Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Author's posts
Dec 04
TDYR 190 – The Community Breakfasts For The Homeless Begin In Keen
Dec 04
More Observations About The "Wire" App
Group Chats ARE Persistent
In my post yesterday I said that it seemed like Wire group chats were "persistent" (something I'd previously written about with regard to Skype). Today I can confirm that they ARE persistent. When I fired up the Wire app this morning I received all the messages that had been posted into the group chat overnight while I'd been offline.
Further, when I went to add someone to the group chat, I received this message:
The Wire team also deserves credit for how smoothly they make the scrolling back through the chat history. Works very well!
No IPv6... yet
Friends tested Wire in an IPv6-only network and confirmed that it unfortunately does not yet work. In reaching out to someone at Wire the word was that they are definitely investigating this to see what can be done. The issue is that the Wire app connects to Amazon EC2 servers - so it's really an issue of Amazon's capabilities.
I will say again that Wire at the very least deserves credit for coming out with a website, www.wire.com, what works over IPv6! That immediately puts them far ahead of most other communications startups.
The Mac OS X Client Rocks!
Wow! What a great desktop client! It works extremely well. I loved the ability to drag and drop images directly into a chat window. Calls worked great from the client. So far a great experience!
The Heavy Use Of Profile Pictures Takes Getting Used To
The profile photo you use winds up being the background for the entire screen on the mobile device - or for the sidebar in the Mac and iPad clients. And that photo changes to be of the last person with whom you communicated. Sometimes that can lead to a bit of strange user view depending upon the profile photo used. Here's one that worked fine for me:
... but others were a bit strange. The ubuiquitous presence of the photos does take a bit to get used to.
The Use Of Colors Is Fun
Wire lets you choose a color in the settings. This is then used for the highlighting and cursor color that you see. It also shows up in other places such as this listing of people:
... where it shows the colors people are using. I can see people having fun with this.
Pings Are Useful
At first I was skeptical of what a "ping" could really be useful for (remember Facebook's "Poke"?). But then a friend sent a ping while I was off in some other app - on my Mac I got this nice big box:
I could then just hit "REPLY" and flip over to the Wire app. Of course, he sent another ping and I then had the option to silence the pings:
It was a useful way to know there was something to pay attention to over in Wire. Obviously this could be abused... I've not yet checked into what settings there are to control this.
More To Explore...
I continue to be quite impressed with both the iOS and Mac versions of Wire. More thoughts as I get a chance to experiment further...
P.S. If you are using Wire, feel free to find me as "Dan York" or "dyork@lodestar2.com" ...
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Dec 04
Attending ICANN 52 In Singapore? Why Not Speak About DNSSEC or DANE?
Time is running out! We have already received several excellent proposals for the ICANN 52 DNSSEC Workshop to be held on Wednesday, February 11, 2015 at ICANN 52 in Singapore and only have room for a few more presentations! If you work with DNSSEC or DANE and will be at ICANN 52, we would encourage you to submit a proposal for consideration for the 6+ hour DNSSEC Workshop to be held on the Wednesday of the ICANN week.
All you need to do right now is send a short (1-2 sentences) proposal to dnssec-singapore@isoc.org expressing your interest and saying what you would like to talk about.
We published the full Call for Participation here that gives many suggestions for the type of topics we’d like to include. Looking at the agenda for the recent ICANN 51 DNSSEC Workshop in L.A. may also help give you ideas.
Please let us know soon if you are interested in being considered for the program!
Thank you!
Dec 04
Call For Participation – ICANN 52 DNSSEC Workshop on 11 Feb 2015 In Singapore (Featured Blog)
Dec 04
Want To Speak About Your DNSSEC Or DANE Work, Tool or Service? (ICANN52 CFP)
Will you be attending ICANN 52 in Singapore in February 2015? If so, and if you work with DNSSEC or DANE , we are seeking speakers for the ICANN 52 DNSSEC Workshop to be held on Wednesday, February 11, 2015.
The full Call for Participation is included below, but the key point is – we are looking for proposals from people who want to talk about interesting, innovative and new ways they are using DNSSEC or DANE … new tools… new services… new research … new case studies… demos of new tools/services… basically any new information that can help people understand better the value of DNSSEC and DANE and also the ways in which it can be more easily implemented and used.
Speaking at an ICANN DNSSEC Workshop is a great way to get your ideas and information out to members of the DNSSEC technical community – and the sessions are also archived and viewed by people long after the event is over.
If you are interested in participating, please send a brief (1-2 sentence) description of your proposed presentation to dnssec-singapore@isoc.org by Wednesday, 10 December 2014. (Updated deadline – originally it was December 3.)
Call for Participation — ICANN DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 52 in Singapore
The DNSSEC Deployment Initiative and the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme, in cooperation with the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC), are planning a DNSSEC Workshop at the ICANN 52 meeting on 11 February 2015 in Singapore. The DNSSEC Workshop has been a part of ICANN meetings for several years and has provided a forum for both experienced and new people to meet, present and discuss current and future DNSSEC deployments. For reference, the most recent session was held at the ICANN meeting in Los Angeles on 15 October 2014. The presentations and transcripts are available at: http://la51.icann.org/en/schedule/wed-dnssec.
We are seeking presentations on the following topics:
1. DNSSEC activities in Asia
For this panel we are seeking participation from those who have been involved in DNSSEC deployment in Asia and also from those who have not deployed DNSSEC but who have a keen interest in the challenges and benefits of deployment. In particular, we will consider the following questions: What can DNSSEC do for you? What doesn’t it do? What are the internal tradeoffs to implementing DNSSEC? What did you learn in your deployment of DNSSEC? We are interested in presentations from both people involved with the signing of domains and people involved with the deployment of DNSSEC-validating DNS resolvers.
2. Potential impacts of Root Key Rollover
Given many concerns about the need to do a Root Key Rollover, we would like to bring together a panel of people who can talk about what the potential impacts may be to ISPs, equipment providers and end users, and also what can be done to potentially mitigate those issues. In particular, we are seeking participation from vendors, ISPs, and the community that will be affected by distribution of new root keys. We would like to be able to offer suggestions out of this panel to the wider technical community. If you have a specific concern about the Root Key Rollover, or believe you have a method or solution to help address impacts, we would like to hear from you.
3. New gTLD registries and administrators implementing DNSSEC
With the launch of the new gTLDs, we are interested in hearing from registries and operators of new gTLDs about what systems and processes they have implemented to support DNSSEC. As more gTLDs are launched, is there DNSSEC-related information that can be shared to help those launches go easier?
4. Guidance for Registrars in supporting DNSSEC
The 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) for registrars and resellers requires them to support DNSSEC from January 1, 2014. We are seeking presentations discussing:
* What are the specific technical requirements of the RAA and how can registrars meet those requirements?
* What tools and systems are available for registrars that include DNSSEC support?
* What information do registrars need to provide to resellers and ultimately customers?
We are particularly interested in hearing from registrars who have signed the 2013 RAA and have either already implemented DNSSEC support or have a plan for doing so.
5. APIs between the Registrars and DNS hosting operators
One specific area that has been identified as needing focus is the communication between registrars and DNS hosting operators, specifically when these functions are provided by different entities. Currently, the communication, such as the transfer of a DS record, often occurs by way of the domain name holder copying and pasting information from one web interface to another. How can this be automated? We would welcome presentations by either registrars or DNS hosting operators who have implemented APIs for the communication of DNSSEC information, or from people with ideas around how such APIs could be constructed.
6. Implementing DNSSEC validation at Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) play a critical role by enabling DNSSEC validation for the caching DNS resolvers used by their customers. We have now seen massive rollouts of DNSSEC validation within large North American ISPs and at ISPs around the world. We are interested in presentations on topics such as:
* What does an ISP need to do to prepare its network for implementing DNSSEC validation?
* How does an ISP need to prepare its support staff and technical staff for the rollout of DNSSEC validation?
* What measurements are available about the degree of DNSSEC validation currently deployed?
* What tools are available to help an ISP deploy DNSSEC validation?
* What are the practical server-sizing impacts of enabling DNSSEC validation on ISP DNS Resolvers (ex. cost, memory, CPU, bandwidth, technical support, etc.)?
7. The operational realities of running DNSSEC
Now that DNSSEC has become an operational norm for many registries, registrars, and ISPs, what have we learned about how we manage DNSSEC? What is the best practice around key rollovers? How often do you review your disaster recovery procedures? Is there operational familiarity within your customer support teams? What operational statistics have we gathered about DNSSEC? Are there experiences being documented in the form of best practices, or something similar, for transfer of signed zones?
8. DNSSEC automation
For DNSSEC to reach massive deployment levels it is clear that a higher level of automation is required than is currently available. Topics for which we would like to see presentations include:
* What tools, systems and services are available to help automate DNSSEC key management?
* Can you provide an analysis of current tools/services and identify gaps?
* Where are the best opportunities for automation within DNSSEC signing and validation processes?
* What are the costs and benefits of different approaches to automation?
9. When unexpected DNSSEC events occur
What have we learned from some of the operational outages that we have seen over the past 18 months? Are there lessons that we can pass on to those just about to implement DNSSEC? How do you manage dissemination of information about the outage? What have you learned about communications planning? Do you have a route to ISPs and registrars? How do you liaise with your CERT community?
10. DANE and DNSSEC applications
There is strong interest for DANE usage within web transactions as well as for securing email and Voice-over-IP (VoIP). We are seeking presentations on topics such as:
* What are some of the new and innovative uses of DANE and other DNSSEC applications in new areas or industries?
* What tools and services are now available that can support DANE usage?
* How soon could DANE and other DNSSEC applications become a deployable reality?
* How can the industry use DANE and other DNSSEC applications as a mechanism for creating a more secure Internet?
We would be particularly interested in any live demonstrations of DNSSEC / DANE applications and services. For example, a demonstration of the actual process of setting up a site with a certificate stored in a TLSA record that correctly validates would be welcome. Demonstrations of new tools that make the setup of DNSSEC or DANE more automated would also be welcome.
11. DANE / DNSSEC as a way to secure email
The DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) protocol is an exciting development where DNSSEC can be used to provide a strong additional trust layer for traditional SSL/TLS certificates. We are both pleased and intrigued by the growing usage of DANE and DNSSEC as a means of providing added security for email. Multiple email servers have added support for DANE records to secure TLS/SSL connections. Some email providers are marketing DNSSEC/DANE support. We would like to have a panel at ICANN 51 focusing on this particular usage of DANE. Are you a developer of an email server or client supporting DANE? Do you provide DANE / DNSSEC support in your email service? Can you provide a brief case study of what you have done to implement DANE / DNSSEC? Can you talk about any lessons you learned in the process?
12. DNSSEC and DANE in the enterprise
Enterprises can play a critical role in both providing DNSSEC validation to their internal networks and also through signing of the domains owned by the enterprise. We are seeking presentations from enterprises that have implemented DNSSEC on validation and/or signing processes and can address questions such as:
* What are the benefits to enterprises of rolling out DNSSEC validation? And how do they do so?
* What are the challenges to deployment for these organizations and how could DANE and other DNSSEC applications address those challenges?
* How should an enterprise best prepare its IT staff and network to implement DNSSEC?
* What tools and systems are available to assist enterprises in the deployment of DNSSEC?
* How can the DANE protocol be used within an enterprise to bring a higher level of security to transactions using SSL/TLS certificates?
13. Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) use cases and innovation
We are interested in demonstrations of HSMs, presentations of HSM-related innovations and real world use cases of HSMs and key management.
In addition, we welcome suggestions for additional topics.
If you are interested in participating, please send a brief (1-2 sentence) description of your proposed presentation to dnssec-singapore@isoc.org by Wednesday, 03 December 2014
We hope that you can join us.
Thank you,
Julie Hedlund
On behalf of the DNSSEC Workshop Program Committee:
Mark Elkins, DNS/ZACR
Cath Goulding, Nominet UK
Jean Robert Hountomey, AfricaCERT
Jacques Latour, .CA
Xiaodong Lee, CNNIC
Luciano Minuchin, NIC.AR
Russ Mundy, Parsons
Ondřej Surý, CZ.NIC
Yoshiro Yoneya, JPRS
Dan York, Internet Society
Dec 03
TDYR 189 – Initial Thoughts On Wire, The New Communications App
Dec 03
Initial Thoughts On "Wire", The New Communication App From Ex-Skypers
My first thought was naturally - do we really need YET-another-OTT-communication app?
After all, my iPhone is littered with the dead carcasses of so many other apps that have launched trying to be THE communication platform we all want to use. (And indeed I've written about many of them here on this site.)
But what makes Wire different for me from so many other similar apps that have launched (and faded) is really the PEOPLE involved. The news announcement mentions, of course, Skype co-founder Janus Friis as one of the big names behind Wire. Jonathan Christensen is also the co-founder and CEO of Wire. The news post says this:
The company's team comprises former product and technology leaders from Apple, Skype, Nokia, and Microsoft. Christensen held leadership roles at Microsoft and Skype, and was co-founder and CEO at Camino Networks. Along with Christensen, founders include Alan Duric, Wire’s CTO, a co-founder of Telio (Oslo exchange TELIO) and co-founder of Camino (acquired by eBay/Skype); and Priidu Zilmer, Wire’s head of product design, who led design teams at Vdio and Skype. Wire’s Chief Scientist Koen Vos, created SILK and co-created Opus, the standards for fidelity and intelligibility in voice over IP that billions of people use today.
I've known Jonathan over many years from his time at Skype. Alan Duric is a personal friend from the world of SIP, IETF and more. Some of the others are names I've known - and I've been told privately of others who are there, including apparently Jaanus Kase, who was one of the first working on Skype's community relations back in 2006/2007.
It certainly looks like an excellent team!
Does that mean it will succeed? Not necessarily... but it certainly has a far greater chance in my mind than many of the other attempts.
I have a GREAT amount I want to write about with regard to Wire, but for today I just want to write a few initial thoughts.
VERY Minimalist User Interface
When they say that Wire is about "simple, beautiful conversations", they aren't joking about the "simple" part. The user interface is extremely minimalist. All based on gestures and revealing just the information you need.
It's very cool as you get used to it... but it's also a bit non-intuitive - at least for older greybeards like me. At one point I simply wanted to reply in text and wound up calling someone (Alan, as it happened).
It is definitely great to see someone experimenting with a new UI to the degree that they have.
I installed it on both my iPhone 5s and my older iPad2. It worked great on both devices. The iPad, in particular, had a very nice view in the landscape mode. I did not yet install it on my Mac but spoke with several people who did.
Chats With Photos, SoundCloud and YouTube
When you start chatting with someone, it's very easy to add photos. You also could just drop in a link to a SoundCloud sound or a YouTube video and the player would automagically appear in the chat stream. And yes... animated GIFs work, too.
Call Quality - and Chats During The Call
I made several calls today and the quality was excellent. All high-quality voice. Presumably using the Opus codec or something similar. It's great that during the call you still have the full chat capability as I was sharing text and photos with the person I called.
Persistent Group Chats
I was extremely pleased to see how wonderfully well the "group chats" worked. Someone pulled a bunch of us "early adopters" into a chat room and it felt like we were back in 2006 or so in the early days of Skype and many of the early VoIP offerings. A very pleasant experience.
The group chat also synced very nicely between devices. A message I wrote on my iPad showed up just moments later on my iPhone. Others reported a similar experience with the Mac client.
Perhaps best of all the group chats appeared to be persistent group chats. After shutting down the app and then reconnecting later, I seemed to get all the messages that had been exchanged when I was offline. I've written before about the power of persistent group chats in Skype, and it was good to see what looked like something similar here. (Need to do more testing to confirm... but it looked good.)
What's Missing?
I realize today was the first day of the launch and that the product will evolve considerably, but some initial things I found missing:
- Perhaps the biggest surprise was the lack of video, purely because that seems to be included in almost every other OTT communications app these days.
- Not having a Windows client also seemed odd, given that they had a Mac OS X client. (Not that this mattered to me personally, but it just seemed odd.)
- I also missed the ability to edit a message you've already posted.
So Now What?
I'm definitely intrigued by what I see... I'll keep using Wire and will install the Mac OS X client.
There's still the larger issue that this is yet-another-silo-of-communication that is separate from all the other mobile apps and services out there... but that's the topic for another post.
And there's the ever-present "directory" issue, i.e. how will Wire grow the directory of users so that you find the people there that you want to communicate with? But that, too, is a topic for another post. It's not clear, too, what the business model is.
I was also initially intrigued by the idea that Wire might work over IPv6 ... but while the www.wire.com website DOES work over IPv6 (yea!), further examination and network sniffing shows that the traffic going from the application goes to Amazon EC2 servers that are only on IPv4. I'm looking forward to learning more about what might or might not be true here.
All that aside, Wire looks so far like a very cool new entrant into the realm of mobile communications apps... and I'm looking forward to more experimentation and usage in the days and weeks ahead! If you are using Wire (or decide to try it out), please feel free to contact me in the Wire app as "Dan York" or via "dyork@lodestar2.com".
Congrats to Jonathan, Alan, Jaanus and the rest of the Wire team for their launch today!
More Articles To Read
- GigaOm: Ex-Skypers unveil Wire app, offering voice, messaging and more
- The Guardian: Skype co-founder backs Wire - to take on Skype
- TechCrunch: Skype Co-Founder Backs Wire, A New Communications App Launching Today On iOS, Android And Mac
- TechMeme list of other related articles
- Hacker News discussion
What Do YOU Think?
Have you tried Wire out yet? What do you think? Will you use it?
An audio commentary on this topic is available at:
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Dec 03
Olle Johansson’s #MoreCrypto V2.0 Slide Deck – With TLS
Olle Johansson is a tireless crusader for bringing about a more secure Internet… and just recently published a new version 2.0 of his “#MoreCrypto” slide presentation that this time incorporates a good bit more information about TLS. He includes some tutorial information about TLS and gives multiple examples of using certificates, including with the DANE protocol.
If you are looking to come up to speed on how we make the Internet more secure as well as why it is important, the deck is very useful. We do encourage you to check it out!
And when you’re done, why not head over to our “TLS for Applications” area to learn more about adding TLS to your applications? Or visit our Start Here page to get started with IPv6, DNSSEC, TLS and more?
P.S. Olle is always open to feedback about his slides, too… you can reach him at oej@edvina.net.
Dec 02
TDYR 188 – Testing Out Mozilla’s New Firefox Hello WebRTC App
Dec 02
How To Test Firefox Hello, Mozilla’s New WebRTC Video Call Service
Here's all you need to do to try it yourself. First, you need Firefox 34, of course. Once you have upgraded or installed the software, you should see a "Hello" button over on the far right side of the browser's top bar:
If you don't see this button, as I didn't, you may have to perform the following steps, as documented in a Firefox help page:
1. Open the "Customize" section of the browser to add the "Hello" button to your menu bar:
2. Drag the "Hello" button to the browser bar or to the drop-down menu.
Now, in my case, that still didn't work and I had to use the additional trick mentioned in the help article of going to http://about:config and changing "loop.throttled" to "false" (simply by clicking on that setting). After restarting Firefox I was then able to go into the Customize window and add the Hello button to the browser.
Initiating A Call
Once the Hello button was visible I just had to click on it to get a URL that I could pass along to someone:
I posted it, somewhat ironically, into a Skype chat where a number of us who are "early adopters" of VoIP tech hang out... and Dick Schiferli (of Pamela fame) soon clicked the link. The call request window appeared in the lower part of my Firefox window:
The first time we tried Dick was signed in to a Firefox account but I was not. We got an error and the call couldn't connect:
Now, I don't know if this was a transient error caused by so many people trying it out... or if this was an issue with the "guest" access, but a few minutes later when I was also signed in Dick and I had no problem connecting:
And there we were talking!
Cross-Platform Testing
In a good test of cross-platform interop, Dick was using Firefox on Microsoft Windows 8 and I was using Firefox on Mac OS X. The quality both in terms of voice and audio was great. We did notice one interesting difference between the platforms. On OS X I had an arrow that let me "pop out" the Hello window into a separate window that I could then resize and move around my screen:
There was no way for either of us to simply click a button and make the conversation go "full screen", but with this pop-out window I was able to resize it to take over most of my iMac's screen.
Missing Chat...
Interestingly, one of the things I found missing from our experience was any form of integrated chat. I wanted to share with Dick a link to a screenshot of what I was seeing on my computer and wound up sharing that link through a Skype chat.
I don't know that I need chat... but I found it curious that I would just expect chat to be available. Given that Skype and Google+ Hangouts both offer this, my expectation does make a bit of sense.
Further Testing...
Given that I just created my Firefox account today, I couldn't test the use of contacts as documented in the Mozilla blog post about the beta of Firefox Hello. I look forward to doing so. I also want to go back and try it again when I am not signed in to verify that guest access does indeed work.
All in all I was quite impressed with the ease and quality of this first public release of Firefox Hello!
More info about Firefox Hello and Firefox 34 in general:
- Firefox 34 arrives with Firefox Hello video chat, revamped search, and Chromecast tab mirroring from Android
- Firefox Gets an Instantaneous Video Chat Feature, Better Search Bar
An audio commentary about this topic is available on SoundCloud:
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