Deliberately Invalidatable Root Zone

A few days ago we saw something that has not happened before. One of the root-servers of the Internet was DNSSEC-enabled, signed, secured.. or was it? No, it was not really secured was it? Nope! BUT! The DNSSEC-enabled part of it is true, or at least a little bit of it.

One of the root-server instances, the L-root , had it’s copy of the root-zone signed. However, for now, the public key distributed is obviously broken and unusable (thanks Patrik!).

I for one think the DNSKEY record is cute!

IN  DNSKEY  257  3  8 (
AwEAAa8Zp+++++THIS/IS/IN/AN/INVALID/
KEY/AND/CANNOT/BE/USED/FOR/VALIDATIO
N/PLEASE/CONTACT/ROOTSIGN/AT/ICANN/D
OT/ORG/FOR/MORE/INFORMATION+++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++8=
);

The “system” is called DURZ (Deliberately Invalidatable Root Zone) and the plan is to put it to use in all of the the root-server instances before moving on in the implementation of DNSSEC for the root-zone.

Why? Well, first and foremost DURZ is for testing purposes. While the signed root-zone is still not considered as “in production” it will prohibit the use of the root-zone as a trust anchor for validation. During this period of time testing will f.ex. give measures of how the signed root-zone (larger response size etc) affects whoever uses it.

The implementation of DURZ will span all of the root-server instances and is planned to be done in May this year. A schedule has been posted on the Root DNSSEC site. Do I think they will stick to it? Why of course not.. How fun would that be?

M: 2010-03-03 0400-0600
I: 2010-03-03 1500-1800
D: 2010-03-24 1400-1500
K: 2010-03-24 1500-1700
E: 2010-03-24 1800-2000
H: 2010-04-14 1400-1500
C: 2010-04-14 1500-1700
G: 2010-04-14 1700-1900
B: 2010-04-14 1900-2100
F: 2010-04-14 2100-0000
J: 2010-05-05 1700-1900

All times are in UTC.

When all the root-servers are serving the DURZ I expect that a period of statistics and measurements will commence, the goal being to pinpoint any side effects from the fact that the root-zone is signed, bloated and well, lets just call it pregnant with what may be the savior of DNS.

This sounds like a great start for a fantasy novel but all that is just the means to an end..

The implementation of DNSSEC for the root-zone has been a hot potato for the last two or ten years. It has been predicted to be the deliverance of DNSSEC, the single event that puts all the pieces in place. Will it be? Well, I say we just wait and see.

If you want to know more about the implementation of DNSSEC in the root-zone, head over to Root DNSSEC!

Regards,

LG

New year, Fresh start!

So, we have a new year! This do happen once in while or so but this time it means more then usual. 2009 was a good year with lots of cool projects and quite a few big happenings for me. However, I think that 2010 will be ever more spectacular.

M O R E T O C O M E

Yesterday evening was spent with friends eating a nice dinner, playing some social games and talking about the year that had past. At the strike of twelve the usual pyromaniacs of the group (yes, Im guilty) went out to spend a few minutes burning half a pay check of fireworks into the sky while the rest enjoyed a sparkling wine.

These traditions seems to never change and I have thought about how important they really are. Last year I spent christmas on a sunny island and to be honest it was not the same when I think back. Not bad in any way but it felt like I had missed something. I will most likely travel during christmas on more occasions then one in the future but I think that I need to keep at least one year in between, at home, with the family just to keep the spirit intact.

Happy New Year!

Regards,

LG

Update.. or not!

As usual when my blog goes quiet its not because I don’t have anything to write about, It’s because I have to much to write about.

The weeks since Internetdagarna and my last post has been packed with things to do and there is still more coming. It is a wonderful time for change and I intend to make as much out of it as possible.

At least as soon as I get rid of the last remnants of my flue. It knocked me out for the better part of a week and Im still not fully back into shape. You know, when a man catches a cold…

To mention one, really great, thing that actually did not relate to me as much as to my lovely girlfriend, she has finally completed her Ph.d and now demands to be called Doctor. It has some nice appliances don’t you think?

It all begins with 22810!

Regards,

LG

The days of Internet are over…

Well, as you might have guessed I’m talking about the Swedish conference named Internetdagarna or “The internet days” in English and not the life span of the Internet itself. That would ruin my career quite effectively (thinking in an ego selfish kind of way).

The conference covered three days with the last one being more of a workshop (or at least intended to be). To view the entire schedule you need to visit internetdagarna.se as I’m only gonna cover the highlights in this post.

To start the whole event of .SE (the organiser) had invited quite the span of different people going from flown in professors to a marketing guy from Tre (a Swedish ISP/telco). The latter had a different approach to talking about “mobile internet access” effectively turning his talk into a giant commercial for the earlier named company (the twitter feed went mad with booo!).

Sadly that was also the only part of the first keynote session I had time to see due to a meeting with the Swedish PTS (post & tele communication board) as a part of my engagement in the board of registrars.se. The meeting was however immensely more productive than the talk about cheap 3G access.

The next session I attended was hosted by PhD student Daniel Westman (a colleague of mine from PRG) and the topic was “Copyright – a conversation with James Boyle“. The session was overall very good and I enjoyed the stand up way of presenting. I think that including a good joke or two makes the audience more awake and attentive.

Next up was a session called “Challenges on the web hosting market” where four companies got their chance to foresee the future. Well, in my opinion they could have gone with one company (either of the ones that where there) as they all said the same thing.

“Cloud, Cloud, Cloud, Cloud”

After about 15 minutes of their fame I just had to text my dear friend Daniel who is head of IT-operations at Loopia to tell him the amount of times the word cloud had been used in the session (100). As expected I got a “LOL” back. It’s not really that we don’t share their opinion but more that the use of buzzwords rule the Swedish hosting business.

If we strip the real meaning of the word down to it’s core then it’s more like glorified shared hosting with some actual quota limits (that most of us have had for ages) as long as you use shared storage and some common sense. Well, to make my own prediction I think that we will see this kind of packaging of shared hosting but the name wont be cloud, it will be web hosting or maybe just hosting.

To move on to next session here would be heartbreaking as the nightly events of the first conference day was awesome! As the lights of the venue’s free-beer-and-food event started blinking (someone told me that it was the signal to leave) we headed out to the belgobar in Stockholm where many of my dns/domain/market friends where already waiting to spend the rest of the evening.

No one mentioned, no one forgotten!

The next morning felt a few hours to early when I headed down to the lobby for some breakfast but I guess that’s the price you have to pay for some fun around a conference! However, the second day was actually packed with meetings more then sessions and went by very fast. It ended at 19:30 when I told myself that I was going to rest some before dinner and ended up waking at 07:30 the morning after.

The fact that the third and last day was my time to show off my pretty face (confidence? hell yea!) gave me the feeling that the extra hours of sleep was actually very much in place. I started of at the DNSSEC track where we listened to vendors such as Secure64, Xelerance and Infoblox. A quick coffee break and it was time for me to moderate the next session featuring open source projects  such as OpenDNSSEC and BIND.

Due to the lack of questions we actually finished early and I got to eat dinner with my good friend Shane Kerr, the head of development for BIND10 (the most anticipated open source software of 2010 if you ask me). During the afternoon my second chance to shine came along as I presented under the topic “Deploying DNSSEC, from a registrars perspective”. If you are interested in what was actually said then grab the slides!

With the DNSSEC track being done and dealt with the only thing left was getting on the train and heading home. Tomorrow I leave for another visit to Germany (my second in less then a month) and after that I’m looking forward to spending the entire week at the office (my gosh, it it really true?).

Regards,

LG

Different styles of life as we wear it!

During my twenty <something> years of life I have gone trough quite a few styles in clothes, but then again I guess most of us have. We all had that lunatic phase somewhere in your teens (pictures from that era are banned from all social networks and coupled with promises of certain death if shown in public).

Well, to get back on track… right now I’m in a transition phase where my normal week includes three styles. Regular jeans and some hoodie for pure office days, some comfortable sportspants and t-shirt during private life and then the business outfit for meetings and social life.

Being somewhere in the start of my professional career I see it fit to try out what kind of clothing person I want to become in the future. Right now I’m leaning somewhat towards the business outfit for most occasions as I very much enjoy being well dressed.

This might come as a shocker to some of my colleagues but hopefully they will like me anyways (they better, or else). Anywho.. Being anything close to a geek, nerd or genius actually gives you a lot of choices in the clothing department.

My reasoning here is that you will make great money in whatever clothes you are wearing as long as you can convince the right people that you are the only man for their project (and for that we have phones, e-mail and a heap of other technologies that does not feature visuals of the person on the other side).

So, what do the general public have to say about the clothing of a business man still in his twenties? Should he be wearing a suit, a hoodie or a coat similar to the one on the right? Well, that remains to be seen. I promise to give you an update on how my little experiment is going sometime soon.

Until then…

Regards,

LG