Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Dan York
Author's posts
Jan 11
TDYR #066 – Cherish The Ones You Love
A couple of recent events have reminded me how incredibly important it is to cherish the ones you love...
Jan 11
Weekend Project: Enable DNSSEC Validation On Your DNS Resolver
Looking for a weekend project to learn more about a new technology? How about seeing if you can enable DNSSEC on the DNS resolver you use in your home network? (or in your business network?)
This whitepaper from SURFnet about deploying DNSSEC validation on recursive caching name servers provides an excellent guide to get started.
If you operate your own home server/gateway/router and use any of these three recursive name servers, the document provides step-by-step instructions:
- BIND 9.x
- Unbound
- Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Once have DNSSEC validation configured, you should be able to go to our list of DNSSEC test sites to test your installation. Specifically you should NOT be able to get to the sites with bad DNSSEC signatures.
If you do not operate your own home server, or if you just have a wireless “home router” from one of the various manufacturers, you may need to do a bit more digging to see where your DNS resolution is happening.
To start, you may want to download the DNSSEC-check tool from the DNSSEC Tools Project and run that tool on one of the computers on your network. It may be that your ISP is already providing DNSSEC validation and if so you can congratulate yourself and go find another project to work on!
If that doesn’t show that you have DNSSEC validation, you need to figure out where your DNS resolvers are located. The DNSSEC-check tool will give you the IP addresses of the DNS resolvers your computer is configured to use. Alternatively you can go into one of your computers on your home network and look in the network settings where you should be able to find the IP addresses for whatever DNS servers are being given out by DHCP on your local network.
If the IP address of the DNS resolver is in the same address range as your computer’s IP address (i.e. the same subnet), you are most likely using a DNS resolver located on your home router. You’ll need to go into the administrative interface for the home router (assuming you have access to it) and look around to see if there is a setting there for DNS resolution and if so if there is a setting to enable DNSSEC.
If you don’t see a way to enable DNSSEC, your home router vendor doesn’t support DNSSEC yet. If you have the time and patience, it would be great if you could go to the website for that router vendor and see if there is a way to file a feature request or bug ticket. It might be in support forums or in a bug tracker somewhere.
If the IP address of the DNS resolver is in a different address range from your computer’s IP address, odds are that it is probably operated by your Internet service provider (ISP) or is perhaps from a service such as Google’s Public DNS (although if it was from Google, the DNSSEC-check tool would have already shown that DNSSEC validation was working).
Again, if you have the time and patience, it would be great if you would contact your ISP to ask if you can get DNSSEC validation. We hear from both ISPs and vendors that “customers aren’t asking for DNSSEC” - and we need to change that!
Thanks for your help! Working together we’ll make a more secure Internet!
Jan 10
TDYR #065 – On Getting An Abusive Fraud Phone Call, And Needing Secure Caller ID
I received an abusive fraudulent phone call today from someone from the "Windows security service" who no doubt wanted to get me to install malware on my computer. The call made once again think of our need for "secure origin identification" within IP communications. More info at:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20130729_can_we_create_a_secure_caller_id_for_voip/
http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/stir/charter/
Jan 10
CES 2014: CEA Announces IPv6 Specification For Consumer Electronics
We were very pleased to read the news earlier this week coming out of the 2014 International CES event that the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) had selected “IPv6 Implementation Standards” to be one of two standards programs in its “CESpec” program. As stated in the CEA’s news release:
The CESpec program aims to draw worldwide attention to important, new industry standards at CES. Standards selected for the 2014 CESpec program are expected to be completed by the 2015 International CES.
We are delighted to see this focus on IPv6 within the CEA and look forward to learning more about their plans over the next year. As long-time readers may recall, we attended the 2012 International CES event and met with multiple vendors to talk about IPv6. We also know of some of the folks involved with the CEA IPv6 Working Group and would encourage any other CEA members to become more involved with that group. As the announcement notes:
Fifteen organizations joined CEA in 2011 to form the IPv6 Working Group. The group coordinates CE manufacturers, service providers and retailers activities as the Internet transitions from IPv4 addressing to IPv6 ensuring Internet-enabled devices continue to operate without interruption. It is expected to result in a standard that defines necessary feature sets for several levels of IPv6 support, creating profiles for Basic, Basic-plus and Advanced IPv6-capable devices.
The simplest networking devices such as network printers, alarms and home automation systems are Basic devices that will support a limited set of IPv6 features. More Internet capability is appropriate for the Basic-plus profile group: optical disc players, game consoles, smart TVs and media servers. Advanced devices are those that need the most Internet capability and include PCs, tablets and smartphones.
And we very much agree with both of these quotes from the working group co-chairs, Hans Liu, director of software architecture at D-Link Systems Inc. and Dan Torbet, director of system engineering at ARRIS:
“IPv6 is the next generation of Internet protocol, and it’s being rolled out throughout the Web,” said Liu. “Our goal is to help speed this transition by providing guidance to consumer equipment manufacturers to ensure their products make maximum use of IPv6.”
“The more IPv6 capability is implemented in consumer products, the more efficiently Internet service can be delivered to consumers,” said Torbet. “We’re very happy to have this project featured as a CESpec and we look forward to demonstrating our work next year.”
We, too, are looking forward to their demonstrations of IPv6 work next year at the 2015 International CES!
Jan 09
Deadline TOMORROW to Apply to Represent the “Technical Community” at the Brazil Meeting and in 1Net (Featured Blog)
Are you interested in being a representative of the "technical community" to the "Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance" happening in April 2014 in Brazil? Or would you like to represent the technical community on the "1net Steering Committee" that is guiding the future of the 1net initiative? If so, THE DEADLINE IS TOMORROW, Friday, January 10, 2014, to submit your expression of interest in being considered for a role on those committees. More...
Jan 09
TDYR #064 – Why I Do What I Do
"Why do you do it?" someone recently asked me after learning I'd flown around 96,000 miles last year year to somewhat ironically talk to people about making the Internet work better. In this episode I talk about WHY I do what I do... and about the choice of futures I see us having for the Internet and for our online future...
Jan 08
TDYR #063 – On Helping Those Stuck Out On The Cold Winter Streets
Some evening thoughts while walking the cold streets of Keene, NH, on our need to help those who have no choice but to be out on the streets...
Jan 08
Quick Admin Update: Minor changes to Deploy360 website, sharing
Just a quick update… in our constant effort to to make this site work as smoothly as possible for visitors and also to help as many people as possible find our content, I spent some time “under the hood” today making some upgrades and doing a number of other tweaks.
You shouldn’t see anything really different about the site, but if you do see anything that acts strange, please let us know. I’ve gone through a sample of our pages and posts, but there’s a chance I may have missed something.
The major change you will see is the “Share This:” bar of buttons at the bottom of this post. I switched from the plugin we were using before to Automattic’s “Jetpack” plugin for WordPress and like the behavior much better. I also added LinkedIn as a sharing choice to make it easier for people to share out content out to LinkedIn. Any feedback on the sharing experience would be welcome, either as comments here or via email/form.
Another reason for the update today was that the Jetpack plugin lets us also automatically publish our new posts out to the Deploy360 Google+ Page, in addition to our Twitter account and Facebook page. We’ve found a good amount of interest in our information within Google+ and continue to gave great conversations there. Our previous process automatically posted to Twitter and Facebook but was a manual process for Google+ that was a bit cumbersome. We like that this change puts Google+ on the same level as the others as a content distribution channel.
We also updated the awesome EditFlow editorial calendar we use for planning the content we’re sharing on the site and made a number of other minor tweaks and changes.
All in all a shiny new back-end of the Deploy360 site for 2014! We’re looking forward to using these capabilities to deliver even more information to you in 2014… please do let us know how we can help you!
Image credit: wsdot on Flickr (I figured a photo of a snow plow was appropriate given the current weather conditions where I live in New Hampshire, USA).
Jan 07
TDYR #062 – Launching A New Podcast: “FIR On Technology with Dan York”
I'm pleased to announce the launch of a new podcast, "FIR On Technology with Dan York" where I'll be doing deeper dives into the tools and technology that people involved with communications / PR / marketing need to care about. In this TDYR episode I talk about the show, play the promo and discuss the first episode. Links discussed include:
http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2014/01/my-new-podcast-fir-on-technology-episode-1-about-google-hangouts-on-air.html
http://forimmediaterelease.biz/index.php?/weblog/C21
http://forimmediaterelease.biz/index.php?/weblog/comments/fir_on_technology_with_dan_york_episode_1_exploring_google_hangouts_on_air
FIR Podcast Community on G+: https://plus.google.com/communities/112349929544876511942
Mark Knox's music: https://soundcloud.com/xerocrossing
