January 2015 archive

Are You Protected By DNSSEC? A Quick Way To Check

Want a quick way to check if you have DNSSEC validation working at your site? Just go to:

https://www.dnssec-tools.org/test/

You’ll see either a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down:

Thumbs Up DNSSEC Tools Thumbs Down

If you get a thumbs-up then all the DNS queries were validated with DNSSEC.  If you get a thumbs-down then your local DNS resolver is either not validating with DNSSEC or is not validating all queries.  Time to figure out what’s wrong!

If you need to configure DNSSEC validation, we recommend SURFnet’s white paper that includes easy steps for common DNS resolvers.

And if you know very little about DNSSEC and want to learn more, please visit our Start Here page to begin!

My Four Words For 2015

2015 four words 300pxAs I have done for the past several years now, I like to start off on January 1 with a post about a few "words" that represent aspirations I have for the year. As I did last year for 2014, I'm going to write about four words for 2015, as compared to the three words I wrote about in 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010. And while I've been doing this for my own reasons, I should credit Chris Brogan for starting the idea of writing in this way publicly many years ago. So here is my current thinking for 2015...

ESSENTIALS

Over the past six months or so I've been giving a great amount of thought to what exactly I want to be doing - in many different aspects of my life. Part of that came about as part of looking at my role within the Internet Society and thinking about what makes the most sense for my particular skills and interests. But perhaps a larger part came about in some of the reading and discussions my wife and I have been having around what many call "minimalism" or variations on that theme. Basically... looking at how to do fewer things better. We only have so many hours in the day and we choose how we are going to spend those hours... and we choose what we give our attention to. My wife's ongoing experience with cancer treatments has certainly changed our overall perspective and made us think about what is most important to us.

This year I want to continue that effort into distilling things down to what are really the "essentials" in my life upon which I wish to focus. This may mean focusing more and putting aside some side projects... or admitting that some project ideas may just never happen - and that's okay.

To go back to that wonderful quote from the poet Mary Oliver:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

And even more so... what will I do - or not do - in pursuit of that?

BOOKS

Given that my last book was published four years ago back in 2011, I do feel a bit of a desire to have another book come out some time soon. An obvious candidate is to pitch O'Reilly on doing a Second Edition of Migrating Applications to IPv6 given that a lot has changed in four years and that there is much more that can be said about IPv6 based on the deployment experience to date. I also have several ideas for books in the telephony/telecom/VoIP space.

I also have several ideas for books outside the pure technology space... more in the public relations / marketing / social media space. And there are some other ideas I have floating around my head...

Ideas for books are easy... it's making the time to create the book that is the challenge! I'd like to see what I can do in 2015 to at least get some book project underway.

HEALTH

"Health" was actually one of my three words back in 2010 and as I noted in my 2011 post I went far in 2010 dropping 45 pounds and starting to get into running. Last year "running" was one of my words and I'm now pretty confident that running is part of my lifestyle and just part of what I do.

But... now this year I need to focus a bit broader than just running. It's been a while since I've had a physical and there are some other health issues I'd like to address. It's time to do a bit more to ensure I'm around for the long term.

CURLING

This is not so much an aspiration as an admission that this year may more heavily involve the sport of curling that I enjoy so much. There are two aspects here. First, my soon-to-be-13-year-old daughter enjoys curling and shows some interest in doing more competitively. IF she does that (and it's still an "if"), that will set us on a potential path of bonspiels (tournaments) and camps that may set the tone for much of our family activity for the year. We'll see. Second, I very much want to see this be the year when we start making some headway with starting up the Monadnock Curling Club and looking at bringing the sport of curling to our region of New Hampshire.


That's what I'm thinking about right now for this year... I have a sense that 2015 could be a big year on a number of different fronts... we'll have to see how it turns out.

Meanwhile... Happy New Year! May 2015 be a great year for you!


An audio version of this post is available:


If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:


TDYR 211 – My Four Words For 2015

What are my aspirations for 2015? This episode speaks about my "four words" for 2015. More details here: http://www.danyork.com/2015/01/my-four-words-for-2015.html

TDYR 211 – My Four Words For 2015

TDYR 211 - My Four Words For 2015 by Dan York

Happy New Year! Do Your 2015 Plans Include IPv6, DNSSEC or TLS?

2015Happy New Year!  It’s 2015 … what are you going to do differently this year?  Will you get your websites working over IPv6?  Will you sign your domains with DNSSEC and enable validation?  Will you use TLS for all your websites and applications?

We’re looking forward to a great 2015. We’ll be holding ION conferences around the world, including ION Sri Lanka coming up shortly on January 18. We’ll be writing on our blog and posting video, audio, slides and more to all our various sites and services. We’ll be speaking and participating at events from ICANN, IETF and many, many more.  We’ll be helping get more BCOP documents written and doing whatever we can to improve communication between network operators and the IETF.

2015 is going to be a great year!

If you haven’t yet made technical plans for 2015, may we suggest some ideas?  How about:

  • Set up your DNS resolvers to perform DNSSEC validation – there’s a great whitepaper that shows how easy this is!
  • Join the MANRS Initiative and declare publicly that your network will help keep the Internet’s routing infrastructure clean! See the MANRS document for more info.

Why not make one of these your resolution for the year and see what can happen?

We’re here to help… check out our Start Here page to find resources that may work for you… and please let us know if you can’t find what you are looking for!

Let’s make 2015 amazing!