The Resolvers We Use

The Internet’s Domain Name System is a modern day miracle. It may not represent the largest database that has ever been built, but nevertheless it’s truly massive. And even if it’s not the largest database that’s ever been built, it’s perhaps one of the more intensively used. The DNS is…


Who’s Watching?

Much has been said over the past year or so about various forms of cyber spying. The United States has accused the Chinese of cyber espionage and stealing industrial secrets. A former contractor to the United States’ NSA, Edward Snowden, has accused various US intelligence agencies of systematic examination of…


ECDSA and DNSSEC

Yes, that’s a cryptic topic, even for an article that addresses matters of the use of cryptographic algorithms, so congratulations for getting even this far! This is a report of a an experiment conducted in September and October 2014 by the authors to measure the extent to which deployed DNSSEC-validating…


NANOG 62

NANOG 62 was held at Baltimore from the 6th to the 9th October. These are my observations on some of the presentations that occurred at this meeting. The presentations are available at https://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog62/home.


Five Objectives for Privacy and Security

It has been a very busy period in the domain of computer security. What with “shellshock”, “heartbleed” and NTP monlink adding to the background of open DNS resolvers, port 445 viral nasties, SYN attacks and other forms of vulnerability exploits, it’s getting very hard to see the forest for the…


Internet Regulation: Section 706 vs Title II

At the NANOG meeting in Baltimore this week I listened to a presentation by Patrick Gilmore on “The Open Internet Debate: Section 706 vs Title II” It’s true that this is a title that would normally induce a comatose reaction from any audience, but don’t let the title put you…


How Big is that Network?

How “big” is a network? How many customers are served by an Internet Service Provider? While some network operators openly publish such numbers, other operators regard such numbers as commercially sensitive information. There are a number of techniques used to estimate the relative size of each Service Provider from public…


What’s so special about 512?

The 12th August 2014 was widely reported as a day when the Internet collapsed. Despite the sensational media reports the following day, the condition was not fatal, and perhaps it could be more reasonably reported that some parts of the Internet were having a bad hair day. Media Reports about…


The Cost of DNSSEC

If you’re playing in the DNS game, and you haven’t done so already, then you really should be considering turning on security in your part of the DNS by enabling DNSSEC. There are various forms of insidious attack that start with perverting the DNS, and end with the misdirection of…


Whats so special about 512K?

In around 1990 Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) was alerted to a looming problem: long before the Internet was a commercial reality it looked like we would hit two really solid walls if we wanted to make the Internet scale to a global communications system. The first problem was that…