Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Dan York
Author's posts
Feb 28
"Catching Up With Dan York" On The VUC Call Tomorrow At Noon US Eastern – Please Join Us!
If so, join us tomorrow, Friday, March 1, at 12 noon US Eastern on the "VoIP Users Conference (VUC)". You can join a Google+ Hangout, or call in via:
- sip:200901@login.zipdx.com
- +1 (646) 475-2098
- Skype:vuc.me
There's also an IRC backchannel where links are shared, questions are answered and other comments occur.
As long time readers know, I've been a huge fan of - and participant in, when I've been able to - the VUC calls and community that Randy Resnick has been spearheading since March 2007.
I don't remember when precisely I first started joining in... maybe sometime in 2007 or 2008. In those early days (and still today) it was a great place to discuss open source telephony solutions like Asterisk, Freeswitch and others. The VUC became a place where many of us gathered weekly to learn about the latest technologies from various projects or vendors... and just to chat about various topics relating to VoIP, Unified Communications, SIP and whatever else. We'd get down in the weeds in really geeky discussions about wideband audio... and then get into higher level discussions about trends in VoIP and UC.
When I was at Voxeo for four years, the VUC calls were a way to connect with the telephony developer community - and in fact there were several VUC sessions related to various Voxeo Labs products and services. There were also a couple of VUC sessions relating to IPv6 and several relating to security in which I was a participant (including discussion of my UC security book at one point). It's been a great community and several good friendships have evolved out of meeting people within the VUC world.
When I joined the Internet Society back in September 2011, my attention shifted rather dramatically away from VoIP as I focused more on IPv6, DNSSEC and now routing resiliency/security (and the drop-off in posts here at Disruptive Telephony was also apparent), but VoIP has always been a strong interest and I continued to dip into VUC episodes now and then.
For the last, oh, 6 or 7 months (or maybe 9 or 10!) Randy's been repeatedly asking me if I would be the guest on a VUC episode to talk about all the various stuff I've been up to. His persistence finally wore me down and I agreed to a date... hence the show tomorrow. :-)
Given the conversational nature of the VUC shows, I suspect we'll probably travel all over various topics. There's an abstract up that says this:
Dan York has been a member of the VUC community for many years now but he’s been away for a bit and in this episode we’ll learn about what he’s doing now and how it relates to VoIP and UC. We’ll talk about his work with the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme related to IPv6, DNSSEC and routing resiliency (and touch on what exactly the Internet Society is all about) as well as his views on WebRTC and some of the other standards relating to real-time communications being developed within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). We’ll also cover Dan’s favorite topic of VoIP security and some of the changes that are being seen there. We’ll probably also talk about some of Dan’s other activities and interests related to podcasting and social media.
How much of that we actually discuss will be an open question.
You're welcome to join us... we always do take questions from people calling in to the show and also via the IRC channel. This time there will also be a Google+ Hangout so people will get to see my smiling face! ;-)
And yes, for better or worse it will be archived for posterity for later listening/viewing...
P.S. If you'd like to join the VUC "community" yourself, a great way beyond attending the calls is to join the "IP Communications & VoIP" Community on Google+, as a lot of good interaction happens there.
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Feb 26
Video – DNSSEC: What Every Sysadmin Should Be Doing To Keep Things Working (USENIX LISA)
At the USENIX LISA ’12 conference in December 2012, Roland Van Rijswijk of SURFnet gave a great talk titled “DNSSEC: What Every Sysadmin Should be Doing to Keep Things Working” where he talks about how you are perhaps already using DNSSEC – and what you need to do to make sure it keeps working. Roland’s an enjoyable presenter and I think you’ll enjoy his session. The presentation is available in both video and audio at:
His slides are also available for download.
I’d note, too, that Roland is one of the people involved with SURFnet’s excellent white paper on deploying DNSSEC validation on recursive caching name servers that is definitely worth a read for anyone looking to deploy DNSSEC validation within your network.
Feb 25
So What Shall I Call This “Podcast”?
What do I call this series of short audio commentaries I've been recording at SoundCloud? The good news is that I've been accepted into SoundCloud's beta program to try out their podcasting features for spoken word podcasters. The bad news is that I need to lock down a name for use in RSS feeds, etc. The challenge is that I don't want a name that is too limiting as I want to leave it open for me to comment on virtually any topic. I thought about "Raw Random Audio", but it was pointed out to me that that name doesn't even communicate that it is spoken commentary - it could be electronic noise!
I like Dameon Welch-Abernathy's name of "Phoneboy Speaks" as it communicates that it is a person speaking and that the person is probably technical (or at least likes phones), but I'm not terribly keen on "Dan York Speaks" or any of a hundred variations I've played with. I'm still struggling ... if you've got any thoughts I'd love to hear them, either as comments here, on social networks or via email to dyork@lodestar2.com
Feb 25
Internet Society Hiring Marketing Communication Manager – Apply Now!
If you have a marketing / communications background, the Internet Society is looking for a "Marketing Communications Manager" based in our Reston, Virginia, USA, office. Full details and information about how to apply can be found here:
http://www.internetsociety.org/jobs/marketing-communications-manager
The Internet Society (also known as "ISOC") is an excellent organization[2] working on a wide range of activities related to the development of Internet access, public policy around Internet governance and open standards and the key technologies underlying the Internet. We have a simple vision that "The Internet is for everyone" and that underpins everything we do. Our latest business plan lays out our priorities for the next few years and if you take a look you'll see we're active all around the world.
A key element of all that work is to increase the capacity of our Communications team - and this new role is a key element of that.
I hope that some of you reading this will take a look and strongly consider applying!
There are a great many battles out there for the future of the Internet... and we need people who can help us get our messages out!
[1] To be clear on how I fit in here, I should note that while I am involved with external communications for the Internet Society, it is through the Deploy360 Programme, one of the programs of an internal team known as the "Deployment & Operationalization (DO) Team". You can read more about why I joined ISOC and what I am doing there. I work with people on the Communications team and so you would be one of the people with whom I would potentially work - but there are also 70+ other employees scattered around the world.
[2] I was a member of the Internet Society long before I became a staff person in September 2011.
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Feb 25
FIR #692 – 2/25/13 – For Immediate Release
Trying Diigo as Delicious alternative; Quick News: New York Times digital innovations, why podcasting should be the PR consultant's best friend, slow video dooms views, ad creep reaches thighs of young Japanese women; Ragan promo; News That Fits: 2012 Inc. 500 social media report, Michael Netzley's Asia report, CIPR's state of the profession, Media Monitoring Minute from CustomScoop, listener comments, how Maker's Mark turned a social media smackdown into a win, Dan York's report, Google penalizes UK sites that sell links; music from David Cyr; and more.
Feb 22
Canada Joins The DNSSEC World – Sign Your .CA, Eh?
Congratulations to our friends up North in Canada for the DNSSEC signing of the .CA domain, joining the ever-growing list of top-level domains (TLDs) that are securing their DNS records with DNSSEC! As Jacques Latour of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) outlined in a CIRA blog post they took some time to ensure their system was resilient:
We wanted to create a comprehensive DNSSEC validation process, so we took a different approach to sign .CA that takes into account several known DNSSEC-related issues that affect its operation. Our approach addresses these issues, and we believe we have developed a resilient solution that will result in high availability/no outages.
We created dual independent signing engines using Bind and OpenDNSSEC. There were a few challenges along the way. For example, Bind and OpenDNSSEC produce different, although valid signed zone files and both handle signing differently. These challenges, though, were worth overcoming. The end product will not only be an improved system for .CA, but we’re blazing a new trail here – the global Internet community will benefit from this work.
It’s great that CIRA went through this effort and we look forward to learning from them as they share more information about what they did.
Now, publishing the signed .CA zone is just the first step in enabling DNSSEC for .CA domains. They still have some work to do before they can begin accepting DS records from registrars that support DNSSEC. Their stated goal is to complete that work this year so that in 2014 they can begin accepting signed domains.
In the meantime, we’ve been told that people who can sign and host their .CA domains can contact CIRA at cira-dnssec@cira.ca to find about how to manually get their DS record into the .CA zone.
This is great work and we look forward to seeing more about DNSSEC and .CA over this year. CIRA has published a DNSSEC page with information. Over on Dark Reading, David Schwartzberg also wrote about Canada joining the DNSSEC party.
Congrats, again, to Jacques Latour and the whole team at CIRA!
P.S. And yes, I did pick up the toy beaver in the photo from a .CA booth at a conference… having lived in Canada for 5 years I enjoy that the .CA team can have some fun with some of the Canadian stereotypes. 
Feb 22
SANS Seeking IPv6 Security Stories/Tools For “IPv6 Focus Month” In March
Got an IPv6 security problem you’d like to share? A solution to an IPv6 security problem that you want to tell others about? If so, the team behind the Internet Storm Center (ISC) would love to share your stories as part of their IPv6 Focus Month they are planning for March 2013. Johannes Ullrich of the SANS Technology Institute (the organization behind the ISC) wrote that they are seeking articles about:
- a security problem you ran into with IPv6
- a solution to a security problem (even better)
- a tool that works really well (or not at all) with IPv6
- a way to solve an IPv4 security problem by switching to IPv6
Articles – or just ideas – can be submitted via the ISC contact form or to handlers@sans.edu.
We applaud this initiative from SANS and we look forward to seeing what IPv6 security stories they highlight in March – and we may do what we can to further help spread the news about tools and services they promote.
If you’ve got an idea, please do send it in to the ISC team – it’s great to get more info about IPv6 security out there!
Feb 20
SourceForge Redesigns Itself To Compete With Github
When I received an email today telling me that one of my ancient projects was being “upgraded” to the “new” SourceForge developer platform, I had to admit that I had no clue that SourceForge was even launching a new platform.
But sure enough, “The Next SourceForge” is out with a host of redesigned features that do look nice… and do remind me of everything that I currently use over on Github!
Of course, the project being “upgraded” is a small python app called “viewportfolio” that I wrote back in 2000 during the height of the .COM insanity when Red Hat’s stock had exploded and the tech bubble was all around us.
I last touched the code over 12 years ago!
I have no clue if it actually still works – and to be quite honest if I were to do anything with that app today, even to test it and make any fixes, I’d probably move it first to my Github account where I do all my work today.
But back twelve years, SourceForge was THE place where you hosted your project. Everyone was using “SF” and it was where we all interacted for code.
Then, over time, it became a site so hideously overwhelmed with advertising that it was close to useless to interact with the site. And, well, more and more people started using the git version control system and for quite some time SourceForge seemed to still be wedded to SVN.
So I moved any new projects over to Github, as did many others that I knew, and I left SourceForge behind, only occasionally going in there when I needed to find older projects. Even today, I’m working with someone who has a project on SF, but he’s moving that to Github in the next few weeks where I can work on it with him and where we’ll publicize it.
I applaud the folks behind SourceForge for launching “The Next SourceForge,” if for no other reason than that I do believe it is healthy to have competition around – and having another competitor for Github (there are several already) is a good thing in that it will continue to encourage innovation among the platforms providing project hosting services.
It’s also great to see the visual redesign of SF – a much cleaner interface and thankfully all the ads that were slathered all over the site seem to be gone. And these new features do seem to be great improvements for projects hosted on SF.
Will “The Next SourceForge” prompt me to launch new projects on SF? Or to stop migrating projects away?
Probably NOT.
The reality is that I’m now comfortably ensconced over on Github and I rather like it there. I guess I also trust the people/company behind Github more than I do Dice Holdings, the latest corporate overlord of SourceForge, in terms of being responsive to users and to continuing to improve the user experience. Now this may be unfair… the folks behind SourceForge may be as equally committed as the folks behind Github… but one is a passionate startup and the other is part of a large publicly-traded company that is ultimately focused on helping connect employers and professionals with each other.
What about you? Will “The Next SourceForge” get you to open new projects there? (Or to not migrate away?)
Feb 20
Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) 2013 Begins Today In San Diego
The 20th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) began today in San Diego, California, with a program packed full of talks that look fascinating to someone like me with a strong security interest. While there are no sessions specifically focused on DNSSEC or IPv6 listed on the program, there are a range of network security and web security sessions where both technologies could play a role. For routing resiliency/security I noted that there is one “short talk” tomorrow afternoon on the topic of “Updates from the Internet Backbone: An RPKI/RTR Router Implementation, Measurements, and Analysis” that sounds rather interesting.
Check out the schedules for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to see what is going on each day. While there isn’t a live stream of the sessions available right now, the papers from past years have been posted (ex. 2012 NDSS) and so you should be able to see the papers once the event is over. (And we’ll post an update here when the archive is available.)
Meanwhile, if you are there at NDSS I do hope you enjoy the event – and if you aren’t… watch for the news about next year’s session!
Feb 18
Telemark skiing – and Remembering What It Is Like To Be A Beginner Again
Telemark skiing - and Remembering What It Is Like To Be A Beginner Again by Dan York
