I’ve followed the progress of Open Root Server Network since 2002. While supporting it by using their service since then i switched on operating the node B in September 2006. This node is sponsored by FunkFeuer in Vienna as a successor of ATnet which closed it’s service for that node after it was sold to EUnet.

Currently, in my opinion – ORSN is a proof of concept. This means that we’ve shown that it’s possible to run an independent root server network which sticks to the zone principles of ICANN. But it has still to be considered experimental and needs some further steps to get interesting for the big ISPs too. While talking to operators of UPC, SilverServer and some others the main issue they are concerning about is the stability. They don’t think we’re poisoning the zone but somehow hessitate to switch before other big players did so. So we’re currently having an hen and egg situation. Questioned how to break this most of them came up with the idea of a legal entity focused on the development of the future network. The outcome of this should be some kind of mission statements which show exactly where we are and where we want to go.

As Markus Grundmann is currently very low on his spare time i’ve choosen to take the lead of the project for a while and will try to get following challenges a bit futher.

• Legal entity
  We’re currently thinking about an appropriate aproach for this. There needs to be considered that we don’t want to fall in the same position ICANN currently is (controlled by one government). Also we don’t want to be based in one country nor in one continent. But question here also is, what will keep our organisational costs minimal.
• DNSSEC
  Although there is at least one open issue (“Zone walking”) on DNSSEC itself, it’s probably good to do the first step into a more secure DNS.
  Personally i don’t consider zone walking as a blocking issue for the introduction of DNSSEC because i stick with the “DNS is public”-argument. I am more concerned about the performance issues this might cause.
• Anycast
  Currently the load on our servers is not that high as we would need Anycast structure, but if we head forward in providing service to big ISPs the stability will be a big issue – as said. Considering the importance of our service we will get a more interesting target for attackers too.

I hope this gives people interested some insight on my planned steps for the further development of ORSN.

I have to say that i was also not really thinking about that issue much in my time before participating in ORSN. But which came up as a simple operator job for a DNS server worked out as a big political thing. More on this later.

Latest trends should bring all other nations in an alarm state. Fact is, if one country should ever be capable of this key it’s the country that controls the root zone itself. As recently shown ICANN is not doing quite well with legal issues on basis of privately held firms – so for me this questions how they do with governments? I personally would see it as best solution if this would go to a neutral authority (UN is one example) or maybe they would take the path the ITU did (if still possible) once.

So what does this mean for the Open Root Server Network? Well, several things. We are currently working on our approach to bring in DNSSEC to the root zone. As some of you might ask – what’s the big deal? Clearly said it’s not the technical aspect.

• There is still an open question about zone traversal and DNSSEC. As DNSSEC in the root zone would close the last gap in the hierachy this should be considered.
• Holding keys securely and still available for the signing work is an important thing to work on.
• Get people to use the functions is absolutely necessary. So a lot of lobbying work has to be done.

In January 2007 CAIDA was one of the institutes behind the Day in the life of the internet. This project was one of the first steps in trying to gather more research data for the future development of internet technologies. I as an operator of ORSN node B have provided them with PCAP data of this node.

Now CAIDA came up with the idea to make a workshop for future contribution of data. They have already invested a lot of time in the DatCat database therefore. The focus of this workshop is to get data providers and researchers together to find a way to provide enough metadata to make the data useful for researchers while still keeping it that simple so data providers will use it. Workshop attendees are also being introduced in DatCat and it’s background.

I’m looking forward to join this workshop in March …

Workshop Homepage