July 2013 archive

Jul 25

IETF Journal – WebRTC: Moving Real-Time Communication into the Web Browser

Webrtc 2Seeking to understand the basics of WebRTC and why there is so much interest in it? There is a new July 2013 issue of the IETF Journal out this week that includes an article I wrote titled "WebRTC: Moving Real-Time Communication into the Web Browser" that looks at WebRTC from a high-level user perspective.

My aim with this IETF Journal article links was to summarize some of the links on my my WebRTC/RTCWEB page and is admittedly similar in style to my 2012 post, "How WebRTC Will Fundamentally Disrupt Telecom (And Change The Internet)", although this newer article focuses on the work happening within the IETF and provides links to get more involved.

On that note, the RTCWEB working group within the IETF will be meeting next week in Berlin (twice, actually) and has an agenda for IETF87 focused primarily on security questions and looking at the "data channel" aspect of WebRTC/RTCWEB. It should, as always, be an interesting session to listen in to.

If you can't get to Berlin, there are audio streams you can listen to remotely and a Jabber chat room where you can raise questions. Links to both can be found on the top of the agenda page. Do keep in mind that the times listed are local to Berlin, Germany.

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Jul 25

“Rough Guide To IETF 87″ Now Available – IPv6, DNSSEC, Routing and much, much more…

IETF LogoNext week is the 87th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), taking place this time in Berlin, Germany, and it will be an incredibly busy week as something like 1,200-1,500 engineers gather in a hotel meeting space to debate and discuss various topics and create the open standards that power the Internet.  There are many different working groups meeting during the week and the IETF 87 agenda can seem a bit overwhelming.  To help with that, as we’ve done in the past, the Internet Society has published our “Rough Guide to IETF 87″ available at:

http://www.internetsociety.org/rough-guide-ietf87

This document reflects our (Internet Society) interests and what we see as the important topics related to the technology priorities we have an an organization.  The working groups and events listed are ones where we have Internet Society staff participating or where the topic being covered is one of our priorities.

For instance, within our team here at Deploy360, we’ll be there in Berlin at the working groups related to:

  • IPv6
  • DNSSEC
  • Routing resiliency and security

Most of which, but not all, are captured in the Rough Guide.  As we noted in an earlier post about DNSSEC activities, there are two groups focused on DNSSEC and DANE that are of great interest to us.  There are a wide number of IPv6-related groups in which we’ll be participating and several groups related to routing resiliency and security.

If you are reading this page here on our Deploy360 site, hopefully the Rough Guide will help you understand where we will be spending our time.

There are, of course, a great many other working groups meeting next week at IETF 87 that are doing outstanding work in Internet infrastructure, applications, routing, security, real-time communications, network operations and so much more.  The full agenda for IETF 87 is an amazing list of all the great open standards work happening across the IETF!

NOTE: If you unable to attend IETF 87 in Berlin in person, there are numerous methods of remote participation that you will allow you to listen to what is going on and to provide comments.

Jul 25

Apple Celebrates 1 Billion Podcast Subscriptions Via iTunes!

By way of a Facebook update from Donna Papacosta, I learned that Apple announced that there have been over 1 billion podcast subscriptions through iTunes. Yes, one billion subscriptions! And indeed opening up iTunes, going to the iTunes Store and clicking on "Podcasts" gets you this banner:

Itunes 1 billion podcasts banner 2

Clicking on the banner gets you to a page in iTunes celebrating this milestone and highlighting some of the popular podcasts:

Itunes 1 billion podcasts

Now, granted, this doesn't say how many of those subscriptions are actually listened to - I know that I have subscribed to a number of shows that I just don't get a chance to play. Nor does it say whether this is a historical or current number, i.e. are there 1 billion podcast subscriptions right now or is this going back to when it all started in 2005? (In other words, does it count subscriptions which were then later ended?)

Regardless, it's a huge number and definitely something to celebrate for those of us who enjoy the medium of podcasting and listening to (or contributing to) podcasts!

Many thanks to Donna for passing along the word of this milestone!

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Jul 24

TDYR #024 – SoundCloud’s Crashing iOS App Is A Reminder To Have Multiple Tools

Today was frustrating in that the SoundCloud app on iOS kept crashing when I tried to upload a recording. It turns out that this is a known issue and a fix has been submitted to the app store: http://help.soundcloud.com/customer/portal/articles/1228230-i-m-having-problems-with-my-iphone-ipad-app But this occurrence reminded me that if you want to be creating content you can't rely on only one tool. Thankfully, I also have the Hindenburg Field Recorder (HFR) app on my iPhone which had no problem uploading to SoundCloud. Now, it's NOT a free app. In fact at $29.99 it's one of the more expensive that I have on my iPhone - but it is excellent for recording and editing audio. More info is at: http://hindenburgsystems.com/products/hindenburg-field-recorder I was using the SoundCloud iOS app because it was easy and convenient, but this crashing may inadvertently cause me to switch to using HFR that much more.

Jul 23

INET DC, Weds, July 24: Surveillance, Cybersecurity and the Internet’s Future (Livestream available) (Featured Blog)

Are you concerned about the recent reports about government surveillance programs? Are you concerned about security and privacy online? If so, you may want to attend (in person or remotely) the INET Washington DC event happening on Wednesday, July 24, from 2:00 - 6:00 pm US Eastern time at George Washington University. Sponsored by the Internet Society and GWU's Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute, the event is free and open to the public and will also be streamed live on the Internet for those who cannot attend in person. More...

Jul 23

INET DC, Weds, July 24: Surveillance, Cybersecurity and the Internet’s Future (Livestream available) (Featured Blog)

More...

Jul 23

2 DNSSEC / DANE Sessions Next Week At IETF 87 In Berlin

IETF LogoNext week is the 87th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)  in Berlin, Germany, and there will be two working groups meeting that are related to DNSSEC on the agenda:

DNSOP

The DNSOP (DNS Operations) Working Group will meet on Thursday, August 1, from 1520-1650 (Berlin time) in the Bellevue room.  There are 3 major items on the DNSOP agenda, but the one of strong importance related to DNSSEC is the discussion about how to communicate that there has been a change in the Key Signing Key (KSK) from a child zone up to a parent zone.  In other words, when you create a new KSK for your child zone, can we get an automated way to communicate the existence of this new KSK to the parent zone so that a DS record can be created and the global chain of trust can be updated?

Somewhat ironically, I experienced this precise issue myself last week when, during the DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 47, a KSK on one of my personal zones expired.  The company providing DNS hosting for that domain automatically generated a new KSK, but they have no way of alerting the parent zone (.ORG in this case) that a new DS record is ready for upload.  I had to login to the web interface for my registrar and copy/paste the DS record from the web interface of my DNS hosting provider.  Meanwhile, my domain was failing validation.

There are two different proposals for mechanisms to automate this process.  Warren Kumari, Olafur Gudmundsson and George Barwood submitted draft-kumari-ogud-dnsop-cds that proposed the creation of a new “CDS” record type in DNS.  Essentially, the parent zone will periodically poll the child zones and if a new CDS record is found the parent zone will update the DS record for the zone.  Separately, Wes Hardaker developed draft-hardaker-dnsop-csync providing a similar but broader mechanism for synchronizing child and parent zones. This draft involves the creation of a “CSYNC” record type in DNS which tells the parent zone which records in the child zone need to be updated in the parent zone.  Wes originally wrote the draft to look at how to synchronize NS records and their associated A and AAAA records (what we often call “glue” records) between child and parent zones but then added support for DS and DNSKEY records to stimulate further discussion.

At DNSOP there will be a joint presentation about the two drafts with an interest in looking at “where do we go from here”.  It should be an interesting discussion and if you are unable to attend in person you can listen to the remote audio stream at the specified time.

DANE

Right after DNSOP, the DANE Working Group will meet on Thursday, August 1, from 1700-1830 (Berlin time) in the Potsdam 1 room.  With RFC 6698 now specifying the DANE protocol the WG is focused more on how DANE will be used by various services.  The agenda has not yet been posted, but there has been active discussion on the DANE mailing list about drafts relating to using DANE with email (both SMTP and S/MIME) and with voice-over-IP (SIP) as well as with OpenPGP and OTR.  As someone who sees DANE as a powerful reason to deploy DNSSEC, I’m very much looking foward to the discussion in this group and to seeing where DANE is going.

If you are unable to attend IETF 87 in person, you will be able to listen remotely to the DANE working group at its specified time.

Jul 22

FIR #713 – 7/22/13 – For Immediate Release

Brian Solis interview up, Youtility book review coming; Quick News: Facebook metrics dustup, a medical Instagram, fear of missing out (FOMO) and headlines for Twitter; Ragan promo; News That Fits: what brands can learn from today's newsrooms, Dan York's report, PR and sponsored content, Media Monitoring Minute from CustomScoop, listener comments, summer's the season to reassess your social media presence, Michael Netzley's Asia report, a look at social signals; how to comment; music from Mother Redcap; and more.

Jul 18

Over 8% Of Internet Users Now Use DNSSEC Validation, per Geoff Huston

Yesterday Geoff Huston published a long post on CircleID titled “DNS, DNSSEC and Google’s Public DNS Service” where he walks through the ongoing DNSSEC measurement efforts he and his team have been doing using flash-based advertisements.  I recommend reading through the entire post, but the key part I was pleased to see was simply this:

Since March 2013 we’ve seen the proportion of end users who use DNSSEC resolvers that perform DNSSEC validation rise from 3.3% to 8.1%, or a rise of some 4.7%.

As Geoff notes, most of this rise was due to DNSSEC validation now being performed by Google’s Public DNS service, but his article has some fascinating statistics about where Google Public DNS seems to be being used.

He also lists the countries with the highest percentage of DNSSEC-validating clients.  To no surprise given their long involvement with DNSSEC, Sweden came out on top but a number of the other countries listed may not be the ones you might expect.

It is all very cool to see and I look forward to watching these percentages grow over time!

Jul 18

TDYR #023 – The Energy Of Africa

As I prepare to leave South Africa, I recorded some final thoughts on the energy and enthusiasm I have found here...