"The traffic that comes to Defcon's public IP address takes a jog through New York, " says Kapela.

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Each instance belongs to a single network and any communication between instances in different networks must be through a public IP address.

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While IP-based public safety gateways are still somewhat new and law enforcement tends to be conservative adopting unproven technologies, officials from companies manufacturing the products say initial responses have been positive.

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By matching users' IP addresses with the public database of addresses registered to different corporations, Griffith's "Wikiscanner" revealed widespread corporate meddling on Wikipedia, as companies attempted to add marketing pitches to their own entries, or hide controversies.

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Importantly, today TCP and IP (described in RFCs 760 and 761) exist in the public domain, owned by no one and used by everyone.

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Gene Quinn, the proprietor of the IP Watchdog website, has never struck me as a thoughtful commentator on public policy issues.

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But the concept of development of IP rights is going to be one to watch in this, as well as any, big public funding project.

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