RIPE 92 in Edinburgh
Context
The last RIPE meeting I attended was RIPE 89 in Prague, in October 2024.
Back then I was still at F5, but now with a new job (still in DNS), it was time
to attend a new one!
This time in Edinburgh, and even though we had some rain, we also had some lovely weather, as you can see:
DNS Session
I attended the DNS Working Group on Thursday, with the following talks:
- "DNS, Transitive Trust and How Many is Many", by Ondřej Surý (ISC).
A very interesting talk about the insane number of DNS queries it takes for some CNAME chains, with e.g. 247 queries to resolve teams.microsoft.com (that's on a cold cache).
I'm not making it up, judge by yourself:
- "Black Holes and Prisoners: Understanding AS112 Deployment
Characteristics",
by Elizabeth Boswell (University of Glasgow).
Takeaway: AS112, which is a run by volunteers (hello, Hivane Network!), performs as well or even better than regularly-ran Root deployments! - "DNS TAPIR POP – Managing Multiple RPZ Inputs", by Lars-Johan Liman (Netnod)
TAPIR is an open source project, whose goal is to allow sharing knowledge about DNS threats between DNS operators. I wasn't aware of this project, and like the idea, even though having folks participating might require work. - "Overdoing NSEC3 Hurts" by Petr Špaček (ISC).
As usual, Petr delivers a very nice and fun talk (even with a broken voice!) and breaks some common misconceptions about NSEC3.
Spoiler alert: do NOT use NSEC3.
I liked the opening slides, with "what people think NSEC3 does" (with a picture of Edinburgh Castle) vs. "what it actually does" - meaning, in the end, a false sense of security.
The takeaway for me are:- NSEC3 is costly in terms of performances
- Use NSEC instead!
Catching up with old friends
As usual, a RIPE Meeting also means bumping into many people you haven't seen in
a while.
I was especially happy to have a few beers with Pieter (from PowerDNS), or
catch up with Denesh (previously UKNOF/DNS-OARC), Cathy, Petr and Greg (ISC), or Benno (NLnet
Labs).
Running
While Edinburgh is not in the mountains, it's still more hilly than where I live, so I took advantage of it to get some elevation.
On Day 2, I even ran with Lucas (a Swiss fella) up to Arthur's seat:
RIPE Dinner
The RIPE Dinner social happened at "Dynamic Earth", which was literally a few meters away from where Lucas and I ran in the morning, up to "Arthur's Seat in Holyrood Park.
Also, we were at a full French-speaking table, with folks from Hivane, Infomaniak, OVH, Wifirst, France-IX, AFNIC, OpsMill and Nimag Networks.
Conclusion
I usually stay only 2 days at RIPE, and this one was very good and busy!
Tags: DNS