ICANN66 at Montreal – A contrasting summit

During the first half of November, the 66th ICANN Summit was held in Montreal, Canada. This third and final annual summit devoted to policies applicable to Internet naming was eagerly awaited as the topics under discussion are numerous. At its closing, however, it left many participants a little bit disappointed.

A preview of the topics and postures during the weekend before the official launch of the Summit

The weekend before the official opening of the Summit is usually an opportunity to get an overview of the topics and postures involved. Not surprisingly, the expedited Policy Development Process (ePDP) which aims to develop a consensus rule to specify future conditions of access to personal data that are no longer published in the WHOIS, the domain name search directory, due to GDPR, is one of the major topics.

Among other related topics, the replacement of the same WHOIS by the RDAP (Registration Data Access Protocol) probably next year for generic domain names. This replacement is not insignificant when we know that WHOIS has been in use for nearly 35 years.

The body representing governments, the GAC, has weighed up the issue of domain name abuse, which has taken off considerably on the new generic extensions launched in 2012. When we know the rise of Internet practices aimed at weighing on elections in certain countries and the economic impact of computer attacks and hacking, we understand that this subject is being pushed by the GAC. While one of ICANN’s topics is to clarify in their texts the notion of malicious uses, this term refers to domains registered for phishing, malware, botnets and spam, the other part concerns the means to stem them. The existence of abusive domains indeed threatens the DNS infrastructure, impacts consumer safety and threatens the critical assets of public and commercial entities. Finally, and not surprisingly, the subject of a future round of new generic extensions has also been on many lips.

ICANN66 at Montreal - A contrasting summit
Cherine Chalaby at the ICANN Summit held in Montreal

“The best ICANN summit”, really?

During the traditional opening ceremony, which brings together all the guests for one hour (2500 according to Goran Marby, ICANN CEO) in a huge room to listen to various speakers, including Martin Aubé of the Quebec Government’s Ministry of Economy and Innovation, Cherine Chalaby, one of the ICANN Board members whose term ends at the end of the year, told his audience that ICANN66 would be the “Best ICANN summit”. It must be said, however, that at the end of the week of debates and meetings, which followed one another at a sustained pace, while the subjects under discussion are really numerous, the feeling regarding this assertion was more than mixed for many participants.

First, the expeditious process for access to WHOIS non-public data is progressing with a framework constrained by ICANN and the Personal Data Protection Authorities. The outcome of this process is envisaged between April and June 2020 and it is currently a centralized model where ICANN would allow the future lifting of anonymity of data that are now masked due to GDPR which holds the line.

Then the subject that was probably most often mentioned during this new summit week concerned abuses with domain names. For ICANN, the subject is central because it is directly correlated to its totem: the stability of the Internet for which they are the responsible. Since February 2019, ICANN has been publishing some metrics on malicious practices identified through DAAR, their Domain Abuse Activity Reporting.

Their latest report presented in Montreal shows that 364 extensions (mainly new generic extensions from the 2012 round) revealed at least one threat posed by one of the domain names activated on these extensions. More worryingly, new generic extensions would still account for nearly 40% of malicious uses, compared to 60% for historical generic extensions. This figure should be highlighted with the volume of these two categories of extensions. Indeed, out of just over 200 million generic names, new generic domains represent only 15% of the total number of registered names. ICANN therefore wants this subject to be taken up by the entire community present in Montreal.

Proposals were made by the various bodies present, some of which went so far as to request a policy development process (PDP). This last proposal, if it were to obtain ICANN’s approval, would have the unfortunate consequence of postponing the hypothetical schedule for a next round of new extensions, a subject that interested many of the guests present in Montreal. Indeed, for ICANN, the problem of the concentration of malicious practices in the new generic extensions must be solved before any future round, so that the PDP still in progress on the review of the last round of 2012 has gone almost unnoticed.  

If the rules are slow to evolve on malicious uses, your Nameshield consultant can already provide you with adapted solutions to your needs on this key matter.

Nameshield signs up the Paris Call in order to actively contribute to the Internet’s stability

Paris Call - Nameshield

Just one year ago, in the context of the first Paris Peace Forum, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, launched the Paris Call for trust and security in cyberspace. This call is a political declaration aiming to express a mobilization on the stability in the cyberspace and strengthens the efforts of the international community and many actors involved in the digital security issues. This text reminds some principles that we think are fundamental, like the application of the international rights and the Human rights in the cyberspace. It also highlights the need of a multi actors’ approach, to create standards which will allow us to fully benefit, i.e. in a reliable and secure way, from opportunities provided by the digital revolution.

Lastly, the Paris Call promotes the strengthening of the digital products and services’ security that we use for example, in our daily lives. The text aims in that sense, to prevent cyberattacks perpetrated by malicious actors, which threaten all the users of the cyberspace.

Aware that our Society’s development, on the economic, cultural and democratic fronts, requires a strengthened trust of the information that flows through the Internet, Nameshield, which has worked for 25 years to protect the digital identity of its clients; companies, local collectivities and administrations through the use of their domain names, wished to join this initiative and sign the Paris Call.

Its job consists in ensuring the integrity and resilience of the identity of individuals and organizations on the Internet, represented today by the domain name. By highly protecting data on domain name identity cards (Whois) and by providing a high availability and high performance service through the associated Domain Name System (DNS), Nameshield contributes to a large extent to the second principle of the Paris Call: Protecting the Internet. To prevent activity that intentionally and substantially damages the general availability or integrity of the public core of the Internet.

Cornerstone of the Web, the Domain Name System (DNS) serves as the Internet directory. This protocol translates a domain name into an IP address, based on a database distributed on thousands of machines. If the DNS falls because of data corruption or a denial of service attack, all your websites and emails would become inaccessible, which is completely unthinkable nowadays! The DNS must be protected and must stay highly available.

Protocol created in the 1980’s, security flaws regarding the usual functioning of the DNS have been identified since its creation. That is why, a new secured protocol, DNSSEC, has thus been developed to ensure the authenticity of the exchanges through a certified signature. Other solutions can complete the resilience of your identity on the Internet: the registry lock, SSL certificates…

The security solutions proposed by Nameshield, an independent French company that stores its data in France and possesses its own anycast and resilient DNS infrastructure, certified ISO 27001 on all its domain names activity, are compliant with the ANSSI recommendations on the good practices regarding the domain names’ acquisition and exploitation.

In the context of the 2nd Paris Peace Forum, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wished to illustrate the second principle of the Paris Call: Protect the Internet by highlighting the services proposed by Nameshield. The company is proud to be able to collaborate, at its level, with the actors implicated in digital security issues in order to make the Internet more reliable and thus contribute to the security of the cyberspace.

https://pariscall.international/en/principles

Advices on how to change the domain name without losing its referencing

Advices on how to change the domain name without losing its referencing
Image source: DiggityMarketing via Pixabay

During a rebranding for marketing purposes, in the context of a merger or an acquisition for example, a company can change its website’s domain name.

At the search engines’ level, it is all the pages that change, as if this was a brand new website. Therefore, how not to lose the work done on the SEO and make a successful transition, in particular if the website is old?

In the case of a rather old website with an optimal referencing on the existing domain name, transferring a website on a new name can ruin the time-consuming work that is the SEO. If the decrease of the traffic from organic search is normal (and temporary), some advises can help lessen the downturn, at least during the transition period.

Copy identically your website and implement 301 redirections

The first tip is to completely keep the website’s architecture, so that only the domain name changes in the URL.

Then, permanent redirections (301 redirections) must be created from each pages of the former website towards the corresponding page of the new website. Do not implement multiple redirections.

This process must be closely monitored to ensure that each 301 redirection is effective. The search engines will know that it’s not necessary to index the former name anymore but it’s the new one that must be indexed now. To ensure this, it is necessary to check that none of the former pages is accessible through the former domain name.

Have the backlinks updated

Google uses parameters linked to confidence indicators in its algorithm, thus to trusted websites, deemed as such by the search engine (indicators like the age of the website, the transparency of the legal notices, the ratio links number/words number per page, the links number pointing from other websites to this one, the extensions like .edu, .gov, the institutional websites, media websites, etc.) Hence, it can be interesting to quickly obtain the links from this kind of trusted websites at the time of the migration.

Along the same lines, reviewing your backlinks and requesting to the websites that refer to your website to update these links, so they link towards the new name, is an advantage. Of course, if you have many backlinks, concentrate on the more important backlinks regarding the referencing.

Inform Google

Lastly, it’s possible to directly inform Google of the changing through Google Search Console, the search engine will then update its index.

Register the sitemap

By submitting a sitemap file for the new website to the search engines, you will gain time in referencing by immediately giving to the engines the pages to index.

Keep the same holder for the new domain name

Make sure that the new domain name has the same proprietary information on its whois as the former domain name. Google may check these data.

Be patient

Do note that on Bing you will need an average of 2 months to get your referencing back, and about 6 to 7 months on Google.

[New gTLD] Launch of .NEW by Google

[New gTLD] Launch of .NEW by Google
Image source: 377053 via Pixabay

Following the launch of .APP, .PAGE, and .DEV among others, Google (Charleston Road Registry), launches the new extension .NEW in Sunrise period as of October 15, 2019.

Conditions for registration of a .NEW

  • All domains on .NEW must resolve to action generation or online creation flows. Once resolved, the web user should be able to ‘create’ something without any further navigation. For example, docs.new proposes a dedicated page proposing the direct use of Google online word-processing software allowing a new document creation page.
  • Any .NEW domain will need to be live within 100 days of registration.

If these conditions are not respected, the registry will consider the registration as non-compliant with the registration policy. In this case, the name will be placed on hold. The registrant will then be notified to correct and apply these conditions, if no action is taken, the domain will be blocked then deleted.

Launch calendar

  • Sunrise period: from October 15, 2019 to January 14,2020
  • LRP (Limited Registration Period): from January 14 to July 14, 2020
  • General availability: from July 21, 2020

For more information on the conditions for registration of your .NEW, don’t hesitate to contact us.

The alarming Kaspersky report: nine times more attacks aiming connected objects than in 2018

The alarming Kaspersky report: nine times more attacks aiming connected objects than in 2018
Image source: TheDigitalArtist via Pixabay

Last October 15, Kaspersky, the antivirus software company, published an edifying report about the volume of cyberattacks directly aiming connected objects.

Although the industry expected that this new generation of objects would be directly targeted by cyberattacks, the increase in the cyberattacks number is alarming and lets easily imagine the security flaws that the connected objects present.

According to the estimation presented by Kaspersky, between the beginning of 2018 until mid-2019, the attacks would have reached the record of 105 million, i.e. nine times more than the previous year as a whole.

In order to conduct this research, Kaspersky used the trap technique by deploying more than 50 honeypots across the world. A Honeypot is a program that imitates the connected objects’ signature specifically created to attract cybercriminals. It was then possible to detect attacks from pirates that fell into the trap set for them. According to Kaspersky, during this experience, more than 20 000 sessions would have been infected every 15 minutes. 105 million attacks from 276 000 unique IP addresses have then been detected (compared to 12 million in 2018).

Furthermore, the report indicates that both in 2018 and 2019, China and Brazil are vying for the top position of the countries that served as the origin of the attacks launched.

The main malwares that use the security flaws of connected objects are well known (Mirai for example) and identified.

While we are aware that IoT is a privileged playground for pirates, the first security measures are far from being systematically applied. It’s essential for example to change the password installed by default for each connected devices’ purchase. For reminder, although technologies of cyber malice are indeed more and more sophisticated, the first gateway for pirates remains the users’ lack of vigilance.

New eligibility criteria for .EU

New eligibility criteria for .EU
Image source: OpenClipart-Vectors via Pixabay

As of October 19, 2019, internationally-based EU citizens can now register .EU or .ею domain names.

The .EU is the country code top level domain for the European Union. More than 3.6 million registrations spread out across Europe make this TLD a popular extension. Initially, this extension is only reserved to companies and individuals residing within EU and EEA member states. However in order to meet the needs of an ever-changing digital environment, EURid, the .EU registry, changes this eligibility criteria to extend it to all EU citizens living around the world.

“We are excited to be able to extend the registration criteria to EU citizens around the world. The .eu domain is now closer to your ambitions, achievements and dreams. It is the bridge connecting you to your friends and family – even if you live outside the EU. It will always show your roots, your outlook, and your cultural values.” – Marc van Wesemael, EURid`s CEO.

For more information on the conditions for registration of your .EU, don’t hesitate to contact us.

ccTLDs news : .AR domain name registrations for Argentina are opened

ccTLDs news : .AR domain name registrations for Argentina are opened
Image source: Mampu via Pixabay

Argentina now offers the possibility to register .AR domain names. Until now, it was only possible to register third level domain names particularly in .COM.AR.

Here are the launching periods planned:

Sunrise period – From 11/09/2019 to 09/11/2019

  • Priority to holders of domain names registered in the zones .com.ar, .net.ar, .org.ar, .int.ar, .tur.ar, before December 1st, 2015 and in effect at August 27, 2019.
  • At the end of this period, if only one request is received, the user who did the request can register the domain name by paying the corresponding tax. If many requests are received by the registry for the same name, the holder of the name will be decided by drawing lots.

Intermediary period – From 27/11/2019 to 27/01/2020

During this period, all the community can request the registration of domain names available in .AR.

The reserved and restricted domain names are excluded and some domain names will likely be subjects to approval.

  • Reserved domains: domain names identical to names registered in ‘.gob.ar’ and ‘.mil.ar’ are exclusively reserved to these names’ holders. To note: Even a domain name reserved in one of the .AR zones can be classified as reserved by the Argentinian registry.
  • Restricted domains: Even a domain name reserved in one of the .AR zones can be classified as reserved by the Argentinian registry, making these names unavailable for registration.
  • Terms which are subjects to approval: normal words or expressions which, if they are part of a domain name, must be approved by the Argentinian registry. They include names that are aggravating, discriminatory or contrary to the law, to morality or to good customs, or that could cause confusion, deception or identity theft.

For any information, don’t hesitate to contact your Nameshield’s expert.

General availability: 15/09/2020 (Update)

Starting 15/09/2020, domain names available can be registered in .AR by any user, depending on the conditions set by the rules of the Argentinian registry.

For reminder, the registration conditions of the .AR include the providing of supporting documents.

If your current domain names portfolio doesn’t have COM.AR, NET.AR, etc. and you wish to register a .AR at the time of the general availability, we advise you to anticipate and to contact your consultant to know the detail of the documents to provide.

The domain name is an integral intangible asset

Essential key element to any dematerialized data flow exchange, the domain name became a strategic intangible asset of great value. Depending on the academic works, there is a real correlation between the intangible assets’ quality and the companies’ economic performance. Identifying and valuating domain names becomes necessary for the financial director. Explanations in La revue de la Société Française des Analystes Financiers – SFAF (the journal of the French Society of Financial Analysts) of Jean-Manuel Gaget, Strategy and Consulting director of Nameshield and administrator of the Institut de Comptabilité de l’Immatériel (Intangible Accounting Institute).

In the 90’s, the domain name was an accessory element of the brand. During its world expansion, it became the principal element of the brand, in particular in the e-commerce’s world. You only need to look at how Amazon or Easyjet have developed their logo to consider it as a unique communication medium.

The domain name has this unique particularity to be an intangible asset with four dimensions. It is simultaneously:

  1. An IT object allowing to access services on the Internet by being the link between the IP address (a suite of numbers) of a physical object [computer, server, smartphone…] and a literal name (role of the Domain Name Server or DNS);
  2. A communication tool allowing to establish its identity on the Internet and gain a digital territory;
  3. A legal element through a temporary contract with an Internet Registry;
  4. A financial asset, accountable as an intangible asset under certain conditions.

Now an essential key element to any dematerialized data flow exchange, be it for email sending, the access to websites, social networks and connected objects, any data exchange on the Internet passes by the use of a domain name and any service disruption has important consequences on the organizations’ activity.

Why and how to rate your domain name capital?

Today, the academic works, in particular carried by the French referential of the intangible capital’s measure “Thesaurus Capital Immatériel” (Thesaurus Intangible Capital) show a real correlation between the intangible assets’ quality and the companies’ economic performance. The higher the quality of the intangible assets is (human capital, information system capital, customer capital…), the stronger, more sustainable and economically efficient in the medium and long term the company’s fundamentals are. Hence the importance to measure the intangible capital and its evolution over time. 

However, as much as literature is rich regarding methods of brands valuation, it is near non-existent regarding domain names. That is why in 2019, the Intangible Accounting Institute wished to enrich the Thesaurus Intangible Capital with a specific section on the rating of the domain name capital. In the same way that clients, Human, IT, knowledge… assets are evaluated, we searched to evaluate the domain name capital in association with the brand capital. Because brands and domain names are now inseparable!

Accounting principles applicable to domain names

In a decision of the French Council of State of December 7th, 2016 (ebay.fr case), it is reminded that if the use of a domain name:

  • Represents a constant source of profits;
  • Has a sufficient sustainability (particularly if it can be regularly renewed);
  • Is likely to be transferred;

Then it is an intangible asset of the company and must follow the associated accounting and tax rules. As such, the domain names have to be accounted either at their creation cost, at their acquisition value, or at their current value (market value) for the ones acquired free of charge. The domain names are then not to be considered as a simple IT workload, but as real assets that should be managed at fair value. As such, further attention on tax issues related to domain names’ value must be given within the context of the transfer prices.

Which financial valuation methods to use?

Inspired by the ISO 10668 standard regarding the monetary valuation of the brands, we have developed a reliable scientific corpus by financing the CIFRE thesis of Mr. Clement GENTY (2016-2019), covering the subject: “Internet governance and global economy: proposal of a valuation model of a domain name’s value as intangible asset“. It is in this context that three approaches regarding the monetary valuation of domain names have been studied:

  • A historical costs approach;
  • A market approach (on semantics);
  • A loss approach (replacement cost).

The market approach aims to measure the semantic value of a domain name by reference to the monetary transactions passed. To that end, we have developed a database of more than 1.4 million transactions passed. This approach allows to give a price value by comparable.

Aim: to measure the digital performance of the organizations

These three approaches of domain names valuation by historical costs, the market and the loss, combined to the domain name capital rating are tools that should be at the disposal of the financial directions so they can better measure the digital performance of their organizations.

Satori Botnet: The hacker facing up to 10 years imprisonment did not act alone

Satori botnet
Image source: TheDigitalArtist via Pixabay

We now know more about the cyberpirate, Nexus Zeta, whose real name is Kenneth Currin Schuchman, who distinguished himself with the creation of the Satori botnet.

Pleading guilty to the charges regarding Satori botnet creation, his confessions describe the implementation of this attack using IoT flaws.

For reminder, a botnet is a set of infected computers remotely controlled by a cybercriminal. The machines that belong to a botnet are often called “bots” or “zombies”. The aim: to spread a malware or a virus to the greatest number of machines possible.

The hacker Nexus Zeta did not act alone but worked together with two other cybercriminals: Vamp who served as the primary developer/coder of Satori and Drake who managed the botnet sales.

The Satori botnet was created based on the public code of the Mirai IoT malware.

For reminder, in 2016, Mirai was the source of one of the biggest DDoS ever seen in 2016, targeting in particular the American provider DYN. The functioning is based on the permanent research on the Internet, of IP addresses corresponding to connected objects (IoT). Once the vulnerable connected objects identified, Mirai connects to them to install the malware.

If the Satori botnet mainly attacked the devices running with factory-set or easy to guess passwords, in its first month of deployment, it has infected over 100 000 devices.

Between 2017 and 2018, the three hackers continue to develop Satori, which they will rename Okiru and Masuta. The botnet went as far as to infect over 700 000 devices.

Officially accused by the American authorities, Kenneth Currin Schuchman is free until his trial. However, he breaks the pre-trial release conditions by accessing the Internet and developing a new botnet. It is in October 2018 that he is this time arrested and jailed. Pleading guilty, he’s facing up to ten years in prison and a fine of 250 000 dollars.

50 years after Arpanet, the Internet’s ancestor

Arpanet - Internet’s ancestor - Nameshield Blog
Image source: geralt via Pixabay

On October 29, 1969 UCLA sends the very first e-message to Stanford Research Institute through Arpanet network (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) laying the foundation for today’s networked world.

Arpanet, the Internet’s precursor 

Arpanet is the first data transfer network developed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) which belonged to the U.S. Defense Department.

The first Arpanet node was set up at UCLA on August 30, 1969, the second node, at the Stanford Research Institute, was set up on October 1st 1969. The first message was sent between the two institutions on October 29 1969 by the UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock who wished to send the word “login” but the system crashed so only two letters, “l” and “o”, were transmitted, the complete word will only be transmitted 1 hour later.

Arpanet connected some universities and research institutes: first, UCLA and Stanford Research Institute, followed by UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. At the end of 1969, Arpanet counted 4 nodes, in 1971, 23 nodes were created and 111 nodes in 1977.

In 1983, Arpanet has been divided in two networks: one military, the MILnet (Military Network) and the other academic, the NSFnet.

On January 1st 1983, the name “Internet” already in use to define all of Arpanet, became official.

World Wide Web turns 30 years old

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher working for the CERN, proposed a hypertext system working on the Internet. This system was originally developed for scientists working in universities and institutes around the world, so they could instantly share information. His vision of universal connectivity became the World Wide Web, which sent Internet usage skyrocketing.

In 1993, Mosaic, the first popular web browser was created by Marc Andreessen and Eric J.Bina, two students of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) of the University of Illinois. It was not the first graphical web browser but Mosaic was particularly fast and allowed the users to display images inside web pages instead of displaying images in a separate window, which has given it some popularity and contributed to increase the World Wide Web’s popularity.

Internet Protocol – From IPv4 to IPv6

The Internet Protocol (IP) is a set of communication protocols of IT networks developed to be used on the Internet. IP protocols allow a unique addressing service for all connected devices.

IPv4 the first major version was invented in the 70’s and introduced to the public in 1981. It is still the dominant protocol of the Internet today. Twenty years ago, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) started predicting the depletion of IPv4 addresses and began working to create a new version of the Internet Protocol: IPv6.

IPv4 uses a 32-bit addressing scheme to support 4.3 billion devices, while IPv6 possesses a much larger address space. Indeed, IPv6 uses a 128-bit address allowing 3.4 x 1038 possible addresses.

DNS – Domain Name System

At the request of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Defense Department, the DNS (Domain Name System) was invented in 1983 by Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris, in order to associate complex IP addresses with humanly understandable and easy-to-remember names. Thus a logical address, the domain name, is associated to a physical address, the IP address. The domain name and IP address are unique.

In 1998, is created ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the regulatory authority of the Internet. Its main purpose is to allocate the Internet protocol addresses spaces, to attribute the protocol identifier (IP), to manage the domain name system of top level for generic codes (gTLD), to assign the country codes (ccTLD), and to carry out the functions of the root servers’ system management.

With 351.8 million domain names registrations in the first quarter of 2019, domain names registrations continue to climb, but with the increase of the number of threats aiming the DNS at the same time.

The emergence of cyber threats

Considered as one of the first cyberattacks and certainly the first to attract the media’s attention, the Morris Worm was launched in 1988 by a student of the Cornell University, Robert Tappan Morris. Originally, the malware developed by the student didn’t have for purpose to cause damage but simply to estimate the extent of the Internet. However this worm affected about 60 000 computers estimated connected to the Internet and the cost of the damages was about 100 000 to 10 million dollars. This event marks the turning point in the field of online security.

Today, cyberattacks are abundant, frequent and more and more sophisticated. The evolution of techniques and the arrival of new technologies make cyberattacks increasingly complex and offer new opportunities to attackers.

There are various types of cyberattack like attacks aiming the DNS: DDoS, DNS cache poisoning, DNS spoofing, Man in the Middle… (In 2019, according to IDC – International Data Corporation, 82% of companies worldwide have faced a DNS attack over the past year) or attacks directly aiming users and having for purpose to obtain confidential information to steal an identity (phishing).

The consequences for victimized companies can be significant. For example, today the cost of a data breach is 3.92 million dollars on average according to IBM Security, this cost has risen 12% over the past five years.

An IP traffic estimated in 2022 more important than the one generated from 1984 to 2016

With more than 5 billion Google searches made every day, e-commerce continuing to thrive, social media growing in popularity and the increasing number of connected objects, the traffic volume on the Internet has risen considerably.

Indeed, in 1974, daily traffic on the Internet surpassed 3 million packets per day. According to a Cisco’s research in 2017, the global IP traffic reached 122 exabytes per month, the company estimates that this volume should reach 396 exabytes by 2022.

“The size and complexity of the Internet continues to grow in ways that many could not have imagined. Since we first started the VNI Forecast in 2005, traffic has increased 56-fold, amassing a 36% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) with more people, devices and applications accessing IP networks” said Jonathan Davidson, senior vice president and general manager of Service Provider Business at Cisco.

Today, 50 years after the birth of the Internet’s ancestor, Arpanet, there are more Internet connected devices than people in the world. In 2022, the web users will represent 60% of the world’s population and more than 28 billion devices will connect to the Internet.