DNS

DDI Integration: We Need IPAM

I am a big fan of DDI (DNS, DHCP and IPAM) as magical trio to manage all transactions on network infrastructures... Or to say the least: make it possible. Basically it makes these "Core Network Services" concise, manageable and integrated. It basically makes the network infrastructures of today and the future possible. There is however one thing that continuously seems to irritate when talking about integrating these services on networks.

ICANN’s Internet Users Representatives Decry New Top-Level Domain Implementation

Surprisingly, and adding to the rapidly growing field of objections to ICANN's proposed expansion of the domain naming system, the group that represents individual Internet users in the ICANN community, the ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee, posted their advice on new Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs).

DDoS Mitigation: A Blend of Art and Science

As DDoS attacks become larger, more frequent and complex, being able to stop them is a must. While doing this is part science, a matter of deploying technology, there is also an art to repelling sophisticated attacks. Arbor Networks, Citrix and others make great gear, but there's no magic box that will solve all your problems for you. Human expertise will always be a crucial ingredient.

The Myth of the Unintended Infringer in SOPA and PIPA

In a recent op-ed piece in TheHill.COM, some friends and I described the futility of mandated DNS blocking as contemplated by the SOPA (H.R. 3261) and PIPA (S. 968) bills now working their way through the U.S. Congress: No Internet user is required to use the Domain Name servers provided by their ISP. And if millions of American citizens who for whatever reason want to engage in online piracy can no longer do so because Congress has passed this law and their ISP is now filtering the citizen's DNS lookups...

Breaking the Internet HOWTO: The Unintended Consequences of Governmental Actions

"Breaking the Internet" is really hard to do. The network of networks is decentralized, resilient and has no Single Point Of Failure. That was the paradigm of the first few decades of Internet history, and most people involved in Internet Governance still carry that model around in their heads. Unfortunately, that is changing and changing rapidly due to misguided government intervention.

TLDs, CJD and Other Mad Cows

"At every crossroad on the road that leads to the future, tradition has placed against us ten thousand men to guard the past". These were the words of Stanley Prusiner in 1992 describing the opposition to his radical discovery of what he called prions, the causative agents of a clutch of baffling brain diseases. These include kuru, affecting New Guinea cannibals, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD), and BSE or mad cow disease. And today these guardians of the past are in place again at the crossroad that leads to a future of thousands of top-level Internet domain names.

Stopping SOPA’s Anti-Circumvention

The House's Stop Online Piracy Act is in Judiciary Committee Markup today. As numerous protests, open letters, and advocacy campaigns across the Web, this is a seriously flawed bill. Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Darrell Issa's proposed OPEN Act points out, by contrast, some of the procedural problems. Here, I analyze just one of the problematic provisions of SOPA: a new"anticircumvention" provision

Providing Persistent Domain Names Under .ARPA

Some domains are too big to fail. Quite apart from the obvious ones like google.com and facebook.com, upon whose availability our everyday lives depends, there are many others upon which the infrastructure of the Internet (and much of the modern world itself) depends. These are domains like w3.org and ietf.org, which host the technical specifications which describe the World Wide Web and the Internet themselves.

gTLDs Opponents Create the Very Confusion They Decry

It's ironic and amusing that while a few well-connected opponents of the new gTLD program were testifying before the U.S. Senate committee, I was asked to help educate top executives of one of the largest global ad agencies and their major clients on the brand marketing and advertising implications of the program. It was clear from the start that virtually all these high-powered executives knew about the program they had learned from the eleventh hour negative campaign.

Technical Comments on Mandated DNS Filtering Requirements of H. R. 3261 (“SOPA”)

About two months ago, I got together with some fellow DNS engineers and sent a letter to the U. S. Senate explaining once again why the mandated DNS filtering requirements of S. 968 ("PIPA") were technically unworkable. This letter was an updated reminder of the issues we had previously covered... In the time since then, the U. S. House of Representatives has issued their companion bill, H. R. 3261 ("SOPA") and all indications are that they will begin "markup" on this bill some time next week.