Notes from NANOG 89: Trust and Network Infrastructure

Trust is such a difficult concept in any context, and certainly computer networks are no exception. How can you be assured that your network infrastructure us running on authentic platforms, both hardware and software, and its operation has not been compromised in any way? The combination of complex supply chains…


IEPG at IETF 117

This is part of a personal commentary on the meetings at the July 2023 meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF 117). If you want to know what was presented and the comments at the mic see the IETF 117 meeting archive. The IEPG meets for a couple of…


RIPE 86 Bites – Encryption and Active Network Management

RIPE held a community meeting in May in Rotterdam. There were a number of presentations that sparked my interest, but rather than write my impressions in a single lengthy note, I thought I would just take a couple of topics and use a shorter, and hopefully more readable bite-sized format.…


Hiding Behind Masques

It has been almost a decade since Edward Snowden exposed a program of mass surveillance by the US NSA, using the Internet for large scale data harvesting. The Internet had been profligate in the way in which various protocol scattered user data around with a somewhat cavalier disregard for privacy.…


To DNSSEC or Not?

The early days of the Internet were marked by a constant churn of technology. For example, routing protocols came and went in rapid succession, transmission technologies were in a state of constant flux, the devices we used to interact with the emerging digital environment were changing, and the applications we…


Is Secured Routing a Market Failure?

Author: Geoff Huston       The Internet represents a threshold moment for the communications realm in many ways. It altered the immediate end client of the network service from humans to computers. It changed the communications model from synchronized end-to-end service to asynchronous, and from virtual circuits to packet…


Dark

I’d like to reflect on a presentation by Dr. Paul Vixie at the October 2022 meeting of the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG), on the topic of the shift to pervasive encryption of application transactions on the Internet today. There is a view out there that any useful public…


Revocation

Two years ago, I wrote an article on X.509 certificate revocation. I’d like to report that a lot has happened between then and now, but that’s not the case. So why revisit this topic today? What drew my attention was a tweet earlier this month that reported that the Certification…


Some Notes from RIPE 83

The RIPE community held a meeting in November. Like most community meetings in these Covid-blighted times it was a virtual meeting. Here’s my notes from a few presentations that piqued my interest. All the material presented at the meeting can be found at https://ripe83.ripe.net/. Vulnerability Disclosure Responsible Disclosure is a…


NANOG 83

The network operations community is cautiously heading back into a mode of in person meetings and the NANOG meeting at the start of November was a hybrid affair with a mix of in-person and virtual participation, both by the presenters and the attendees. I was one of the virtual mob,…