DNS

Kieren McCarthy: Issue Guide to ICANN San Francisco Meetings

As the ICANN's 40th international meetings start off in San Francisco, Kieren McCarthy, General Manager (US) of the Global Internet Business Coalition (GIBC), and founder of the .NXT conference, has released a guide for the most important topics (listed below) with some added commentary, background and links to relevant resources. more

Professional Services Are a Safe Bet to Address Staff Shortages

Many organizations today are tightening their belts. They have smaller budgets and fewer resources even though they face an ever-growing list of projects, tasks and corporate IT initiatives to complete. IT departments are hard pressed to streamline operations but don't necessarily have the manpower -- be it resources or specific skillsets -- to add capabilities that will achieve such efficiency. There are only a few possible solutions organizations can consider to address this common problem... more

The Growth of DNS-OARC Highlights Great Strides in DNS Research

This past weekend several of my Dyn colleagues and I attended the DNS-OARC annual meeting and fall workshop in Montreal. "OARC" in the organization's title stands for "Operations, Analysis and Research Center". DNS-OARC was founded by the Internet Systems Consortium (best known as the maintainers of the BIND DNS software) in 2004 to address a gap in the DNS community. Engineers working to extend the DNS protocol itself have always had a home in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), but there was no corresponding community for those who operated DNS infrastructure and did research using data gleaned from DNS operations. more

ICANN Org’s Multifaceted Response to DNS Abuse

While the March report from ICANN's Domain Abuse Activity Reporting system show a general reduction in second-level gTLD domain names identified as being used in phishing, malware distribution, and botnet command and control, it has been widely reported that criminals are taking advantage of the global COVID-19 pandemic by launching malicious online campaigns. There have also been numerous reports of spikes in the use of COVID-19-related domain names for DNS Abuse. more

ICANN at 20: Looking Back Forward

This year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), marks its 20th anniversary since inception. ICANN was birthed as a result of the infamous DNS Wars - in 1994, the U.S National Science Foundation, the then overseer of the Internet infrastructure decided to sub-contract the management of the Domain Name System (DNS) to a private U.S company called Network Solutions INC (NSI). This move was not well received by the Internet community, culminating in the so-called "DNS Wars" more

IDN ccTLD Fast Track developments

The IDN ccTLD Fast Track program is moving along rapidly, with ICANN's announcement that both the Simplified and Traditional Chinese script versions of .china have passed the string evaluation phase of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Program. Alongside this, ICANN have also announced the release of a proposed implementation plan for 'Synchronised IDN ccTLDs' that will create the rules by which these variant IDN ccTLDs will coexist. more

My Top Takeaways from DNS-OARC 24

The 24th DNS-OARC meeting was held last week in Buenos Aires -- a two-day DNS workshop with amazingly good, consistent content. The programme committee are to be congratulated on maintaining a high quality of presentations. Here are my picks of the workshop. They fall into three groups, covering themes I found interesting... These presentations related to the ongoing problem of DNS as a source of reflection attacks, or a victim of attempted DDoS... more

Building a More Secure Routing System: Verisign’s Path to RPKI

At Verisign, we believe that continuous improvements to the safety and security of the global routing system are critical for the reliability of the internet. As such, we've recently embarked on a path to implement Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) within our technology ecosystem as a step toward building a more secure routing system. In this blog, we share our ongoing journey toward RPKI adoption and the lessons we've learned as an operator of critical internet infrastructure. more

The True Effect of Corona on the DNS

In recent weeks we've seen a range of press articles, security blogposts and public statements addressing real or perceived issues with network capacity and the domain name system (DNS) in particular. These range from concerns about the resilience of the DNS with questions on the impact of the number of registrations to news indicating that a tidal wave of fraud and abuse is hitting the world. more

Spring Clean Your House of Domains, DNS and Digital Certificates

At the start of the year, many responsible for managing domain name portfolios may be considering spring cleaning! Traditionally, such a task consists of a review to check that all domains in the portfolio serve a purpose either from a commercial or defensive perspective. The aim is to ensure budget isn't wasted on domains of little to no value. It's fair to say that for many organizations, this is a difficult process - almost as feared as actually spring cleaning our own homes. more

The Wild West Of Performance Measurement: Using Data To Ensure Optimal Vendor Selection

Data-driven decision making relies on contextual understanding of how data is gathered and the type of analysis used to arrive at an outcome. The popularity of data-driven decision-making has increased the number of companies using statistics to support a preference or vendor selection. The Internet Performance Management (IPM) market hasn't been spared, but, unlike other markets where institutions have codified a standard for qualification and quantification, such as the FDA's nutrition labels, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, or the Coffee Quality Institute, the IPM market is still in the Wild West stage. more

US Ambassador and US Commerce Dept Assistant Secretary Defend Transition of IANA Oversight

In an article entitled "Celebrating and Protecting the Global Internet" in Bloomberg BNA, US Ambassador Sepulveda and US Commerce Dept Assistant Secretary Strickling defend the transition of IANA oversight to the global multistakeholder community. more

9th Registration Operations Workshop (ROW), June 16th, 2020, Online

The Registration Operations Workshop (ROW) was conceived as an informal industry conference that would provide a forum for discussion of the technical aspects of registration operations in the domain name system and IP addressing. The 9th ROW will be held online on Tuesday, June 16th, 2020 at 13h00-16h00 UTC. more

NTIA Expresses Support for New gTLD Program

Kevin Murphy reporting in DomainIncite: "NTIA boss Larry Strickling has come out in support of ICANN and its new top-level domains program, warning that its opponents 'provide ammunition' to authoritarian regimes. Speaking in Washington DC yesterday, Strickling warned that organizations fighting to put a stop to the new gTLD program risk provoking a UN takeover of the internet." more

Domain Name Variants Still Won’t Work

ICANN has spent years trying to figure out what to do with domain name variants, strings that look different but mean the same thing, for some definition of "the same." They've been trying to deal with them in second level domains for a decade, and are now working on rules to allow variant top-level domains. Unfortunately, variants don't work. The problem isn't putting them in the DNS; it's that once they're in the DNS, they don't work anywhere else. more