Yesterday ICANN began DNSSEC signing the IDN .test zones. Over the next few days, we will be testing and carefully monitoring the system. It is not expected that DNSSEC or the testing will have any effect on normal DNS operations. Any user experiences or problems or feedback should be reported to <richard.lamb@icann.org>. This deployment is intended to demonstrate certain capabilities and also provide both ICANN and those interested in DNSSEC an opportunity to gain further experience with this new technology.

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Last week we improved the format of the IANA IPv4 Address Space Registry. It is now much easier to see which address space is available for allocation to RIRs and which address space is reserved for Multicast and Future Use.

We made other changes, too. The IPv4 registry used to report that a lot of /8s were allocated to “Various Registries”. That wasn’t very helpful to anyone; it was a bit like saying “we don’t know”. In fact, the RIRs have been providing DNS and Whois services for addresses in these /8s but the IANA IPv4 registry didn’t indicate which RIR to consult because addresses in each of these /8s are often used by organisations in different RIR regions.

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More IPv4 /8s returned to an “IANA – Reserved” status in 2007 then ever before.

With help from the Regional Internet Registries, three /8s were returned in 2007 and last month we recovered one more. We now have 43 unallocated /8s. Here’s a table showing the details of the returned blocks.

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It is very inconsiderate of five-sixths of the world to fail to speak English, but then we are reliably informed that they feel pretty much the same way.

And so while the Internet has done an extraordinary job of transcending physical borders, language remains a pretty significant issue if you want to actually communicate with your new online neighbour.

When it comes to ICANN’s work, this comes with an extra layer of complexity thanks to the fact that the vast majority of English speakers wouldn’t know what an English speaker was talking about when discussing many of the topics that concern ICANN on a day-to-day basis.

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Running a DNS server that serves the root gives an interesting view into the world of the DNS.With the ongoing improvements to the ICANN operated L-ROOT we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to make use of the “DNS Statistics Collector” tool.

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I am at the UN Internet Governance Forum, being held this week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A recurring theme you can hear here is one that has vexed the technical community many times before — “Why are there 13 root servers?” This question is usually followed by questions like “Why are most of the root servers in the US?”

So let’s dispel these myths.

There are not 13 root servers.

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It’s been a long while since we posted a factsheet – a clear guide to a technical subject written in plain English. Today we publish one on a very technical, but very important subject: IPv6.
Internet Protocol version 6 is important for the Internet’s continued expansion for future generations. The number of free address under the [...]

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Earlier this week, we inserted eleven new top-level domains in the DNS root zone. These represent the term “test” translated into ten languages, in ten different scripts (Chinese is represented in two different scripts, and Arabic script is used by two different languages).
This blog post is not about that. (If you’re interested about it, read [...]

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I moved to Brussels to work from our office here at the start of August. One of the things I’d normally do when moving is working out which ISP to buy a service from. I haven’t done that yet because ‘Internet’ access is bundled along with the rent, water and electricity charges for my apartment.
What [...]

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