CircleID

Geneva Discussion to Include India's Proposal for Government Control of Internet

2012-05-17T13:37:00-08:00

Shalini Singh reporting in the Hindu: "The raging controversy over possible excessive state regulation of the internet based on the IT Rules 2011 is now likely to be dwarfed by discussions in Geneva later this week over India's proposal to the United Nations General Assembly, for government control of the Internet… In its proposal submitted to the General Assembly in New York on October 26, 2011, India has argued for a radical shift from the present model of multi-stakeholder led decision-making, to a purely government-run multilateral body..."

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More under: ICANN, Internet Governance

DNSChanger Disruption Inevitable, ISPs Urged to Bolster User Support

2012-05-17T10:28:00-08:00

Up to 100,000 customer modems are at risk of losing their internet connection from July 9 when the FBI disables rogue DNS servers seized late last year. The affected customer modems make up about a third of the 350,000 to 400,000 internet users believed to still have the DNSChanger malware on either their modems or Windows computers.

Read full story: SC Magazine

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More under: Cyberattack, Cybercrime, DNS, DNSSEC, Malware, Security

Case Studies from the UN Broadband Commission

2012-05-17T09:19:00-08:00

The Broadband Commission for Digital Development, in partnership with ITU, has released its first country case studies looking in-depth at the state of broadband development in four economies and examining links between broadband and the UN Millennium Development Goals.

The case studies, which cover the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Panama, the Philippines, and Romania, look at the effect of broadband connectivity on economic growth and access to basic services like education and health. They offer regulatory guidance and best practices, showcasing success stories and lessons learned.

Romania and TFYR Macedonia both provide strong examples of how adopting pro-ICT policies, establishing effective regulatory frameworks and developing strategic private and public partnerships can play a key role in boosting broadband access, affordability and demand.

A nation with a strong commitment to connectivity as a driver of national growth, TFYR Macedonia already boasts an impressive broadband penetration rate of 32%. Internet access in schools and Wi-Fi-based public Internet access points have been rolled out throughout the country, including remote areas. Schools now offer one Web-enabled computer for every 1.45 children, while university students and academics can freely access knowledge and research resources via the academic network MARnet.

Meanwhile, near-neighbour Romania ranks among the top countries in the world for broadband speed, and scores well for affordability too. The average cost of a baseline monthly broadband subscription represents less than 5% of average monthly income — well within the global targets established by the Broadband Commission last October. Public access is promoted through initiatives like 'Biblionet', which was launched in 2009 and which provides free library-based access through some 795 public libraries equipped with 3,318 computers.

Case studies on Panama and the Philippines, meanwhile, explore the impact of broadband on the economy and on job creation. Both studies evaluate the development of e-applications in the areas of education, public health, media and government services — all of which can help further stimulate broadband adoption.

In Panama, fixed broadband is having a significant economic impact. Analysis of a structural econometric model for the period 2000-2010 indicates that fixed broadband now contributes an annual 0.44% of GDP, with the indirect effects of fixed broadband use estimated to have contributed almost 9.6% of total national economic growth. Accelerating take-up means that this impact has now almost doubled to reach 0.82% of annual GDP, and contributed 11.3% of all economic growth over the decade.

In the Philippines' case study, analysis over the same 10-year period indicates that mobile broadband adoption has contributed an annual 0.32% to GDP, representing 6.9% of total GDP growth for the economy over the past decade. Given the acceleration of mobile broadband penetration since 2005, this impact has also now almost doubled, reaching 0.61% of GDP, representing 7.3% of total economic growth over the decade.

Download the full set of case studies at:
www.broadbandcommission.org/work/documents/case-studies.aspx

Written by Paul Budde, Managing Director of Paul Budde Communication

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More under: Broadband, Mobile

Rethinking Protection Technologies: A Change Has Occurred

2012-05-16T14:12:00-08:00

I ordinarily spend a lot of my time talking about the technical aspects of threat detection and examining the tools and strategies that the bad guys are employing to subvert corporate defenses and breach their objectives, so it was refreshing last week to speak with a large bunch of C-level folks from Fortune-250 companies and to get the opportunity to step-back a little.

Talking technical is easy. Distilling technical detail, complex threats and operation nuances down to something that can be consumed by people whose responsibility for dealing with cybercrime lays three levels below them in their organizational hierarchy is somewhat more difficult. Since so many readers here have strong technical backgrounds and often face the task of educating upwards within their own organizations, I figured I'd share 4 slides from my recent presentation that may be helpful in communicating how the world has changed.

The overall context of the hour long presentation was related to the paradigm change from protection back to detection — given the scope and capabilities of modern organized crime. The following slides came from the first quarter of the hour — setting the scene for how protection technologies have failed and what organizations need to do in light of that failure.

In essence, this slide talks about how that adversary has changed from old. Gone are the days of a single hacker looking to break in to an organization and toast all the systems. Sure, some of these guys still exist, but that's not where the threat lies today by any statistical analysis. Instead, what organizations are facing is a complex ecosystem where expertise is plentiful and available for relatively low prices. Most importantly, the adversary is now a professional in every sense of the word and needs to be respected for such. Failure to do so is at your peril.

While the adversary has changed for the worse, so too has the target. Consumerization of IT and BYOD, while buzzwords in every sense of the word, really are fundamentally changing the threat landscape and the ability of organizations to combat sophisticated threats. Speaking with lots of people charged with defending their corporations from within, they really do feel powerless to combat Mac threats, Android malware, etc. or enforce application and desktop policies (for whatever that means in the world of iPads and App stores).

Everything is playing in to the bad guys hands. The devices their targets are using are varied and widespread, they roam and bridge networks, they have hundreds of applications yet few are patched in a timely manner, and the threat of personal information being leached has ensured that encryption of communications is the norm — too bad that those nosey IT security guys can inspect traffic for malicious attacks.

In essence, the onus of securing the enterprise has slipped from the corporate IT folks and landed firmly in to the hands of their enabled workforce — who happen to be poorly suited to the task.

Oh, and then there's the "Cloud". Not the Cloud supplying cheap processing power and high availability mission-critical applications at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems. Rather the Cloud that is the 2nd millennium USB stick — the mechanism for transporting infected files between one device and the next.

IT security departments have invested millions of dollars in their defense in depth strategies. Multiple layers of "protection" (and expense), overlapping redundancies and a continuous stream of alerts have had debilitating effects on thinly-stretched security teams.

Even if those layers of defense had been working, the "solution" for the bad guys was (and is) to "attack in depth". The tools and techniques they now employ are multi-facetted and their complexity is hidden from the attacker. The hard work of innovation and coding was done by some expert far away, and their expertise (along with dozens of others) has been combined into a single campaign.

Last but not least, I talked about the "marginalization of protection". My objective in this part of the discussion was to point out that trying to protect everything has never worked, and will be even less successful going forward. The consumerization of IT and the diversity of devices out there have also forced organizations (including vendors) into an area in which it is simply uneconomical to try and secure.

While effort still needs to be applied to "protecting" the enterprise, my advice is to consolidate those expensive resources around the most valuable things of the organization and only grow outwards from there if you're successful.

In response, organizations need to assume that they are compromised and will continue to be compromised many times over, and often in many interesting ways. The onus shifts to how an organization can rapidly detect a compromise and how seamless the remediation needs to become.

I used to say that the most economical course of action was to simply reimage the computer when you were able to confirm the compromise. Nowadays that may not be quick enough, nor appropriate. Today you should reimage when your threshold of suspiciousness has been reached and, if you can't reimage (e.g. iPads, etc.), then remotely reset the device to factory defaults and wipe any stored content so it can't re-infect itself.

What about those critical devices — such as the CFO's laptop — which can't be reimaged without a lot of disruption? Let's be clear, just because you detected one piece of malware or remote control agent on the device doesn't mean that it's the only one installed. And if you're thinking you can safely remove everything related to the infection, then you're either ill-informed or it wasn't a threat to begin with.

Frankly, if you have critical devices that cannot be reimaged for any reason at the turn of a hat, then you've got bigger problems with your IT operations than mere breaches by professional criminals, and your organization needs to reevaluate its security operations at a fairly fundamental level. If a device is so critical that it cannot be recovered, it most certainly shouldn't be a roaming laptop, accessible via the Internet, and is operated by personnel with higher than average probabilities of being targeted.

Written by Gunter Ollmann, VP of Research at Damballa

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More under: Cyberattack, Cybercrime, Malware, Security

2011 UDRP Filings Up at WIPO, Down at NAF - And Still Infinitesimal

2012-05-16T10:47:00-08:00

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) recently issued a detailed press release regarding Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) cases for which it provided arbitration services in 2011 and, once again, the number of WIPO filings was up. According to WIPO: "In 2011, trademark holders filed a record 2,764 cybersquatting cases covering 4,781 domain names with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center (WIPO Center) under procedures based on the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), an increase of 2.5% and 9.4% over the previous highest levels in 2010 and 2009, respectively."

Yet that's an incomplete picture. At the other major UDRP arbitration provider, the National Arbitration Forum (NAF), 2011 case filings were down 4% in 2011, declining from 2,177 cases in 2010 to 2,082 in 2011. The vast majority of these cases (96.2%) involved gTLDs like .com and .net; cases were concluded an average of 35 days after filing, but some were resolved in as few as 20 days — and 17%, a full one-sixth of filed complaints, were resolved directly by the parties with no need for panel arbitration. (That noteworthy record again raises the question of why a supplemental Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) process is even needed for new gTLDs, but that's a separate subject.)

So, overall, the WIPO 2.5% increase was balanced out by the NAF 4% decrease and total UDRP filings at the two principal ICANN-accredited arbitration providers were essentially flat in 2011.

The Internet Commerce Association's (ICA's) Code of Conduct condemns intentional cybersquatting, so we are happy to see filings stabilize and would be delighted to see them decline further in the future. But we do think these filing figures need to be calmly placed in the broader context of total domain registrations. And, according to VeriSign's December 2011 Domain Name Industry Brief, domain registrations increased by 8.9 percent in the preceding year.

So, we think it's quite significant that total 2011 UDRP case filings did not increase notwithstanding a near-9% increase in total domain registrations. This marks yet another year in which UDRP filings declined as a percentage of all domain registrations.

While the NAF press release does not include the total number of domains involved in the cases filed with them we can guesstimate that, when we also include the additional second tier UDRP arbitration providers, approximately 9,000 domains were at issue in all 2011 cybersquatting cases filed with all UDRP providers.

That's 9,000 out of a total of about 220 million registered domain names. In other words, for each million domain registrations there are about 41 domains alleged to be cybersquatting in UDRP cases.

We expect that trademark interests will counter that the number of UDRP filings represents just "the tip of the iceberg" of abusive domain registrations, and will also point out that some but not all ccTLDs are subject to UDRP. And we'll concede those points — while also noting that .com and .net registrations totaled 112 million, just over half of all domains, and that these are the gTLDs that attract the most Internet traffic and are therefore most likely to be abused by intentional cybersquatters. So, while UDRP filings are not an exact proxy for the full extent of cybersquatting, they are the best measure we have of instances in which the resulting harm or domain value were judged sufficient by a trademark owner to invest the relatively modest sums of a $1300 filing fee plus associated attorney fees.

We are also well aware of studies — like this from Sophos — indicating that major brand names are subject to significant typosquatting. Despite finding that malware was virtually nonexistent on such websites, that study nonetheless observed that "typosquats are by no means harmless". Yet, other than the 2.7% of typosquatted domains that "fell into the loose category of cybercrime", a significant portion of the remainder of typosquatted websites appear to fall outside the scope of the "bad faith registration and use" standard required for a successful UDRP filing. So it's not just that rights holders have concluded that a particular typosquatted domain isn't worth the monetary cost of filing and pursuing a UDRP — they may have also concluded that they would not prevail. That is, those domains may fall more into the category of annoying nuisance rather than bad faith infringement, and are not generally associated with criminal activities such as phishing or with bad acts such as malware distribution.

Notwithstanding this contextual decline of 2011 UDRP filings, we are quite sympathetic to the costs imposed on brand owners of maintaining portfolios of defensively registered domain names that could be easily cybersquatted if released back for public sale. Reducing this cost is a subject that could certainly be addressed by an open and inclusive UDRP reform process within ICANN — if trademark interests will ever stop working to defer the initiation of such a process.

We'd also point out that if even one-one-hundredth of one percent of all domains registered today were cybersquatting in a manner sufficient to justify a UDRP filing that would currently total about 22,000 domains, and the actual number of UDRP filings last year involved less than half as many domains. In other words, based just on UDRP filings, more than 99.995 percent of all domains are not cybersquatting. That's right, 2011 UDRP filings involved less than one-two-hundredth of one percent of all registered domains. Even if the filed cases understate the incidence of UDRP-violating cybersquatting by a factor of one hundred, the problem would rise to just under one-half of one percent of all domains, with the remaining 99.5 percent being non-infringing.

We note all this not to excuse cybersquatting but to indicate that the problem appears to be small, manageable, and diminishing as a percentage of registered domains year after year based on UDRP filings — and that the UDRP provides a relatively fast and inexpensive alternative to litigation in court. So any trademark interest advocacy for 'rights protections' that are more numerous and stringent than what's already available is not strongly supported by the available evidence.

We'd also note that many ICA member providers of "parking" or other domain monetization services, as well as of secondary domain marketplaces, have established either formal or informal means by which trademark owners can bring alleged infringement claims to their attention and block clearly infringing domains. These services are available at no cost to trademark owners, and should often be their first recourse in advance of filing a UDRP claim.

As for the WIPO press release declaration that, "With the domain name coordinating body, ICANN, allowing for a massive increase in the number of new domains, brand owners' resources will likely be stretched further.", that seems entirely speculative for now — especially since brand owner resources were not stretched further in 2011 with total UDRP filings being flat, and actually declining in the context of an expanding DNS environment. WIPO's statement also ignores the fact that the Trademark Clearinghouse will let trademark owners secure, block, and issue warnings in regard to new gTLD domains in an unprecedented manner to reduce cybersquatting.

So let's wait and see what applications are actually filed for new gTLDs, and then wait to see what registrants they attract and what visitor traffic they generate, and then make a judgment on the impact of new gTLDs on trademark owners that is informed by facts rather than speculation. (We note in passing that NAF's statement makes no similar gloomy predictions regarding cybersquatting at new gTLDs.)

One final thing to remember is that arbitration providers like WIPO can affect the number of UDRP filings by allowing its panelists to alter long-established practices and thereby change UDRP policy in a one-sided manner. For example, recently a WIPO panel ruled that ceat.com must be transferred to CEAT Ltd., an Indian tire company, even though there was scant evidence that the domain had been registered, much less used, in bad faith (See: CEAT Limited, CEAT Mahal, v. Vertical Axis Inc. / Whois Privacy Services Pty Ltd). Another WIPO panel recently ruled in FACI Industries v. BuyDomains.com, Inventory Management that faci.com be transferred to the non-famous metal casting firm of FACI Industries of Bolingbrook, Illinois even though there was ample evidence that the registrant exercised due diligence to avoid infringing the complainant's trademark rights (See: FACI Industries v. BuyDomains.com, Inventory Management). As the dissenting panelist in CEAT stated, "To hold that such a valuable word cannot be used as a domain name simply because "the domain name is a trademark and has no descriptive meaning" is not supported by the Policy and is a very severe restriction on the right to register a domain name that is not contemplated by ICANN in its policies or practices… That is simply a rewriting of the Policy that is entirely unsupported. Clearly, registering a word that both parties say is an acronym and using it for purposes unconnected with the Complainant or its activities does not violate the Complainant's trademark rights or the Policy.”

These rulings open the door to any short domain name that can constitute an acronym for one or multiple organizations being subject to "first to file" UDRP actions encouraged by trademark attorneys. We are already seeing an uptick of new UDRPs related to acronym domains, and if this becomes a flood in the remainder of 2012 — encouraged by the ceat.com and faci.com rulings, which deviate from years of UDRP practice related to acronym domains — does that mean that cybersquatting is up, or that cybersquatting has been unilaterally redefined down by WIPO panelists and that as a result the trademark bar sees a new UDRP opportunity to bring to clients' attention?

These disturbing and controversial acronym domain rulings again illustrate why WIPO and other UDRP providers should reconsider allowing panelists deemed "neutrals' to also serve as advocates for complainants or registrants, given the clear potential for conflicts of interest, and the certain appearance of potential conflicts. It also illustrates that prior decisions should have a more binding precedential effect that they are accorded under the current WIPO Overview. The UDRP process should remain an available remedy for squelching a declining pool of infringing domains, but not permitted to be a mercurial full employment program for creative trademark attorneys.

ICA will continue to press for meaningful UDRP reform, including changes to assure that arbitration "neutrals" do not have inherent conflicts. But for now we are happy to note that total UDRP filings continue to decline as a percentage of all domains and remain a tiny fraction of the overall DNS infrastructure. That's something worth remembering the next time you see allegations that cybersquatting is out of control.

Mr. Corwin serves as Counsel to the Internet Commerce Association

Written by Philip S Corwin, Founding Principal, Virtualaw LLC; Counsel, Internet Commerce Association

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More under: Cybersquatting, Domain Names, ICANN, Internet Governance, Law, Policy & Regulation, Top-Level Domains

Business Case for IPv6 - Part 2

2012-05-16T08:00:00-08:00

In my previous blog on the topic, I stated that the business case supporting the IPv4 roll-out in the late 90s was the Internet. Although IP depletion will slowly become a reality, the chances are that due to mitigating technologies such as NAT and DNS64, it may take quite a while before organizations in the developed economies will get serious about IPv6.

So where should we look to find a business case for IPv6?

Over the last year or two, the shift towards cloud computing paradigm has started to make some pretty impressive waves. Although still at a relatively early stage, we are seeing both service providers and enterprises coming out with brand new strategies for public and private clouds. Based on the recent developments, we estimate that by 2015, the way in which applications and network services are consumed will be very different from what it is today. The discontinuity here will be just as big as the Internet was some 15 years ago.

As far as the IPv6 business case is concerned, not many people have realized how critical IP addresses and DNS is for the cloud orchestration process. To commission or decommission a virtual machine, one needs to reserve or to free an IP address, preferably within a window of 300 milliseconds. Further, in order for that newly commissioned virtual machine to be easily accessed, a DNS entry is also needed. With Infrastructure 1.0 utilizing IPv4 spaces managed with Excel spreadsheets, the cloud doesn't scale.

To address this issue, anyone serious about cloud computing will have to come to accept that Infrastructure 2.0 is required in order for the cloud computing paradigm to work as intended. If someone is to make a considerable investment in cloud environment, protecting the investment for at least the next 10 years becomes essential. And the way I see it, this is where IPv6 comes in.

In this light, IPv6 can be viewed as a similar enabler to the cloud as IPv4 was for the Internet. From the business perspective, IPv6 enables the cloud to scale into the foreseeable future. Furthermore, by making IPv6 a standard feature in clouds, organizations investing in them can make sure that their basic architecture will stand the test of time, thereby optimizing the cloud ROI.

Written by Juha Holkkola, Managing Director of Nixu Software

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More under: Cloud Computing, Internet Protocol, IP Addressing, IPv6

Cel-e-brate v6, Come On!

2012-05-15T12:04:00-08:00

With IPv6 World Launch coming up it's worth pausing to consider the collective efforts of the Internet industry in enabling and deploying an essential evolutionary technology at what will become truly massive scale. It's easy to be a detractor and believe there has been little progress — but the Internet hasn't melted down and there is no evidence it is about to. Perhaps the issue is that progress occurred in a different way than was predicted or preferred by the experts. The reality is providers everywhere have developed coping mechanisms for IPv4 exhaustion. Innovation, operational sweat, and perhaps some tough negotiating make it happen. But isn't that the essence of the Internet?

Thought leaders across the industry are focusing on transition topics that matter: from economic lifecycles, security, and business continuity to the promising future of the Internet of Things. This is what drives most of us, and those on the front lines in the IPv6 evolution have every right to rise up and celebrate. It's not only a great technological milestone, but a testament to their collective abilities to work together for the greater good of the connected planet.

Today's Internet is the foundation for everything we do and the IPv6 Internet will be too but unfortunately some things never change. While the majority have been busy working on IPv6 for the greater good, evidence makes clear we're likely to come face to face with a growing number of technologists (aka criminals) with malicious intentions. IPv6 hinders them in some ways, but helps them in others. If you have any doubts, a quick search will show a growing number of software tools intended to break or exploit IPv6. Everything we build offers potential for those who are malicious to use their skills for disruption. Security is a continuum and experience suggests it might be worth some cycles to make sure your IPv6 project does not end up on your CEO's shortlist of things that keep them up at night.

Preparing for the transition requires looking beyond just software support and interoperability testing to identifying strategic partners and understanding the long-term cost of ownership. If IPv6 is important to your future you owe it to your business, investors and customers to make sure you have the best technology but are also on the right path with the best, forward looking partners. It's refreshing to see that on the Internet, as has always been the case, a global initiative can transcend the boundaries of political, social, and economic agendas. Maybe we can all even learn a lesson or two from IPv6 on how to tackle some of the critical long-term social and economic challenges facing the world today.

Want to learn more about the transition to IPv6, join us at our webinar on May 30. Click here.

Written by Craig Sprosts, General Manager of Fixed Broadband Solutions at Nominum

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More under: IP Addressing, IPv6, Security

Hosters: Is Your Platform Being Used to Launch DDoS Attacks?

2012-05-15T11:12:00-08:00

As anyone who's been in the DDoS attack trenches knows, large multi-gigabit attacks have become more prevalent over the last few years. For many organizations, it's become economically unfeasible to provision enough bandwidth to combat this threat.

How are attackers themselves sourcing so much bandwidth? It's actually easier than you might think. While botnets comprised of malware-infected computers can be used to launch attacks, you don't actually need thousands of devices. In some cases, attackers are infiltrating hosting company resources (shared hosting, virtual private servers, dedicated hosting, etc.), availing themselves of bandwidth by using hacked, stolen and fraudulent accounts.

Let's say that an attacker manages to get his/her hands on 5 hosting accounts with 5 different hosting companies. It's not unusual for these hosting companies to have 1 Gbps+ of connectivity to the Internet. A lot of hosters don't look at their outbound traffic all that closely or have difficulty policing what their customers do. All an attacker needs to do is install a script on each account and he/she has easy access to gigabits of connectivity.

For hosters, finding the trouble spot can be like looking for a needle in a haystack (especially if thousands of accounts share resources). While the offender might be found eventually and the account shut down, the damage has already been done.

What can hosters do to help prevent this or detect this better?

Restrict outbound traffic from your customers by using ACLs (Access Control Lists). For example, there are few reasons your customers will ever need to make port 80 UDP connections to other hosts on the Internet. Put policies in place to block all outbound traffic except to specific, acceptable, understood destinations or ports. If customers have legitimate reasons to make an outbound connection from your infrastructure, they should be able to notify you and justify it (this will affect a only tiny percentage of your base) so you can make the appropriate arrangements. Some hosters do not even accommodate these requests.

Throttle outbound traffic from your customers. Even for legitimate outbound connections, most likely they don't need to take up 500 Mbps of outbound bandwidth. Simply set a lower limit.

Put alarms in place when outbound traffic utilization spikes. If, for example, all of a sudden the amount of data leaving your network increases by 40%, there's probably an issue somewhere and your tech folks should be investigating.

Restricting and monitoring your outbound traffic will probably save you money on bandwidth costs and decrease the amount of abuse reports. Best of all, attackers will realize they're not getting what they want out of your platform. The less you have to worry about, the better, right?

Written by Miguel Ramos, Sr. Product Manager, Neustar Enterprise Services

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More under: Access Providers, Cyberattack, Security

Measuring IPv6 at the Network and the Customer Level

2012-05-15T10:52:00-08:00

George Michaelson, APNIC's Senior Research and Development Scientist recently visited the RIPE NCC to collaborate on various research projects with his RIR colleagues. IPv6 measurements were one of the topics we looked at.

Recent IPv6 statistics from the RIPE NCC show an accelerated uptake of IPv6 in Norway, both in terms of the number of allocated prefixes, and visible announcements in the routing system. This is based on a comparison over time of the amount of IPv6 addresses allocated to each economy, and the amount of visible prefixes per Autonomous System (AS) in the routing tables each day. The graph below shows 50% of ASes in Norway now announce one or more IPv6 prefix.

Some have interpreted this to mean that over 50% of the end users in Norway have now access to IPv6. However, a measurement of end user IPv6 capability by APNIC doesn't necessarily support that, rather, it suggests that end user access to IPv6 remains low in Norway, as in other economies. The graph below shows the percentage of IPv6 preference at the end user level.

Keep in mind that this only includes data until mid-May, hence the drop at the end. For the most up-to-date graph, please visit the APNIC Labs IPv6 Measurements pages.

Are these measurements in conflict?

No, not really. One is a measure of capacity and capability in routing and forwarding, and the other is a measure of end user access. There are many reasons why some routing-active entities don't show up in an end user measurement: the AS may be servicing content delivery and not offering access services, or may be providing transit and data management services for others and have no direct end user traffic.

Perhaps the AS is servicing segments of the user base who only gain access to the global Internet occasionally, or to restricted URLs, or not even the web but only VOIP (which we can't measure in the APNIC technique.)

The difference is not a conflict. It exposes differences in what we see on the Internet and the different conclusions drawn from each.

APNIC's measurement focuses on end user access, and in large part, suggests that there is a continuing problem with end user access to IPv6, even when the AS in question may have associated IPv6 allocations visible in global routing.

In the background article on RIPE Labs you can find much more information, including the methodology and an analysis of the specific situation in Norway and in Japan.

Written by Mirjam Kuehne

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More under: IP Addressing, IPv6

Communications and the London Olympics

2012-05-13T18:37:00-08:00

Communications will be one of the most critical areas during the London Olympic Games.

The industry is working to establish shared access networks — would it not be nice if they did this everywhere, all the time? They are also working very closely with British Olympic Association, London Transport, the broadcasters and content providers.

Mobile coverage will be the biggest shared infrastructure in the world. There are already 80 million mobile devices in the UK, and to this will be added the millions of devices from overseas visitors and athletes. There will be more people taking photos and videos and sending them around the world. And, of course, the same applies to the thousands of professional photographers and journalists attending the Games. The mobile operators have indicated that there may be periods of 'controlled service', particularly in relation to mobile broadband.

There will be two dimensions to this network — one for officials and athletes, and one for the general public. The network will go live on 1 June and will cater for a range of related and other events:

Olympic Torch Relay, 27 May-27 July;
Diamond Jubilee, 2 June-5 June;
Euro 2012, 8 June-1 July (IPTV);
Farnborough Airshow;
Olympic Games, starting on 25 July.
Over 1,000 BT workers have been assigned to the communications activities surrounding the Games.

Next-generation access network rollouts have been accelerated and core network bandwidth has been increased to facilitate the backbone network, as well as increased fibre access to all facilities, venues, etc.

Extra capacity is needed for the BBC iPlayer service, which will drive up telecoms traffic, with each of 24 HD Olympic TV channels using 3Mb/s. Organisations are made aware of the fact that corporate networks could be flooded if people are watching in the office. This will also apply to international links, as overseas viewers could flood these as well.

If an incident occurs that goes viral on YouTube, this could also swamp networks. There have been warnings that the lack of a national high-speed broadband network could see network meltdowns in such circumstances.

It is anticipated that many public websites can expect as much as five times their normal traffic; organisations should be aware of this and take the necessary measures to cope with it.

Another interesting contingency is that call centres are employing extra staff, as it is expected that enquiry call on-hold time will be longer due to foreign languages. Other increases are expected on retailers' card terminals and ATM usage.

Because of increased security awareness there are elaborate security plans in place — to protect not only the people but also all infrastructures, including the existing telecoms infrastructure around the country. Security plans also take into account other 'unpredictables' that can lead to disturbances, such as unforecasted gatherings, cyber attacks, and large increases in free rich content over the networks.

There is a Resilience and Response Group (EC-RRG) operating the National Emergency Alert for Telecommunications (NEAT) coordination points. There are contingency scenarios for engineers, suppliers, colleagues unable to reach site and so on. They also have proactive procedures in place to reduce risks such as internet congestion, the impact on home working, monitoring video-streaming, terrorist/public order incidents.

Some statistics on the Games:

5.3 million visitors are expected with half a million extra on Day 8.
On 9 days there will be more than 1million extra journeys on public transport.
Greenwich population will be 25% higher on Day 3.
At the end of an event, 10,000-20,000 people will be exiting individual venues, creating bottlenecks.

During the games, there will be major disruption for London-based workers — there is a four-step approach:

reduce journey requirements by avoiding planned utility works;
retime appointments to avoid clashes with busiest times;
reroute transport and logistics as access roads will be closed;
review transport types and use alternatives.

For its part, the regulator Ofcom has devised a Spectrum Plan for the Games, which will see the temporary re-allocation of spectrum from public bodies to cater for bandwidth demands. Spectrum from among three separate bands will come from the Ministry of Defence (MOD), the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), while holdings in the 2.5-2.6GHz band have been reserved for the duration of the Games. Ofcom has also conserved spectrum allocated for private mobile radio (PMR), as also spectrum available for DTTV in the 800MHz band which has not yet been sold off. Ofcom is needing all the spare frequencies it can find to cope with the 350 wireless microphones, 75 HD video streams and 780 talkback channels it expects are needed.

It is also expected that there will be greater work and school absenteeism due to large screen displays that are established right around the country. And businesses are adopting greater flexitime procedures and providing facilities in the workplace.

Organisations have also been advised to, where possible, move staff to Disaster Recovery sites and work from there during the Games. Other suggestions include checking standby generator fuel, batteries, firewall resilience, etc. Teleworking is promoted, with companies advised to plan and test the use of technology remotely by home workers.

Written by Paul Budde, Managing Director of Paul Budde Communication

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More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Cyberattack, Mobile, Security, Telecom, Wireless

If You Build It, They Will Come.

2012-05-10T12:10:00-08:00

Only two years after signing the DNS root zone, the powerful lure of a secure global infrastructure for data distribution is starting to reveal itself. It is illustrated clearly by two proposed technical standardizations that seek to leverage secure DNS. To some degree these developments highlight the strength of DNS institutions and how they might fill gaps elsewhere in the Internet's governance. But an increasing reliance upon and concentration of power in the DNS also makes getting its global governance correct even more important.

The first, more widely known, development is the IETF's ongoing DANE effort. The DANE standard proposes to improve the Transport Level Security (TLS) protocol, which is used worldwide to secure communication between applications (e.g., a browser) and host machines (e.g., a website server). DANE enables administrators of domain names to specify TLS cryptographic key material in a resource record stored in a zone file. Using DNSSEC, an application could validate the resource record with the practical result that communication between an application and host machine is probably more secure — a good thing.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of DANE is that it takes TLS key distribution out of the hands of the browser/certificate authorities and places it with DNS operators. The browser/certificate authority regime has been shown to be susceptible to attack and lacking in clear lines of accountability. In theory, if an administrator puts signed key material in the DNS, an application can validate it starting from the single trust anchor maintained by ICANN. Like DNSSEC, DANE depends on registrars, registries and Internet service providers not tampering with signed data provided by administrators. Pressure to tamper with data could come from numerous sources, e.g., interests in intellectual property protection, advertising, surveillance, etc. At the end of the day, it will be the DNS contractual regime, the laws that govern the involved parties, and the extent to which those institutions are transnationally interoperable that determines how DANE contributes to various global public policy goals like free expression and free trade in information services. Expect the differences between governments, and their response to domestic pressures, to challenge that interoperability.

The second, and in our opinion, more interesting development is the more recently proposed ROVER (Route Origin Verification) effort which seeks to address the problem of misconfigured routing announcements, whether accidental or intentional. Similar to DANE, ROVER proposes to improve the inter-domain routing by creating new resource records published in the secure reverse DNS (i.e., the in-addr.arpa zone). Similar ideas have been proposed previously, but never took hold. The records would allow network operators to indicate whether an IPv4 or IPv6 prefix ought to appear in global routing tables and identify authorized origin Autonomous System Number(s) for that prefix. This is the same data (i.e., Route Origin Announcements) which appears in the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) being managed by some RIRs. ROVER would facilitate the comparison of validated records stored in the secure reverse DNS against route announcements being made on the Internet. Discrepancies could be flagged and lead to further action taken by the operator.

Again, the most interesting aspect is the interplay between technology and institutional power. The technical community has been debating the merits of Secure DNS vs. RPKI. The debate occurs in the shadow of the major, ongoing concern for network operators concerning RPKI, i.e., how it could allow certificate authorities (e.g., the RIRs) to impact routing. This concern is further complicated with Border Gateway Protocol Security (BGPSEC), which proposes incorporating cryptographic signing and validation of route announcements directly into the BGP. As an alternative, ROVER suggests leveraging the certified resource allocation data stored in the RPKI (or elsewhere) to create and validate route announcements in the secure reverse DNS. But it allows operators to independently apply that data to routing decisions. If a certificate authority revoked a certificate it would not impact routing unless the operator allowed it to. Less appreciated, however, is that ROVER potentially shifts route announcement data, typically stored in the decentralized Internet Routing Registries (IRRs) now, into the hierarchical secure DNS. Given this, the operation and governance of a few zones, namely .arpa and in-addr.arpa, becomes critical. Those zones are currently managed by ICANN. Its use for routing purposes may raise contention that too much power is centralized with this organization. In theory, as manager of the in-addr zone, ICANN could regulate network operators via contract, similar to the way it does some TLD operators. This will need to be examined more closely.

Written by Brenden Kuerbis, Postdoctoral Researcher at Syracuse University, School of Information Studies

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More under: DNS, DNSSEC, ICANN, Internet Governance, IP Addressing, IPv6, Security

IXPs and CDNs Critical to the Future of Competitive Broadband Internet

2012-05-10T11:27:00-08:00

We continue to see consolidation in the broadband market and various games played by the cablecos and telcos to thwart competition or undermine network neutrality (See links below).

Until regulators create true structural separation between infrastructure and service providers the chances of seeing genuine broadband competition are slim. It is interesting to note telecom regulators in North America have imposed structural separation in the past. In the 1970s when the cable industry was a fledgling startup industry the FCC in the US and the CRTC in Canada passed regulations forbidding telephone companies to acquire and/or compete with cable companies. This enabled the creation of a entirely new business sector — cable television- who now dominates the broadcast and Internet market place. If regulators and governments are interested in stimulating the economy and creating new business opportunities, it is time they study their past successes and breakup up today's oligopolies by imposing structural separation and allow a true competitive market in broadband Internet.

In the mean time the one bright spot in the competitive marketplace is the development of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) and the collocation of Content Distribution Networks (CDNs). In a recent a talk at RIPE-64 given by Kurtis Lindqvist demonstrated that IXPs will be even more important as broadband speeds increase. With larger and larger data flows the need to interconnect at an IXP to a CDN network or peering network will becoming increasingly important. (See: Kurtis Lindqvist - The History of Peering in Europe and What This Can Teach Us About the Future)

I am very pleased to see that Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has taken a very important leadership role in Canada in this regard. (Full disclosure: I am a member of the CIRA board). CIRA has undertaken an active program to help qualified communities, independent ISPs, regional R&E networks and others to deploy IXPs in their community. CIRA's overall goal is to have local members build and operate the IXP, with CIRA bringing technical expertise, stability, back office functions, governance assistance, content providers and, if required, some financial and gear support. Most significantly CIRA will help the IXP provide a variety of DNS hosting services (which can improve responsiveness and reliability for connected users) as well arranging CDN networks to collocate at the facility.

The combination of these services — peering, DNS and CDN — will provide connected independent ISPs, R&E networks, community broadband networks and other organizations the capability to provide services to their targeted communities and provide a modicum of competition to the local incumbent oligopoly. This service by CIRA will be especially important for small business, community and R&E networks as they look to deliver or use cloud services and wireless applications to their local communities. The integration of WiFi with 3G/4G with anytime, anywhere, any device communications for education and research will also be critically dependent on these facilities.

Further reading:
7 ways Comcast is killing the cable killers GigaOm
Keeping the Internet Neutral New York Times

Written by Bill St. Arnaud , Green IT Networking Consultant

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Canadian Telcos Fast Tracking FttH to Combat Cable Operators

2012-05-10T08:20:00-08:00

There are a number of stimuli which are pushing Canada's burgeoning FttH market, and the government and telcos alike have made significant steps to improve the reach and capacity of broadband infrastructure. These measures will show real benefits for consumers in recent years.

From the government's side, its Economic Action Plan, launched in 2009 as a response to the global financial crisis, included a pledge to provide $225 million over three years towards its Broadband Canada Program, geared to extending broadband coverage to underserved communities. The initiative called for the government to pay up to 50% of costs incurred by operators upgrading broadband in rural areas. By the end of 2012, the program's 86 or so projects are expected to have delivered broadband to about 214,000 households.

The government also recently proposed reducing barriers to foreign investment in the telecoms sector, enabling foreign companies to hold more than 46.7% stakes in local telcos. As the experiences of the Netherlands' KPN, Austria's MNO Orange and Ireland's Eircom have recently shown, a fresh injection of capital from unexpected quarters — in these cases South America and East Asia — may help to resuscitate flagging telecom markets in the developed West.

Despite these efforts, much more needs to be done in the government's overall appreciation of broadband as an essential infrastructure. Certainly it has invested in e-health initiatives in recent years, following recommendations from agencies such as the Information Highway Advisory Council. This has resulted in some of the more advanced e-health systems in the world. Yet the government does need to grasp that government-initiated trans-sector policies in Canada are also required to push the development of other key services. In this respect, a fibred national network would be a key infrastructure asset allowing businesses, institutions, utilities to thrive from new business models.

From the telcos' side, operators have been stimulated to invest in FttH through the successes of cablecos which have systematically upgraded their networks with DOCSIS3.0 technology. As a result, many cablecos are commonly offering 100Mb/s services or, to a limited extent, 200Mb/s services. DSL cannot hope to compete, and so to prevent customer churn in areas where cablecos also operate, telcos are been forced to step up their game with FttH.

This development has been a long time in coming — while fibre to businesses in metro areas has been common for some time, deployment elsewhere is still in its early stages, with only a limited number of residential communities being connected to networks. And so operators are fast-tracking FttH deployments: Bell Aliant plans to upgrade a third of its footprint by 2014 and to continue so until 90% is connected. Bell Canada and TELUS are expected to have at least 50% of their network upgraded, while SaskTel has an FttH program to 2019.

The momentum is palpable, and for the government's economic recovery program the years to the end of the decade are more promising.

Written by Henry Lancaster, Senior Analysts at Paul Budde Communication

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More under: Broadband, Policy & Regulation, Telecom

"Toll Free" Broadband Service: Double Billing Ripoff Or Better Than Best Efforts Premium Option?

2012-05-09T15:40:00-08:00

Representatives of both AT&T and Verizon have stated that their companies will soon offer "toll free" broadband services. So far they have not provided much detail, but the prospect for customer and content provider surcharges should trigger concern, even outside the context of the network neutrality debate.

First let's consider the frame the carrier reps use: "Toll Free." This is an old school "Bellhead" reference to a pricing strategy where the called party pays instead of the calling party. Lots of commercial ventures have offered consumers Wide Area Telephone Service ("WATS") line access using the 1-800 and now 866, 877 and 888 prefixes. So toll free historically has referred to a pricing arrangement where consumers can avoid having to pay for a long distance telephone call.

The toll free reference may be a red herring here, because it's likely that the arrangement will simply mean consumers will not have minutes of use or downloaded bytes debited against a monthly usage cap. Toll free will mean debit-free to the end user with a surcharge to the content provider.

The proposed arrangement appears to parallel what Amazon has secured for cellular carrier delivery of e-books with two big differences. First Amazon is having delivered content costing $10 or more in a single transaction, while ventures like Netflix may be offered expedited delivery of content costing $8 a month for "unlimited" streaming. Also we should appreciate that when Amazon pays the e-book downloader pays nothing and does not even have to subscribe to cellphone service. In both the wireline and wireless environment where "toll free" data will operate, end users already are subscribing to monthly service: DSL, fiber or a hybrid fiber wireline broadband service, and/or cellphone service. So the value a carrier offers appears to be "better than best efforts" Internet routing of possibly "mission critical" bits coupled with a end user sweetener of not debiting minutes or bytes from a monthly basket.

Is this a fair deal, or double billing? End users will end up paying for such premium service, so it's fair to ask when — if ever — one would want better than best efforts routing when plain vanilla best efforts heretofore has worked just fine. The network neutrality advocates have a legitimate concern that carriers will find a way to degrade service to content providers like Netflix and Google making the premium routing a necessity. Bear in mind that Netflix already pays Content Distribution Networks, such as Level-3, for high quality, "toll-grade" delivery. Recently Comcast demanded a delivery surcharge in light of the higher volume of traffic Level-3 hands off to Comcast for final delivery than the amount Comcast hands off to Level-3 for upstream delivery through the Internet cloud. So is Netflix getting hit up for a double or triple payment: once to Comcast for last mile delivery, twice to Level-3 and other long haul Internet cloud carriers and thrice to Verizon/AT&T? Let's not forget that end users already are paying $30-100 monthly for their wired and wireless broadband connections. Doesn't that broadband subscription entitle subscribers to timely and efficient delivery of any and all traffic without surcharges?

Written by Rob Frieden, Pioneers Chair and Professor of Telecommunications and Law

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

Carlos Slim Puts Bomb Under European Telecoms Market

2012-05-08T18:26:00-08:00

The Mexican telecoms and broadcasting magnate Carlos Slim — the wealthiest man in the world and owner of the business conglomerate Grupo Carso — has put a 28% bid for the Netherlands' incumbent telco KPN on the table. This is a very interesting and significant move. As is often the case, new winners tend to arrive when previous winners become losers, especially when they are becoming weaker and thus easier to attack. The new winners in the 21st century will come from what in the 20th century were called developing countries. In the communications sector in particular we have seen that these countries — be they in Africa, Asia or South America — have seen the most spectacular growth. Because of their very large populations, growth in these markets adds up to very big numbers.

For several years now I've argued that it is only a matter of time before these new telco giants will enter the so-called developed economies. Now is a good time: developed economies are under pressure, there is lots of hardship and a desperate need to save money. Yet at the same time people do not want to give up their gains in lifestyle. Mobile phones are a case in point — survey after survey show that consumers would cut back on meals out and other entertainment rather than reduce expenditure on mobile comms.

One of the reasons for confidence in predictions on 'foreign invasions' is that mobile operators in developing economies are amongst the most profitable in the world, with among the lowest costs to consumers. This is certainly an attractive position from which to start your competition, especially in depressed economies. One of the key reasons why these companies are in such a good position is because of their scale. With mobile rapidly becoming a commodity, and little possibility for mobile operators to increase ARPU, these players have to become far more cost effective, and they will have to grow their subscriber base to 50 million or more.

We believe that, rather than looking at the weakest markets in Europe, Mr Slim is clearly looking at the stronger markets — which nevertheless are also economically depressed — since from such a stronger position he can further extend his business throughout Europe. We believe that he will be aiming at 50 million subscribers in the region, and for that matter, why not 200 million or more? A key asset of Grupo Carso is América Móvil, which now has some 246 million mobile customers across South and Central America, including 67 million in Mexico and almost 62 million in Brazil.

Carlos Slim is also the co-chair of the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Digital Development which I helped set up and of which he is the special advisor. Mr Slim is a leading force in this Commission and has a very clear and very realistic view on the future of the telecoms industry. He also sees enormous commercial potential in telecoms and is more than happy to 'help out' in markets where players are struggling for growth.

As mentioned before (2008/2009) KPN, like most other telcos, has been struggling with finding its right strategy for the future. The company is missing out on new higher value digital media services and at the same time it needs to continue investing in infrastructure. While looking for those high ROI services it always ends up on the commodity side of the business. As this has now been going on for more than a decade, with falling income from their traditional cash-cows (telephony and basic access) the company is increasingly in need of new cash-flows. Projecting these developments further into the future than has been mentioned above, the only solution in a commodity market is to cut costs and built scale. Our analysis of Mr Slim's move is that this is exactly what is he is setting out to do. The highly fragmented European market has plenty of suffering — or soon to be suffering — telcos, so the time is ripe for massive consolidation.

According to Hendrik Rood from Stratix, by becoming involved in KPN Mr Slim is also laying the foundation for building credibility in this market. Through his involvement in this company he can build the groundwork to move further into Europe. He is well aware of the importance of telcos to the EU and to national governments, and to be seen as a responsible player in the market will help him grow further into it. And — which is also not to be snubbed — KPN still has an admirable ROI.

Written by Paul Budde, Managing Director of Paul Budde Communication

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More under: Mobile, Telecom

Software Defined Networks and Integration of Wifi with 3G/4G for R&E Networks

2012-05-08T12:18:00-08:00

A number of R&E networks such as SURFnet, JANET, AARnet, etc. are actively promoting mobile services and looking at integration of campus Wifi with 3G/4G networks using Eduroam. Mobile wireless services promises to be major service offering for R&E networks as the Internet of Things and Machine to Machine (M2M) becomes increasingly critical for research. Applications such as personal medical devices on (or in) the body, environmental sensors, traffic monitors and even garbage truck tracking will need such networks. As well anytime, anyplace, any device education and research will be increasingly dependent on the integration of campus Wifi, community Wifi and 3G/4G networks. Public content and distribution networks will also be an integral component. And as I have blogged in the past such wireless integration allows the deployment of overlapping Green WiFi nodes — powered by solar panels which will be needed to adapt a warmer climate.

Here is a great article on OpenRadio a project from Stanford that hopes to use OpenFlow to create pools of available broadband from Wi-Fi, cellular and other networks. The project team is working with Texas Instruments to build $300-$500 base stations for the hardware component, while researchers try to build the orchestration software. Hopefully the base stations can be powered by renewable energy. R&E networks and campus IT staff could direct al bandwidth hungry applications to their WiFi networks while using much more expensive 3G/4G for e-mail and text messaging.

Written by Bill St. Arnaud , Green IT Networking Consultant

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More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Mobile, Wireless

A Look at the Rapid Evolution of the World's DNS Infrastructure

2012-05-08T10:48:01-08:00

A recent report by Pingdom looks at the booming growth of Internet's DNS infrastructure. From the article: "Five years ago there were 123 DNS root server sites (the "backend" of DNS) spread out on the Internet. Today there are more than twice as many, over 300. Five years ago, 46 countries had root servers. Today, 76 have them. In other words, not only has the number of root servers grown tremendously, but their geographical spread has increased as well. This is good news for the overall stability and performance of DNS worldwide."

The report also notes that Europe has overtaken North America as the world region with the most root server sites.

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Gas Pipeline Firms Under Targeted Phishing Attacks

2012-05-08T08:34:00-08:00

The United States Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) has issued a warning about an active "spear phishing" campaign targeting companies in the natural gas pipeline sector. In an advisory issued last week, ICS-CERT said it has received information about targeted attacks and intrusions into multiple organizations over the past several months.

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More under: Cyberattack, Malware, Security

ICANN Receives Beyond Expected Number of New gTLD Applications

2012-05-08T08:13:00-08:00

The upcoming expansion of the internet's domain name system could see more than 2,000 new top-level domains come into existence, according to policy overseer ICANN. The organisation revealed at the weekend that it has received 2,091 applications for its controversial new gTLD programme, and could see up to 214 more before it shuts the door to applicants.

Read full story: The Register

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More under: ICANN, Top-Level Domains

Wall Street and Virtual Space Data: Internet Domain Name Index (IDNX) Listed on Bloomberg, Reuters

2012-05-07T12:47:00-08:00

The financial industry is all about pinstripe suits, excessive Excel sheets and boring data. Or is it? Financial markets are more colorful than their reputation: take a look at Bloomberg's or Reuters' sites, and you'll see that pork belly is as much an object of investment speculation as coffee, electricity, bananas, hides, or fishmeal. Recently, the universe of data available to financial analysts and investment bankers grew further, with the addition of the Internet Domain Name Index (IDNX) to leading financial data distributors Bloomberg (ticker symbol: IDNX <Index>) and Reuters (ticker symbol: .IDNX).

So what does IDNX tell us?

IDNX is to domain markets what the NASDAQ is to stock markets or the Case-Shiller index to housing wealth: an aggregate indicator of price changes for the market as a whole. IDNX is the first price index for Internet domain names that is based entirely on data from actual domain sales, meaning that subjective evaluation or opinion is not a factor at all. Under the hood, IDNX employs an estimation technique borrowed from Real Estate finance research that has been refined by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

How do we use IDNX?

Price trends for domain names can be used for trading strategies, personal investment optimization, or insights into the Internet economy in general. Overall, the market for domain names fluctuates in a very similar way to the IT industry, but the correlation between the two is not exact. While IT index heavyweights like the NASDAQ 100 cover the stock performance of the largest IT companies, IDNX has a broader scope. In fact, because IDNX is not based on stock prices but on real trades done by large blue-chip companies, small online marketers, start-ups, and private investors alike, it is a comprehensive fever curve for the well-being of the broader Internet economy.

With IDNX data being distributed through the industry standard data platforms, traders can easily embed this information into trading strategies and investment decision making. In the same way that demand for electricity is linked to economic activity in general, the demand for domains gives insight into the dynamics of Internet-based business across the US and around the world. The virtual economy has made its way onto Wall Street.

Finally, if you're a domain owner, your core source of income is revenue generated from online advertisements. As prices paid for domains represent the discounted future cash flows from owning a domain (assuming textbook-like behavior for buyers and sellers), changes in IDNX can be read as changes in domain owners' expectations as to how much they will earn from online ads. Media executives: why not access your Reuters or Bloomberg terminal, subscribe to IDNX, and know where the future markets are heading?

How does IDNX help investors, domainers, or academics?

IDNX also helps domain investors track their wealth. Almost every company or organization owns at least one primary domain. So do many individuals. A substantial number of them have also been compelled to purchase the name they want from other investors for amounts sometimes reaching 6-digit dollar amounts. With an overall market benchmark like IDNX, it is now easier to appreciate how these intangible assets affect your balance sheet, and to know when to adjust their value according to the general benchmark. Your accountant will ask fewer questions if you can justify a 10% increase on the asset side with data from Bloomberg or Reuters. And for the few dozen investors who own more than 20,000 domains (sometimes up to several hundreds of thousands), a market-wide benchmark is the best indicator of changes in their wealth.

For academic researchers, having domain market data well integrated with thousands of other data sources makes comparisons and deeper analysis convenient and efficient, and on this front, I am curious to see what kind of studies will evolve using IDNX.

How do I start investing?

As of now, it is not possible to invest into the index as such, as there are no investment tools developed that tie into returns linked to changes in the index. However, IDNX can still be used as a tool in itself for financial professionals and domain traders alike. For more information on how IDNX is estimated, please read this research paper. To explore the dynamics of domain prices right now, go to sedo.com/idnx.

Written by Thies Lindenthal, Product Manager for Domain Pricing, Sedo.com

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More under: Domain Names, Top-Level Domains