Recent Articles
Addressing 2011 - One Down, Four to Go!
January 2012
It’s January again, and being the start of another year, it’s as good a time as any to look at the last 12 months and see what the Internet was up to in 2011. So lets see what has changed in the past 12 months in addressing the Internet, and look at how IP address allocation information can inform us of the changing nature of the network itself. more...
The Curious Case of the Crooked TCP Handshake
December 2011
In this article we will be delving into the behaviour of the Linux implementation of TCP, and looking at the way in which TCP establishes a connection. There are socket options in Linux that cause the TCP handshake to behave in a rather curious way. more...
Dual Stack Esotropia
December 2011
The introduction of a second IP protocol into the Internet presents many technical issues, and in previous columns we've explored many of the issues related to network engineering and infrastructure. In this column I'd like to head upward in the protocol stack to the rarefied air way up there at the level of the application, and look at how applications are managing to cope with the issue of running IPv4 and IPv6 at once. more...
The (BGP) World is Flat!
November 2011
In the previous article on the growth trends of BGP we looked at the BGP routing table, and looked at some predictive models for the growth of the size of the Internet's routing table. The conclusions made in that article were that while there is a very high level of uncertainty at present, it appears that the routing table is growing, but at a rate that does not excite any particular concern at this point in time. But is absolute size the only thing that matters in routing? Are other aspects of the Internet's inter-domain routing system growing at rates that are cause for concern? more...
BGP Growth Revisited
November 2011
BGP has been toiling away, literally holding the Internet together, for more than two decades, and nothing seems to be falling off the edge of the Internet. As far as we can tell everyone can still see everyone else, and routing appears to be working. So why should we be interested in BGP? One cause for concern is the inexorable growth of the Internet's routing system. Does this constant growth in routing imply that our routing system is growing faster than our capacity to afford ever larger and faster routers, assuming of course that we can keep on building ever larger and faster routers in the first place? Lets take a look at the metrics of growth in BGP. more...
Hacking away at the Internet's Security
October 2011
The front page story of the September 13 2011 issue of the International Herald Tribune said it all: "Iranian activists feel the chill as hacker taps into e-mails." The news story relates how a hacker has "sneaked into the computer systems of a security firm on the outskirts of Amsterdam" and then "created credentials that could allow someone to spy on Internet connections that appeared to be secure." According to this news report this incident punched a hole in an online security mechanism that is trusted by hundreds of millions of Internet users all over the network. more...
Transitional Uncertainties
September 2011
The telecommunications industry gets things wrong just as easily as it can get things right. In many ways the size of the industry is no indicator of its ability to make astute technology choices. Being large, and commanding vast resources in terms of workforce and capital does not necessarily help in making the right decisions. Some argue that it increases the probability of getting it wrong! This then brings me onto the obvious question: How will this industry manage the transition from IPv4 to IPv6? Will it be successful? Or will our children assign this exercise to the top shelf of the industry's record of failures? more...
Networking @ Home
August 2011
For me, one of the more interesting sessions at the recent IETF 81 meeting in July was the first meeting of the recently established Homenet Working Group. What's so interesting about networking the home? Well, if you regard challenges as "interesting", then just about everything is interesting when you look at networking in the home! more...
The Future of the Internet Economy: Chapter 2
July 2011
The OECD held a "high-level" meeting in June 2011 that was intended to build upon the OECD Ministerial on The Future of the Internet Economy held in Seoul, Korea in June 2008. I was invited to attend this meeting, focussing on the Internet's potential for generating innovation and economic growth as part of the delegation from the Internet Technical Advisory Committee (ITAC), and here I'd like to share my impressions of this meeting. more...
Securing BGP with BGPsec
July 2011
For many years the Internet's fundamental elements – names and addresses – were the source of basic structural vulnerabilities in the network. With the increasing momentum behind the deployment of DNSSEC there is some cause for optimism that we have the elements of securing the name space now in hand, but what about addresses and routing? In this article we will look at current efforts within the IETF to secure the use of addresses within the routing infrastructure of the Internet, and the status of current work of the Secure Inter-Domain Routing (SIDR) working group. more...
