How can the open standards organizations of the IETF and W3C "strengthen the Internet" against large-scale pervasive monitoring? That is the topic up for discussion at the "Strengthening the Internet Against Pervasive Monitoring (STRINT)" workshop planned for February 28 and March 1, 2014, and jointly sponsored by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and the W3C. The workshop is by invitation-only and has a deadline of Monday, January 20, 2014 (by 11:59 UTC) for submission of either position papers or Internet drafts. more
Last week, we started an email thread (old school!) amongst a large group of our tech leadership and thought leaders from all aspects of web traffic management and message management. There was a simple question we wanted to know in a few sentences or less: "In 2014, what do you think the big trends will be with Internet performance?" What follows are 21 very unique, and some very similar, answers. Without a doubt, there are challenges ahead for the Internet as we know it, but the rewards for accomplishing goals are massive. more
This year, 2013, I got 24 days of IPv6 and DNSSEC measurements. All in all it created 15GB logs with more than 62 million rows. On the 21st of December, early in the morning, the goat was "traditionally" burnt down, however this year with one exception. Via the Swedish newspaper Expressen the arsonists anonymously took the blame and also filmed their own act. more
What does the crystal ball say for the Internet in 2014? Here are three scenarios for what could happen with the global Internet Governance Eco-System in the coming 12 months... In the worst case scenario the Internet gets more and more fragmented and re-nationalized. A growing number of governments start to define a "national Internet segment" and develop policies to surveil, censor and control access to and use of the Internet. National firewalls will separate the "domestic Internet" from the global Internet and an exit and entrance regime into networks is introduced where users need passwords, handed out by governmental authorities on an annual basis, to go from one domain to another... more
This post is a heads up to all uber-geeks about a terrific research initiative to try to figure out causes and mitigation of name-collision risk. There's a $50,000 prize for the first-place paper, a $25,000 prize for the second place paper and up to five $10,000 prizes for third-place papers. That kind of money could buy a lot of toys, my peepul. And the presentation of those papers will be in London -- my favorite town for curry this side of India. Interested? Read on. more
At the RIPE 67 meeting in Athens, Greece, the RIPE IPv6 Working Group ran a little experiment to test the feasibility of an IPv6-only network and to identify challenges in user experience. While the results were highly encouraging, they indicated that there is still work to be done before IPv4 can be switched off once and for all. As IPv6 is slowly but surely deployed around the world, we've entered a phase where it's necessary for your devices to be able to communicate using either of the two IP protocols currently in use. more
Given its engineering background, many positive contributions can be made by the engineering community in the broader ICT world to assist in addressing some of the broader internet issues, often addressed within the more limited telecoms environment.. Of course some of this is already happening; however much more work would be needed to strengthen the technical foundations of the internet. Just as an example, the type of issues that could be addressed by a broader ICT engineering foundation could include... more
In 2010 the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) and the Internet industry as a whole lost a great friend and supporter, Mary Litynski. Her dedication, excellence, perseverance and tireless work behind the scenes of M3AAWG helped make the organization the success that it is today. Through this award, M3AAWG seeks to bring attention to the remarkable work that is done far from the public eye over a significant period of time... more
Much has been said about how Google uses the services they provide, including their mail service, their office productivity tools, file storage and similar services, as a means of gathering an accurate profile of each individual user of their services. The company has made a very successful business out of measuring users, and selling those metrics to advertisers. But can we measure Google as they undertake this activity? How many users avail themselves of their services? Perhaps that's a little ambitious at this stage, so maybe a slightly smaller scale may be better. Let's just look at one Google service. more
This is an informal description the evolution of a particular area of network forensic activity, namely that of traceback. This activity typically involves using data recorded at one end of a network transaction, and using various logs and registration records to identify the other party to the transaction. Here we'll look at the impact that IPv4 address exhaustion and IPv6 transition has had on this activity, and also note, as we explore this space, the changing role of IP addresses within the IP protocol architecture. more
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