Intelligence
Latest Articles
Latest intelligence on infrastructure operators, policy decisions, market moves, and digital power shifts.
History
The Codes Aligned. The Circuit Still Needed Permission: RFC 1394
A two-letter domain, a telex answerback and a telephone prefix could all point toward the same country and still leave a message nowhere to go. RFC 1394 made those correspondences useful by placing them in one table. It also marked the table's limits: values could be wrong…
Global Cloud Services Trends
Snowflake's AI Budgets Follow Entry Points, Not Just Agents
A budget attached to a Cortex Agent does not necessarily follow every request that reaches it. Snowflake's treatment of CoWork-originated activity exposes a wider question for enterprise AI: where spending is counted, whose access can be stopped, and how long the stop takes to…
Creators
Albert Greenberg and the network as a distributed computer
Across AT&T, Microsoft Azure and Uber, Albert Greenberg repeatedly addressed the same problem: how to make a large network behave as a coherent system while topology, traffic, control software, hardware and failures change at different speeds. His influence is clearest in control…
IETF
Paul Wouters and the IKEv2 Requirement That Was Not a Negotiation Receipt
“MUST implement” can sound like a deployment report. RFC 8247, co-authored by Paul Wouters, uses it for a narrower purpose: ensuring that IKEv2 implementations have a shared algorithmic baseline. It does not say which transform two peers offered, which one they selected under…
IETF
Bernie Volz and the DHCPv6 Trigger That Did Not Yet Configure a Client
A server log can make the word “Reconfigure” look final: the server issued the message, so a client must now have new settings. RFC 9915, co-authored by Bernie Volz, is more exact. Reconfigure is a carefully authenticated trigger for a later exchange. It is not, by itself, a…
History
The Route Named a Next Hop. The Link Still Had to Agree: RFC 1433
Two machines could occupy the same data-network service and still be unable to exchange a frame. RFC 1433 began from that uncomfortable fact: routing could identify a shorter next hop, while address resolution and link filters retained the power to make the route usable—or turn…
IETF
CATS OAM Can Verify a Steering Policy. It Cannot Choose a Remedy.
The active CATS OAM draft is trying to close a real visibility gap. A service instance can remain reachable at the network layer while the application behind it is slow, exhausted or unavailable. A system that steers traffic only by network reachability may therefore send clients…
Creators
Albert Greenberg and the network as a distributed computer
Across AT&T, Microsoft Azure and Uber, Albert Greenberg has worked on a recurring problem: how to make a large network behave like one coherent system when topology, traffic, control software, hardware and failure all change at different speeds. His influence is best understood…
Leaders
Amit Thapa Chhetri and the Long Build Behind Nepal's Cable Internet
Subisu's origin was not a clean founder myth. The public record instead shows a team testing an idea against a regulatory system that was not yet ready for it, then carrying the operating work forward until the venture became an institution. Amit Thapa Chhetri's role is useful…
IETF
Wassim Haddad and the Prefix That Did Not Yet Authorize Forwarding
A mobile router can have a home-agent registration before it knows which mobile-network prefix it may use. RFC 6276, co-authored by Wassim Haddad, makes the next boundary explicit: only a valid DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation lease allows that prefix into the home agent's binding cache…
Story
Inside AFRINIC’s Reverse-DNS Cleanup
The registry’s public data distinguish delegation records, domain entities and resource holders. They also distinguish an error inventory from removal events. Those differences explain why a falling count can reflect worthwhile maintenance without measuring the restoration of…
IETF
IETF's Survey Can Diagnose a Governance Problem. It Cannot Ratify a Repair.
The IETF Community Survey 2025 gives the organisation a more useful picture of itself than a slogan ever could: a large but imperfect sampling frame, a modest voluntary response, a clear account of what was counted, and a set of concerns that should not be wished away. That is…
Global Cloud Services Trends
GitLab's Supervotes Ended in August. Two Board Seats Run to 2029
Equal votes do not produce a new board overnight. GitLab's conversion to one outstanding class of common stock removed a voting multiplier, while leaving director mandates, meeting access and amendment procedures on different timetables. The distinction matters for anyone…
History
The Interim Fix Bought Time. It Could Spend the Future: RFC 1380
The Internet of 1992 had more than one deadline. Router tables and Class B allocations were under immediate pressure; a larger address space and a richer Internet layer demanded slower architectural work. RFC 1380 refused to hide that mismatch inside one programme. It recommended…
SANOG
SANOG 34 Moved Cities Without Publishing Its Crisis Authority Chain
SANOG 34 did something operationally difficult: it moved a regional conference from Colombo to Kolkata for what SANOG described as the recent security situation in Sri Lanka, while keeping the dates intact. SANOG's own archive records the move, names the original and replacement…
History
The Network Found the Book. It Could Not Keep the Shelf Current: RFC 1432
In March 1993, a bibliography about the Internet carried an unusually revealing provenance: much of its detail had arrived through the Internet itself. The network could help a reader discover a book, yet RFC 1432 also preserved the reasons discovery could never certify the…
IETF
Thomas Graf and the MPLS Label Number That Did Not Identify Its Control Plane
An MPLS label can look like an answer: a compact number at the top of a stack, captured in an export record and ready to be counted. Thomas Graf’s RFC 9160 begins with the smaller, more useful proposition. The number alone does not reliably tell an observer which control-plane…
IETF
SCITT Can Log a Statement. It Cannot Authorize a Release.
RFC 9943 gives software-supply-chain evidence a useful public property: a signed statement can be recorded in a transparency service and accompanied by a verifiable receipt. That can make an issuer’s assertion easier to inspect and harder to rewrite quietly. It does not answer…
History
The Transport Opened a Connection. SNMP Still Owned the Retry: RFC 1283
A connection is an enticing piece of evidence. It has a beginning, a lifetime and an end. In 1991, RFC 1283 placed SNMP on an OSI connection-oriented transport and then warned implementers not to read too much into that new structure. The connection could carry one or more…
Global Datacenter Trends
HPE's 112% Data-Centre Networking Growth Reverses on Its Normalized Base
HPE reported US$382 million of data-centre networking revenue for its July quarter, more than twice the published figure a year earlier. Against the historical base reconstructed in its own earnings presentation, the same revenue fell about 6%. Neither calculation is a reason to…