Networks

Internet Root Servers Hit with Unusual DNS Amplification Attack

On Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, several of the Internet Domain Name System's root name servers received high rate of suspicious queries, reaching as high as 5 million queries per second, according to a report released by the Root Server System Advisory Council. The incident has been categorized as a unique type of DNS amplification attack. more

The Big Bad Internet

I often think there are only two types of stories about the Internet. One is a continuing story of prodigious technology that continues to shrink in physical size and at the same time continue to dazzle and amaze us... The other is a darker evolving story of the associated vulnerabilities of this technology where we've seen "hacking" turn into organised crime and from there into a scale of sophistication that is sometimes termed "cyber warfare". And in this same darker theme one could add the current set of stories about various forms of state sponsored surveillance and espionage on the net. more

United States Is the Most Bot-Infected Country. Right?

A couple of days ago, Threatpost posted an article indicating that the United States is the most bot-infected country... I think that Microsoft's mechanism of measuring bot infections is a good one, not necessarily because it is the most accurate but because it represents the most complete snapshot of botnet statistics. Because Microsoft Windows is installed on so many computers worldwide and because so many users across the world call home to the MSRT, Microsoft is able to collect a very large snapshot of data. more

DNS Oblivion

Technical development often comes in short, intense bursts, where a relatively stable technology becomes the subject of intense revision and evolution. The DNS is a classic example here. For many years this name resolution protocol just quietly toiled away. The protocol wasn't all that secure, and it wasn't totally reliable, but it worked well enough for the purposes we put it to. more

Is LTE Going to Impact Free WiFi?

Developments in LTE are also going to have a significant impact on the unlicensed spectrum, which is currently used by billions of people through their WiFi modems and WiFi services in cities, cafes, airports and other venues. Known as LTE Unlicensed (LTE-U) or Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA), this technology can also ride on top of WiFi networks (without utilising the mobile service), providing high-speed broadband access to users. more

Cuba Getting Faster YouTube Access in Next 24 Hours, Thanks to Deal Signed in December

In the December of last, Cuba singed a deal with Google to enable faster access to content served via its popular platforms such Gmail and YouTube. more

Getting on with Digital Transformation: Three Steps to Making Strategic Technology Choices

In a recently published Uptime Institute Survey, Uptime Institute found that organizations operating data centers are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit professionals skilled in security, networking, and hybrid technologies. This realization comes at an interesting time, as the monolithic business infrastructure built over the last two decades is now entering a period of transformation. more

Do We Need IPv4 at Home/SOHO Any More?

CLAT/NAT64 is utilized across many mobile networks globally, and I am only talking about Ethernet and Wi-Fi in home and small office/home office (SOHO) environments. I experimented by completely disabling IPv4 at home and established a SSID where my MacBook Pro operates without an actual IPv4 address. The MacBook supports CLAT (RFC 6877), and by implementing PREF64 (RFC 8781) and DHCP Option 108 (RFC 8925) in my network, I was able to achieve a 100% IPv6 environment. more

U.S. Outgunned in Hacker War

The Wall Street Journal has an interview with the outgoing head of the FBI's cyber crime investigation Shawn Henry. In it, he has a blunt assessment of the US's capabilities when it comes to combatting online crime, especially data theft and hacking... The more I read around the Internet, the more clear it's becoming at how cyber security is becoming a central focus. This has pretty big implications for the cloud. more

Cisco: Africa in 2017 to Have More Internet Users Than U.S.

Carlos Slim of Telmex tells me the world is about to change. "Two billion more people will connect to the Internet when smartphones cost $50. The phone makers are promising me a $50 phone in 2014." If Spreadtrum and Firefox deliver a $25 smartphone, as promised, that could accelerate takeover. ~310,000,000 Africans will be connected to the Internet in 2017, Arielle Sumits of Cisco predicts... It's inevitable that the U.S. will be dwarfed by the rest of the world. more

Privacy and Security - Five Objectives

It has been a very busy period in the domain of computer security. 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 trees. We are spending large amounts of resources in reacting to various vulnerabilities and attempting to mitigate individual network attacks, but are we making overall progress? What activities would constitute "progress" anyway? more

Maslow’s Hammer Meets the Software Defined Data Center

In my previous post, I talked about the significance of DNS in connection with the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) and Software Defined Networking. Although the second generation DNS provisioning model I outlined should have seemed straight-forward enough, in real life it is anything but. In my view, the real-world complications of a seemingly trivial issue are largely related to how the network industry approaches IP addressing. more

Netflix Has Buyer’s Remorse Over Its Paid Peering Deal With Comcast

Soon after capitulating to Comcast's surcharge demand for improved treatment of its traffic, Netflix got better downstream delivery speeds. Apparently Comcast did not have to undertake a major bandwidth expansion program. Much to the immediate relief of Netflix, Comcast merely needed to allocate more ports for Netflix traffic. So with a reallocation of available bandwidth, Comcast solved Netflix's quality of service dilemma apparently without degrading service to anyone else, upstream or downstream. more

A Look at How the Internet Routes Around Damage: Measuring Global Effects of Storm Sandy

Hurricane Sandy caused major damage in both the Caribbean and the North-Eastern part of the USA. In an earlier article (RIPE Atlas - Superstorm Sandy) we showed data on 15 RIPE Atlas probes that are located in or near the affected areas in the USA. Most of these locations now appear to be back to normal round trip times to targets we monitor. But the effects of Hurricane Sandy were felt beyond the immediately affected area. more

First Square Mile is not the Last or First Mile: Discovery not Just Choices!

The term "last mile" highlights the fact that we are the consumers at the end of a broadband "pipe". Saying "first mile" is a little better but the Internet is not a pipe to or from somewhere else. It's about what we can do locally and then what we can do when we interconnect with other neighborhoods. It's better to describe our neighborhood as the first square mile. Telecom is about selling us services; the Internet is about what we can do ourselves locally and then interconnecting with others everywhere. In writing the First Square Mile - Our Neighborhood essay which I just posted I came to better understand the fundamental difference between the world of telecom which is about giving you choices and the Internet which provides opportunity to discover what we can't anticipate... more