April 2012 archive

Apr 11

FCC DNSSEC Implementation Guidlines for ISPs

In March 2012, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published a set of “DNSSEC Implementation Practices for ISPs” through one of the working groups of the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC).  The full report can be downloaded in PDF at:

http://transition.fcc.gov/bureaus/pshs/advisory/csric3/CSRIC-III-WG5-Final-Report.pdf

The 29-page document provides the following:

  • A brief overview of DNS and DNSSEC
  • A view of the current state of DNSSEC deployment
  • How Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can use DNSSEC
  • An analysis of the key drivers and challenges for implementing DNSSEC
  • Specific best practice recommendations to ISPs for deploying DNSSEC

If you are a network operator or Internet service provider seeking to understand the steps you need to undertake to support DNSSEC, this document is highly recommended.

Apr 11

Network World Tests Six IPv6-Enabled Application Delivery Controllers (load balancers)

Back in February, Scott Hogg at Network World put together a “Clear Choice Test” on “IPv6-Enabled Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs)” that explored the idea of using an ADC (what we used to think of typically as a “server load balancer”) to IPv6-enable content that exists on IPv4-only web servers.  As the intro to the series of posts explains:

If an organization were to deploy an IPv6-capable Server Load Balancer (SLB) or, using the most current term, Application Delivery Controller (ADC), they could configure an IPv6 Virtual IP (VIP) and an IPv4-only server farm.

This would allow Web apps hosted on IPv4-only servers to appear to the Internet user as IPv6-applications. The way it works is that clients would connect to the IPv6 VIP, and the ADC would perform a reverse-proxy function and terminate the IPv6 HTTP Internet connection, then create a new IPv4 HTTP back-end connection to the IPv4-only application servers. The server would not necessarily know the IP version being used by the client and it would happily return the data to the ADC appliance using IPv4. The ADC appliance takes that IPv4 response from the server, copies the HTTP application data and transmits it back to the IPv6-connected client.

Essentially, you are using your load-balancing infrastructure to also proxy the IPv6 to IPv4 connection.

It’s quite a useful and interesting idea for enterprises who want to make their content available over IPv6  (particularly with World IPv6 Launch approaching) but are concerned about making changes directly to their current web servers.  It may be easier as a first step to make changes to your ADC infrastructure (or even to install such an infrastructure).

Sadly, Network World has now locked this good content behind a registration wall and so you can only read their full report if you sign up to be an “Insider”. This is “free” in cost but does require you to provide info for them to track and monitor your usage.  If you are registered already or are okay doing so you’ll be able to read the full report and recommendations.  If you don’t want to register, the idea in general may be worth pursuing and you should explore your options.  (Wikipedia has a nice writeup on Application Delivery Networks that provides names and links to some of the vendors involved.)

Apr 11

Twitter Can Help You Escape Kidnappers (in South Africa)

Fascinating story at Ars Techica: "Twitter helps free kidnapped South African from trunk of his car." A man in South Africa was stuffed into the trunk of his own car when thieves stole it, but they neglected to take his mobile phone from him... and so he texted his girlfriend... who then turned to Twitter!

Twitter and kidnappingIt's actually quite a good example of how Twitter can be used by a variety of different people to help deal with a situation happening right now. We've seen this kind of response using Twitter with disasters and natural events... nice to see the Twitter network effect also helping in the case of an individual.

And very good to hear that the gent in question made it out safely.

The full story is worth a read...

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

Apr 10

Video: Short Documentary on 2012 Curling Nationals in Philadelphia

A gent named Jeff Albertini produced this great short video about the 2012 US National Curling Championships in Philadelphia:

Philly Curling Nationals 2012 Documentary Short from Jeff Albertini on Vimeo.

Nicely done!

Apr 10

Would You Buy a ".blog" Domain Name?

DotblogIf you could get a domain name ending in ".blog" for your blog site, would you buy one?

Over on Domain Incite, Kevin Murphy reports on the first applicant to publicly state that they are applying for ".blog" as part of the massive generic top-level domain (gTLD) expansion by ICANN. Murphy expects that ".blog" will probably be the most heavily contested new gTLD, meaning that multiple companies will be vying to be the registry for ".blog". He points out:

Media analysts NM Incite (great name) tracked 181 million blogs in 2011, up by about 25 million from 2010. A gTLD that could grab just 1% of that business would still be a nice little earner.

I'm not sure, myself. I remain rather skeptical that people will break out of their reliance on ".com" and go for all these other gTLDs. We've seen some of the existing gTLDs like ".biz" and ".pro" that haven't really gone anywhere. (In fact, the only .biz address I personally am aware of is the FIR podcast.)

Still, with a range of more gTLDs perhaps we finally will see people starting to use and accept other domain endings beyond .com/.org or the various country codes.

But would I register "danyork.blog"? or "disruptiveconversations.blog"?

Probably not, given that I already own the .com and .org variants on the names... although admittedly "danyork.blog" would be tempting purely because I do own .com/.org/.me/etc. and could see that one fitting in well with my "personal brand" online. Probably not for my other sites because I already have established names for them.

If I were crazy enough to start up another new blog, the ".blog" gTLD might be interesting... although to be honest I find the name "blog" to be a bit tired these days. I tend to talk more about my "sites" versus my "blogs" as the difference between what is considered a "blog" and what is considered a regular "web site" seems to get increasingly narrow. I'm not sure if I would want a new site to be labeled as a "blog".

What about you? If a ".blog" becomes available sometime in 2013, would you buy one?

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

Apr 10

Want To Monitor the North American IPv6 Summit? Follow #NAv6Summit on Twitter

Would you like to track what is going on at the North American IPv6 Summit this week in Denver?  If so, just follow the #NAv6Summit hashtag on Twitter. A number of people are tweeting out some of the major points and occasionally providing photos like this one:

As we noted yesterday, our Richard Jimmerson is there presenting today, in fact, as part of a panel about World IPv6 Launch.

Apr 10

An Excellent Collection of Node.js Links

Nodejs logoWant to learn more about Node.js, a topic I’ve frequently written about here? If so, a friend recently pointed me to an excellent collection of Node.js-related links compiled by Stanislav Stoyanov:

My Node.js Linksheet

(UPDATE 5 Mar 2013: It seems that the site may unfortunately no longer be available. In a quick search online I was unable to find any alternative sites hosting the document.)

It’s a great collection of companies, tools, games, platforms, frameworks and more all associated with Node.js. While Joyent also maintains a list of Node.js resources, this list from Stanislav Stoyanov contains many excellent pointers for those looking to learn more and get started with Node.js.

Great work!

Apr 10

Skype Hits 40 Million Simultaneous Users!

Congrats to the folks at Skype for hitting over 40 million concurrent users! Today at 2pm US Eastern when I typed "/users" in any Skype chat on my Mac, I got this great message (Windows users should see the count in the lower left corner of the Skype client):

Skype 40million

That's a pretty amazing milestone, given that some of us can remember back to when the concurrent user count was in the upper 20s (early 2011) or even way back to the earlier days when it was down in the low millions (2007). This time of day has historically been one of the highest times, so I expect that we'll see the count drop off for the remainder of the day and then hit this number again tomorrow around early afternoon US Eastern time.

Hudson Barton has an interesting trend chart showing the growth of Skype users over time:

SkypeStatistics Aaytch

The jump in the last quarter has been particularly dramatic - and probably has much to do with the expanded availability of Skype on smartphones and other devices.

Regardless of the reason, it's a rather amazing milestone. Congrats to the folks at Skype!

P.S. Skype now has a blog post up about this milestone as well.

UPDATE #1 - A couple of folks have asked about how Skype can have 40 million people online concurrently. The answer is that Skype uses a peer-to-peer (P2P) network architecture. I explained a bit of this back in November 2010 in "A Brief Primer on the Tech Behind Skype, P2PSIP and P2P Networks". Those of you seeking more info may find that post - and the related links - useful.

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

Apr 10

Video: Here Comes Another Bubble (The Richter Scales)

After yesterday's news of Facebook's acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion USD, a friend pointed out that perhaps the only response is this video from The Richter Scales... :-)

Note - the "credits" page has some interesting links to follow.

Apr 09

Deploy360 Team at North American IPv6 Summit in Denver This Week

If you are attending the North American IPv6 Summit in Denver, Colorado, from April 9-11, Deploy360′s Richard Jimmerson will be out there participating in a panel discussion around World IPv6 Launch.  He’s looking forward to engaging in conversations with people about deploying IPv6 and meeting up with people from around North America who are making IPv6 usage a reality. If you would like to contact Richard to meet with him at the event, please email jimmerson@isoc.org.

For more information about the North American IPv6 Summit or to register, please visit:

http://www.rmv6tf.org/IPv6Summit.htm