Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Dan York
Author's posts
Mar 20
Speaking at SATIN 2012 on Friday About DNSSEC Deployment
This Thursday and Friday I (Dan York) will be at the “Securing and Trusting Internet Names (SATIN) 2012” event taking place at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London, UK. As the event site indicates, this event is a bit of a merger of academia and industry:
SATIN aims to provide a forum for academic work on the security of the DNS alongside industry presentations on practical experiences in providing name services.
This workshop will expose the academics to the real problems that industry is encountering, and show industry what academia has to offer them.
The SATIN 2012 agenda looks quite good and I’m looking forward to learning a good bit about new research into DNSSEC and other technologies to protect DNS. It’s great to see someone from Comcast there talking about their work and I admit to having a particular interest in the session on DANE, as I see DANE as a potential way to show how DNSSEC can add more value to existing networks. (More on DANE in later posts.)
On Friday I’ll be speaking about some of what we’ve seen as we prepared the DNSSEC part of this Deploy360 site and the opportunities we see for simplifying the user experience and accelerating DNSSEC deployment. As part of preparing for the event, I developed with my colleagues here at the Internet Society a 7-page paper on “Challenges and Opportunities in Deploying DNSSEC” that I’m definitely looking forward to sharing with you all.
We’ll be posting both my paper and slides to our site once the event is over. The NPL is also going to be recording all of the sessions and making them available via YouTube. As soon as the videos are live, we’ll start posting about them here, too.
If any of you reading this will be at SATIN 2012 this week, please do say hello (and feel free to drop me a note in advance).
Mar 20
UNH-IOL Hosting IPv6 Test Event for Home Routers on April 16-20, 2012
The UNH InterOperability Laboratory (IOL) announced this week that they will be holding an IPv6 “Test Event” for home routers on April 16-20, 2012, at their facility in Durham, New Hampshire, USA. This will be an excellent way for consumer electronics manufacturers to test whether their home routers/gateways will be ready to support IPv6 connectivity that will be available with the upcoming World IPv6 Launch on June 6, 2012. As noted in the UNH-IOL news release:
The UNH-IOL will verify IPv6 functionality for home gateway equipment for World IPv6 Launch. To be added to the World IPv6 Launch list of participating home gateway vendors, companies will need to enable IPv6 ‘on by default’ through their range of home router products and will need to have a product that has completed the IPv6 Ready CE Router (CPE) Interoperability Test Scenario (PDF) at the UNH-IOL. When a company’s device appears on the UNH-IOL CE Router Tested List, in the table that indicates the device performed all the test cases, the company should complete the Registration Form for Home Gateway Routers. ISOC will then add the company to the list of home gateway vendors participating in World IPv6 Launch.
More information about the UNH-IOL IPv6 test event and how to participate can be found at:
www.iol.unh.edu/services/testing/ipv6/grouptest/april_16_2012/
The deadline to register is Monday, April 9th!
If you are a vendor of a home router / home gateway, this event will provide an excellent opportunity to test your IPv6 implementation in a confidential environment where vendors work with each other and UNH-IOL staff to test their interoperability and improve their IPv6 support.
It is great that UNH-IOL is hosting this event and we look forward to seeing the list of home router vendors supporting IPv6 grow by World IPv6 Launch!
Mar 15
The Big Question On Avaya’s Acquisition of Radvision – What About The SIP and H.323 Stacks?
What about Radvision's SIP and H.323 stacks?
More specifically -
will Avaya continue to support and promote the strong usage of Radvision stacks by other vendors?
Of all the coverage I've seen so far, only Tom Keating touched on this in his brief post:
They also developed a H.323 stack used in hundreds of VoIP and videoconferencing products before SIP became the dominant VoIP protocol of choice.
Beyond the popular H.323 stack, Radvision's SIP stack has also been used in a good number of products out there - and Radvision also developed stacks for RTP, MGCP and many other VoIP protocols. Just follow the links off of Radvision's developer page at:
http://www.radvision.com/Products/Developer/
to see the wide range of developer solutions they have developed over the years.
For those not familiar with this topic, a "stack" in developer-speak is basically a set of libraries that you can incorporate into your products to enable those products to communicate over a given protocol. So if you want to "SIP-enable" your product, you can license a "stack" from a company like Radvision rather than developing your own stack or using one of the various open source stacks that are out there. Licensing the stack also typically gets you support from the vendor and the ability to request changes/customizations/etc.
Radvision has enabled a good number of companies out there to get into the VoIP world. They have been a supplier of stacks to companies all across the VoIP / UC space.
Now they've been acquired by one of the largest vendors in the VoIP/UC space.
Will Avaya continue to support the widespread usage of Radvision's various stacks by other vendors?
Or will they restrict or reduce the usage? Or increase the costs? If so, what will the other vendor's do?
Can the various vendors using Radvision stacks trust Avaya to continue the developer program? Particularly when they may compete directly against Avaya?
Will there be more attention paid now to other providers of SIP and VoIP stacks?
THAT is the question that I'm most curious about in the midst of this merger...
Other Articles
Some of the pieces worth reading on this topic include:
- Zeus Kerravala on NoJitter: Why Avaya Buying Radvision Makes Sense (Updated: Deal Is Official)
- Henry Dewing's Blog at Forrester: Avaya Acquires Radvision
- Carl Ford on TMCnet: Avaya Buys Radvision for $230 Million
- TechCrunch: RadVision Finally Finds A Home With Telecom Giant Avaya — For $230 Million
- eWeek: Avaya to Buy Radvision, Ramping Competition With Cisco
- TheNextWeb: Done deal: Avaya buys video conferencing tech firm RADVISION for $230m in cash (some useful links)
P.S. Hat tip to Forrester's Henry Dewing, too, for at least recognizing the usage of Radvision's stacks, although he did not ask the question I'm asking here.
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Mar 14
World IPv6 Launch Project Now Has Pages on Facebook, Google+
If you want to keep up-to-date on what is happening with World IPv6 Launch coming up on June 6, 2012 – and/or would like to help spread the word, the team working on that project now has a Facebook page and Google+ page (along with the Twitter account they’ve had for a while).
If you use Facebook and could take a moment to “Like” the page or are on Google+ and could add the page to a circle, it will be a great way to stay connected as the date gets closer!
And if you need help with getting ready for World IPv6 Launch, check out our IPv6 resources – and please let us know if you need more help!
Mar 14
Reminder: Today’s ICANN DNSSEC Workshop will be streaming live…
Just a reminder that as we mentioned on Monday, the DNSSEC Workshop happening today at ICANN 43 in Costa Rica will be streamed live.
The event takes place today from 8:30am to 1:45pm in San José, Costa Rica (UTC-6, i.e. US Mountain time – visit timeanddate.com to find out how this compares to the time where you are).
Please see the DNSSEC Workshop web page for the agenda and links to listen to and view the presentations.
Mar 13
Why Should Radio Broadcasters Care About IPv6?
In an interesting post on Radio World titled “Should I Be Concerned About IPv6?” Wayne Pecana explains why radio broadcasters should be thinking about IPv6. After explaining the basics of IPv4 address exhaustion, he points out that many of the consumers of online content may increasingly come from IPv6-only networks, particularly coming out of the Asia-Pacific region. However, his key point for broadcasters is this one (my emphasis added):
Technical solutions exist to accommodate the mixed world of IPv6-only consumers and IPv4-only content. Industry solutions include IPv6-IPv4 Network Address Translation (NAT) and, in many practical implementations, double NAT processes occur through solutions such as Carrier-Grade Nat (CGN).
For some types of Internet content, such as basic Web page content, these solutions are viable. However, a major drawback of any solution is the detriment to Quality of Service (QoS) factors that affect real-time media content, such as streaming audio and video content provided by the broadcaster or similar audio and/or video content providers.
This is an incredibly critical point. With media and communications that needs to be viewed or listened to in “real-time,” you want to reduce as much as possible any kind of network delays or latency so that the user has the best possible viewing or listening experience. By their very nature, large-scale NAT (LSN) / carrier-grade NAT (CGN) solutions introduce an extra layer of translation and in so doing introduce added latency.
Wayne Pecana goes on to explain how broadcasters should look at IPv6-enabling their content servers so that they are natively accessible over IPv6. He recommends:
Enable your “outward-facing” network services in an IPv4-IPv6 “dual-stack” mode, which allows your content to be delivered in a native format to both IPv4 and IPv6 “eyeballs and ears,” and lets you provide the best possible listening or viewing experience for your content consumers.
It’s excellent advice and we’re glad to see this kind of message going out to broadcasters. Pecana also encourages broadcasters to consider attending an “IPv6 for Broadcasters” webinar that is scheduled for July 11, 2012.
P.S. We’d also encourage broadcasters to look at our general IPv6 resources and our IPv6 information for content providers.
Mar 12
ICANN DNSSEC Workshop on Weds, March 14, to be streamed LIVE
Want to learn more about the current state of DNSSEC deployment? Want to hear case studies of organizations who have deployed DNSSEC? Want to learn how DNSSEC can be used to protect your organization’s online reputation?
This Wednesday, March 14, 2012, from 8:30am to 1:45pm (UTC-6, i.e. US Mountain time), there will be a DNSSEC Workshop as part of the ICANN 43 meeting taking place in Costa Rica. The good news is that…
THE EVENT WILL BE STREAMED LIVE
You can just go to http://costarica43.icann.org/node/29659 and click on the appropriate link to listen and view the session.
I (Dan York) will be one of the early presenters outlining some of the areas with DNSSEC that we’ve found in the development of this Deploy360 site where we see opportunities for simplifying the user experience and accelerating DNSSEC deployment. I’ll be talking about the end-user experience for domain name holders, the experience at domain name registrars and several infrastructure issues. I’m very much looking forward to giving the presentation and to participating in the ensuing discussion.
The agenda for the full workshop is a great collection of people involved with the actual deployment of DNSSEC. I’ll be intrigued to listen, learn and interact with the participants and am looking forward to having some new content to add to this site.
If you are going to be there at the session in Costa Rica, I look forward to meeting you. If you are not going to be in Costa Rica but are interested in the topic, I do hope you will tune in to the live coverage. Given that past ICANN DNSSEC workshops have been recorded for later viewing, I expect this session will be as well.
Mar 09
Can IPv6 Addresses Be “Fun”?
So what is the most “fun” IPv6 address you’ve seen?
Fun? IPv6 address?
Well, yes… now that you have the letters “a – f” in addition to the numbers, you can add a bit of creativity to your addresses. As was recently pointed out on Twitter, the folks at Facebook had some fun with the IPv6 address for “www.v6.facebook.com” being:
2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3
Obviously a “k” would have been better, but “face:b00c” is rather cool! There are also any number of other possibilities. Consider some of these:
:feed:f00d:
:bad:f00d:
:bad:beef:
:bad:d00d:
:f00d:cafe:
:bad:fa11:
Obviously you don’t have to limit yourself to just two blocks of the IPv6 address. For instance, here’s the perfect IPv6 address for a cattle rancher’s server:
2001:db8:beef:beef:beef:beef:beef:1
Have you seen any creative IPv6 addresses out there in the wild? What is the most creative use of “a-f” plus the numbers that you can come up with? Have you seen anyone else add some branding into their IPv6 addresses?
Just think of the possibilities!
P.S. If you’re looking to get started with IPv6, have you checked out our IPv6 resources?
