As you may be aware from recent news reports, traffic to the youtube.com website was ‘hijacked’ on a global scale on Sunday, 24 February 2008. The incident was a result of the unauthorised announcement of the prefix 208.65.153.0/24 and caused the popular video sharing website to become unreachable from most, if not all, of the Internet. The RIPE NCC conducted an analysis into how this incident was seen and tracked by the RIPE NCC’s Routing Information Service (RIS) and has published a case study… More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

Pakistan’s attempts to block access to YouTube have been blamed for a near global blackout of the site on Sunday. Google, the owner of YouTube, blamed the outage on “erroneous internet protocols”, sourced in Pakistan. According to BBC News, the nearly two-hour long blackout was almost certainly connected to Pakistan Telecom and internet service provider PCCW. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a second draft of a proposed standards profile to support the implementation of IPv6 by government agencies. “NIST developed the ‘profile’ to help ensure that IPv6-enabled federal information systems are interoperable, secure and able to co-exist with the current IPv4 systems.” …The White House’s Office of Management and Budget declared in 2005 that all federal agencies shall migrated to IPv6 by June 30, 2008… More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

The debates are raging over whether or not we should migrate to IPv6. The strongest argument is the enormous address space that will allow for everyone and everything to have a unique public address, many addresses actually. It is often said that the shortage of public IPv4 addresses has limited our capabilities because it led to the pervasive use of private addressing, Network Address Translation (NAT) and Port Address Translation (PAT). Though these technologies remain critical, they are often regarded as stop-gap measures, and they sometimes create problems. In some circles, NAT has acquired a very bad name. But is that a fair perspective of the technology? Let’s review the positives and negatives. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

February 4th 2008 will be the day the repotting of the internet finally starts. A milestone of sorts for some people who spent a good part of the last five years getting us this far. It should now be finally possible for a IPv6 only device to have a chance to communicate on the Internet. Indeed, today, IPv6 address information is not included in most root DNS servers. Some good write-ups are already appearing on the subject covering the relevance of this development… Why get excited as there are practically no IPv6 only devices yet, some will bemoan. Well, one can hear a distant rumbling of such devices coming, alongside the mobile internet… More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

Interesting things happening in China. An article in the English edition of the People’s Daily on line is headlined, Decimal network security address begins operation: “China’s decimal network security address was officially launched. China has made a fundamental breakthrough in its Internet development; and actual use has been successful. The birth of decimal network technology makes China the only country able to unify domain names, IP addresses and MAC addresses into the text of a metric system…” Someone asked whether this was a rumored IPv9? It appears IPv9 is a project name, not a new protocol. It lumps together several activities, including at least… More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

This open public forum, “What’s in a name? The History and Future of the Domain Name System,” is organized by the Oxford Internet Institute and will be held at The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London, on Monday 28 January 2008, from 4-6pm (UTC). The forum will look at the history and future of the Internet Domain Name System (DNS). It will provide an opportunity to commemorate Jon Postel by looking back at the 25 year history of the DNS but also the 10 years of its management under ICANN; and a vision of what the future holds over the coming years. The panel of speakers include… More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

A cyberattack has caused a power blackout in multiple cities outside the United States, the CIA has warned. The SANS Institute, a computer-security training body, reported the CIA’s disclosure on Friday. CIA senior analyst Tom Donahue told a SANS Institute conference on Wednesday in New Orleans that the CIA had evidence of successful cyberattacks against critical national infrastructures outside the United States. More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

Twenty five years ago, in January 1983, TCP/IP protocols replaced Network Control Program (NCP) as the principal protocol of the ARPANET making the Internet possible as we know it today. Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn have been credited for the invention of the technology… More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back

The Time Square Ball bringing in 2008 had more than 9,500 LED bulbs displaying 16 million colours while consuming power equivalent to about ten toasters. This compares to 600 incandescent and halogen bulbs adorning last year’s Ball. Easy to forget that most mobile devices used by Time Square revelers were behind IPv4 NAT’s and that always on applications such as Instant Messaging, Push e-mail, VoIP or location based services tend to be electricity guzzlers. It so happens that applications that we want always to be reachable have to keep sending periodic keepalive messages to keep the NAT state active… More…

Original post by submitnews@thewhir.com (Web Hosting’s Premier Daily News) and software by Elliott Back