dialed it down and this was just a natural moment for all this to happen, as the U.S. government has said, due to the community’s readiness to actually embrace these responsibilities and establish the appropriate accountability mechanisms to replace the U.S. role.”
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To view the video interview with ICANN President Fadi Chehadé and Board Chair Dr. Stephen D. Crocker, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY3DbUVzyHQ&feature=youtu.be
To learn more about the transfer of the Internet technical functions, go here: www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/iana/transition
DC Trains Laser Focus on ICANN, IANA, and NTIA – ICA Counsel to Speak On U.S Role in Internet Governance by Philip Corwin, Internet Commerce Association
The calm is over, and the storm may be about to begin. Congress is back from recess and not one but two Congressional Committees are about to hone in on the implications of the NTIA’s March 14th announcement of its intention to surrender its IANA functions contract counterparty status with ICANN by September 2015.
Meantime, an exhausting ICANN meeting has just concluded in Singapore, at which much more was learned about the import of that decision and the complexities of implementing it (more on that in a separate post-jetlag post). Everything ICANN-related, including the Internet governance status of business in general and domainers in particular, is up for grabs and at risk for at least the next eighteen months.
This is ICANN week in Washington. Besides those two Hill hearings, two major think tanks are also holding ICANN-related programs.
Here’s the lineup:
First, on Wednesday, April 2, at 10:30 am ET the Communications and Telecommunications Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will consider “Ensuring the Security, Stability, Resilience, and Freedom of the Global Internet” . This is the Subcommittee with direct NTIA oversight, and the hearing may be contentious. The star-studded witness list consists of:
The Honorable Larry Strickling
Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information Administration
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
U.S. Department of Commerce
The Honorable David A. Gross
Partner
Wiley Rein, LLP
Mr. Fadi Chehadé
President and CEO
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
Mr. Steve DelBianco
Executive Director
NetChoice
Ms. Carolina Rossini
Project Director, Latin American Resource Center
Internet Governance and Human Rights Program
New American Foundation
The following day, the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet of the House Judiciary Committee will explore the question of “Should the Department of Commerce Relinquish Direct Oversight Over ICANN?” at 10 am Eastern Time. While the witness list is not yet available, the Subcommittee is likely to focus on whether NTIA has the legal power to make this decision absent Congressional authorization — and the potential fallout for Internet free speech and trademark and copyright protection.
Also on Thursday, at 12 noon the influential Information Technology and Innovation Foundation will hold a program on “Bully or Bodyguard? Assessing the Proper Role of the United States in Internet Governance”. ICA’s Counsel will be one of the presenters. The complete speakers list is:
Robert D. Atkinson
President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Moderator
Phil Corwin
Founding Principal, Virtualaw LLC (and ICA Counsel)
Steve DelBianco
Executive Director, NetChoice
Eli Dourado
Research Fellow, Mercatus Center
Finally, at 11 am on Friday, the respected Hudson Institute will host “A Discussion with the Hon. Lawrence Strickling about the future of ICANN”. Coming just after his Hill appearance, this should be a most interesting session.
Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, all these events will be webcast live so that you can be an eyewitness to history.
This article by Philip Corwin from the Internet Commerce Association was sourced with permission from:
www.internetcommerce.org/ICANN_Week_DC
auDA to Trial DNSSEC in .AU
[news release].au Domain Administration (auDA) announced this week it will introduce DNSSEC into the .au domain namespace in an experimental capacity in the coming months.
Deployment on production servers will commence during April and will be trialed for four months. During this period auDA will:
- Test and monitor production load on the .au servers
- Perform two zone signing key rollover events
- Perform one key signing key rollover
- Liaise with the Second Level Domain (2LD) operators and facilitate the addition of their DS records into the .au zone
- Finalise the DNSSEC Practice Statement (DPS).
DNSSEC is a technology that was developed to protect against DNS-based attacks and hijacks by digitally signing data so you can be assured it is valid. In order to eliminate this form of vulnerability from the Internet, DNSSEC must be deployed at each step in the DNS lookup process from root zone to final domain name. Importantly, DNSSEC does not encrypt data. It just attests to the validity of the address of the site you visit.
In auDA’s test, the .au delegation signer records will not be added to the root zone during this period and auDA notes that operators should not create or implement trust anchors for .au in their production environments.
A mailing list has been created for discussions related to .au DNSSEC. auDA will make all announcements about key rollover periods, outages and any other relevant DNSSEC information via the DNSSEC mailing list.
Further information about the implementation of DNSSEC in .au is available from auDA. There is also an FAQ available.
This announcement was sourced from the ARI Registry Services website here.
New gTLD Registrations Hit 400,000
The number of registrations in the 150 new gTLDs to have at least one registration has reached 400,000, nTLDStats.com data showed Friday. As of 30 March there were 408,366 domains registered across all gTLDs.
The top new gTLD is still .guru with 46,954 domains under management (DUM) and a 11.54 percent market share of all new gTLDs as of 30 March. But it is being gradually caught by .berlin with 43,403 DUM and a 10.66 percent market share.
Third on the list compiled by nTLDStats.com is .photography (30,185 and 7.41%), then .today (17,666 and 4.34%), .tips (17,583 and 4.32%). Sixth on the list is .email with 15,216 DUM and a market share of 3.74 percent, however General Availability only commenced on a week ago on 23 March.
Rounding out the top ten is .technology (12,262 and 3.01%), .company (12,121 and 2.98%), .directory (11,299 and 2.78%) and .clothing (9,714 and 2.39%).
Among registrars, GoDaddy has three in every ten registrations with 122,196 domains, or a 30.02 percent market share. But it is the German registrars that have done well, undoubtedly boosted by the success of .berlin, with 1&1 Internet AG (41,327 and 10.15%) and united-domains AG (37,901 and 9.31%) both having around one in ten registrations.
There are some interesting breakdowns for what gTLDs are popular with which registrars. For example, our very own EuroDNS has .guru at the top of its list with 231registrations, or 12.95 percent of registrations, while .technology is its second most popular gTLD with 105 registrationsand .solutions is third (104) The second most popular gTLD though, .berlin, comes sixth with 70 registrations.
