April 2013 archive

Apr 30

CERN Celebrates 20 Years of The Free And Open Web (Featured Blog)

Of all the many applications and services that run on top of the Internet, arguably none has been more successful than that of the World Wide Web. Invented by Tim Berners-Lee back in 1989 while he was a physicist at CERN, the "Web" has fundamentally changed almost every aspect of our life... and become a part of basically every aspect of our life. Think of a part of your life... and then think of the websites that are part of that. More...

Apr 30

CERN Celebrates 20 Years of The Free And Open Web (Featured Blog)

More...

Apr 30

FIR Podcast Hits Episode #700 – Publishes Special Interview With Shel and Neville

As most readers probably know by now, I'm been a weekly contributor to the "For Immediate Release (FIR)" podcast since back in 2005, and all those years later I continue to find the FIR episodes extremely useful ways to stay up on what is going on with social media, marketing, PR, podcasting and the intersection of all of those topics along with technology and business.

Last week Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, the FIR co-hosts, passed the tremendous milestone of FIR episode #700. It's a pretty remarkable achievement to publish 700 instances of anything... but of a 60-90 minute podcast, week after week after week, is pretty amazing.

Shel and Neville tried to keep the actual FIR episode #700 to be fairly "regular" in terms of content, but at a suggestion from the FIR Google+ Community, they did allow themselves to be interviewed by Donna Papacosta about the show. Both the show and the interview are well worth listening to, in my opinion.

Congratulations, Shel and Neville, on publishing 700 episodes of FIR! Now I'm looking forward to the next 700 episodes...

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

Apr 30

Can DNSSEC and DANE Help Make Voice-over-IP (VoIP) and Unified Communications (UC) More Secure?

Can DNSSEC help make voice and video communications over IP more secure?  Could DNSSEC combined with DANE provide a means to more easily distribute the TLS/SSL certificates needed for VoIP phones and systems?  Can DNSSEC help ensure that you are talking with the correct VoIP system or application server?  Can DNSSEC improve the security of the many WebRTC-based clients being developed? How can a DNS-based public key infrastructure (PKI) help improved the security of IP-based communications?  (whether you call it “VoIP”, “unified communications”, “real-time communications” or just simply “telecommunications”)

These were among the questions that I set out to address in a presentation at the SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) 2013 last week in Reston, Virginia. Speaking to network operators ranging from large carriers and telcos to smaller “over-the-top (OTT)” startups, I used this set of slides to frame the discussion:

I also spoke about how two VoIP software products have already incorporated DNSSEC – the Jitsi softphone and the Kamailio server – and mentioned the new “DNSSEC and IP-based Communications” resource page I’m starting to build (and for which I would appreciate any suggestions).

I don’t necessarily have the “answers” to these questions (although I have opinions :-) )… I was more starting to raise the questions. The DNS community has been building this mechanism (DNSSEC) that provides a “trust layer” and can increase the security of DNS, as well as, via DANE, the entire TLS/SSL certificate infrastructure that we have come to rely upon.  How can we use these improvements to increase the security of IP communications?

For some further context, you may be interested in this recording I made on the topic:

I think there could be some good potential benefit here – and I’m looking forward to further discussions on this topic in the weeks and months ahead.  I’d love to hear your thoughts… either as comments to this post on our site or in social networks … or via direct email to me.

How could we use DNSSEC to increase the overall security of our communications infrastructure?

 

P.S.  I’ll also be appearing on the VoIP Users Conference (VUC) podcast on this coming Friday, May 3, 2013, to discuss these ideas within that community (to which anyone is welcome to join in). More details soon… 

Apr 30

Comcast Launches IPv6 Trials For Business Customers – Sign Up Today

comcast business logoWe were very pleased to see news yesterday on Comcast’s corporate blog about the launch of IPv6 services for businesses. Comcast’s John Jason Brzowski wrote there that:

  • Business Ethernet customers have had full IPv6 service and support in place for them since the beginning of 2013.

  • IPv6 trials are about to get underway for our Business Internet customers and we hope to launch full support shortly after completing the trials. Customers interested in signing up to participate in the trials can do so at http://www.comcast6.net/index.php/commercial-broadband-ipv6-form.

It is excellent to see Comcast offering these trials to their business users and we look forward to hearing of the success of those trials and the move to full IPv6 support.  Congrats to the team at Comcast for getting to this point.

If you are a Comcast Business customer, now is a time when you can sign up and get started with ensuring that your networks work fine with IPv6.   Why wait?

Apr 25

DNSSEC and IP Communications (including VoIP, UC, RTC, SIP)

This page will serve as a repository of information related to how DNSSEC and DANE can work with communications protocols based on IP, including voice-over-IP (VoIP), unified communications (UC). real-time communications (RTC) and the use of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

Documentation

  • (need to identify any documentation on this topic)

Presentation Slides

Communities

There is a good amount of discussion about DNSSEC happening in various DNSSEC communities around the Internet although at the current time there is no specific area focused on VoIP and DNSSEC.

Softphones

We are aware of the following softphones that support IPv6:

Communications Equipment and Software

Beyond softphones, we are aware of the following equipment that supports IPv6.

Additional resources will be added to this page as we become aware of them.

Know of additional resources related to IPv6 and IP communications that we should list?  Please let us know!

Apr 24

Video – Interview with Jan Zorz at PLNOG

Our team member Jan Zorz was in Poland recently to attend the PLNOG meeting, he was interviewed about what he is doing with the Internet Society.  You can now watch and hear Jan talking about how he is seeking to engage with more network operators around best current operational practices:

Apr 23

IPv6 and IP Communications (including VoIP, UC, RTC, SIP)

This page will serve as a repository of information of information related to IPv6 and communications protocols based on IP, including voice-over-IP (VoIP), unified communications (UC). real-time communications (RTC) and the use of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

(NOTE: Need to include reference here to how WebRTC is designed to work with IPv6.)

Documentation

Presentation Slides

Communities

There is a good amount of discussion about IPv6 happening in various IPv6 communities around the Internet. More specific discussion about IPv6 and IP communications is happening here:

Softphones

We are aware of the following softphones that support IPv6:

Communications Equipment

Beyond softphones, we are aware of the following equipment that supports IPv6.

(NOTE: Links need to be added, ideally to IPv6-specific pages. Also, it is worth considering whether this list should be moved to a separate page.)

IP Phones (Desktop):

  • Avaya (unclear on exact models)
  • Mitel 53xx Series
  • Mocet
  • Siemens OpenStage
  • Snom
  • Yealink SIP-T2x

IP-PBXs/Call Servers:

  • Asterisk 1.8+
  • Brekeke SIP
  • Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.1
  • Freeswitch 1.1+
  • Kamailio 3.1+
  • Microsoft Lync Server 2013
  • OpenSIPS
  • Voxeo Prophecy and PRISM

Other SIP Devices

  • Cisco SIP Gateways ( ISR 28XX & 38XX, AS5400 )
  • Dialogic SBCs
  • Mediatrix
  • Mitel Border Gateway (MBG)

SIP Services (in the cloud)

  • INUM.net

Additional resources will be added to this page as we become aware of them.

Know of additional resources related to IPv6 and IP communications that we should list?  Please let us know!

Apr 23

Video – DNSSEC Deployment In The .GOV TLD (LISA 2012)

How did the deployment of DNSSEC go within the .GOV top-level domain? What kind of errors were found in the deployment?  What lessons were learned?  If they could start it all again, what would they do differently?

These were all questions discussed by Scott Rose of the US NIST in a talk last December at LISA 12 (where we had ION San Diego) titled “DNSSEC Deployment In The .GOV TLD“.   As we can know from NIST’s own statistics it was a long road to get DNSSEC deployed – but the latest stats now show around 81% of all .GOV domains being signed.

Scott’s talk is quite good and offers some good lessons for anyone interested in rolling out DNSSEC in a very large organization or community.  From the LISA 12 presentation page, you can either watch the video or listen to the audio.

DNSSEC in .GOV

Apr 22

SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) Starts Tonight in Herndon, Virginia (Featured Blog)

Tonight begins the third annual SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) in Herndon, Virginia, where technical and operations staff from service providers around the world with gather to share information and learn about the latest trends in IP communications services - and specifically those based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Produced by the nonprofit SIP Forum, SIPNOC is an educational event sharing best practices, deployment information and technology updates. Attendees range from many traditional telecom carriers to newer VoIP-focused service providers and application developers. More...