Our second virtual RFCsWeLove took place on the 12th June 2020 (Friday). This was our 15th meetup and the 2nd fully virtual one.
We had a great set of speakers with an excellent set of topics this time!
Dhruv kicked off the session with an introduction to RFCsWeLove, IIESoc as well as upcoming IETF 108. [Slide].
The first talks was on the latest in DC routing by Russ White.
Abstract: BGP has been the "default" for DC fabrics since the publication of RFC 7938. Recently, however, there has been a lot of work on link state and link state-like alternatives, such as RIFT, distributed optimized flooding, and controller-based schemes. This session will look at why many in the community consider BGP to be a less-than-ideal choice for DC fabrics, and provide an overview of three of the alternatives.
Bio: Russ White has more than twenty years' experience in designing, deploying, breaking, and troubleshooting large scale networks. Across that time, he has co-authored more than forty software patents, spoken at venues throughout the world, participated in the development of several internet standards, helped develop the CCDE and the CCAr, and worked in Internet governance with the Internet Society. Russ is currently a Infrastructure Architect at Juniper Networks. He has worked on next generation data center designs, complexity, security, and privacy. He is also currently on the Routing Area Directorate at the IETF, and co-chairs the IETF I2RS and BABEL working groups. He is a co-host of two podcasts - The Hedge and the The History of Networking.
Next, a very interesting research paper on how web censorship is done in India.
How India Censors the Web by Gurshabad Grover [Slide]
Abstract: One of the ways the Government of India engages in online censorship is by asking Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to certain websites for its users. Flowing from provisions in the Information Technology (IT) Act, website blocking in India can be opaque and executive-driven, leaving much to be desired in ensuring users' rights of freedom of expression and access to information online. At the same time, it leaves the technical details of how website blocking will happen to the ISPs. The talk will cover the findings of a recent paper 'How India Censors the Web' that reports the different techniques
Indian ISPs are using to censor websites, and empirical data on whether ISPs are blocking the same websites. Finally, the talk will explore the legal and policy implications of these discussions, especially as they relate to legal reform on online freedom of expression and net neutrality in India.
Bio: Gurshabad manages legal and technical research in the freedom of expression team at CIS. Gurshabad's current work focuses on Indian constitutional law, regulation of online content, and network security.
Finally, a look at running local DNS root servers.
Decreasing Access Time to DNS Root Servers by Running One on Loopback (RFC 7706) by Swapneel Patnekar [Slide]
Abstract: DNS(Domain Name System) is the crucial & ubiquitous fabric of the Internet. Despite the fact that there are 13 root servers (1091 instances in Anycast) all around the world, the resiliency & the security of the DNS has been an ongoing probing question. This presentation explores the following questions,
1. How do we increase the resiliency of the root servers ?
2. How do we stop sending junk queries to the root servers ?
3. How do we reduce the access time to the root servers ?
4. How do we increase privacy by hiding queries made to the root servers ?
RFC 7706 provides us answers to these questions. Plus, I will demonstrate an interesting project(Localroot) which allows anyone to run a local copy of the DNS root zone.
Bio: Swapneel Patnekar is network engineer & researcher with interests in networking(DNS, DNSSEC, BGP), Unix systems and security. As a technical trainer, he regularly conducts workshops on DNS, DNSSEC, Routing, Unix etc. He is also an APNIC Community Trainer & a RIPE Atlas Ambassador.
He is also the Managing Director of Shreshta IT Technologies Pvt. Ltd, a company based out of Belgaum, building & securing networks of micro, small & medium enterprises & network operators in Tier-II and Tier-III cities.
Find details about previous meetup here.
Stay Safe Folks!