ThatSiebGuy

Will Vista stall Net traffic?

There is FUD going around that the release of Vista will cause the Internet’s DNS system to slow to a craw or worse, die. Notice I said “FUD” because that’s all this is. Paul Mockapetris, one of the principal inventors of DNS, was warning that the usage of IPV6 in Vista was going to mean every time a user browsed to a webpage, two DNS lookups would be done, the first to determine if IPV6 was used, if not, fall back to IPV4 (the current standard). This setup would cause undue stress on the already stressed DNS system. What’s wrong with this statement?

a. The DNS infrastructure is rather robust and actual lookups are not that intensive. Collectively? Sure, they could be intensive, but then again…
b. Everyone on the planet would need to be using Vista at the same time, on release day, to cause any noticeable impact.
c. OSX and Linux already have IPV6 implemented. On OSX, its on by default, and stubbornly, doesn’t ever want to stay off. I don’t see anyone complaining about these two killing the Internet.. In Vista, it also looks like its enabled by default, but can be disabled by clicking the check box in the network settings.
d. Microsoft said, while there may be a bit more traffic, Vista will not query twice. Why? Vista will only query on the interface its currently using, which will usually be IPV4. I have yet to see anyone in the U.S. implement IPV6 in the public domain.
e. With all the beta versions of Vista running around, doesn’t look like they’ve impacted the Internet.
f. Most DNS load occurs at the ISP level, those that give you your DSL connection, not at the Root level. ISP DNS Nameservers are usually already under load and I never recommend using them, I prefer OpenDNS.
g. As quoted from DailyTech, “Some experts disagree with Mockapetris and believe this might be a FUD campaign to stir up support for Nomium, a vendor of DNS products were Mockapetris works as chief scientist. Microsoft has said that while vista may cause an increase in DNS traffic it won’t be to the extent that it cripples the DNS system. “

There you have it, straight from the FUDs mouth.

TIA (aka Topsail) unveiled: the real scope of the NSA’s domestic spying program

* Law enforcement has shown that they consider any transactional data arising from voice communications—either POTS (plain old telephone system), cellular, or VoIP—to be fair game and to be covered by a much lower threshold than “probable cause.”
* In the absence of up-to-date laws, the POTS-based definition of “transactional information” is being stretched to fit new forms of data arising from new forms of communication (e.g. location data arising from cell phone calls).
* The NSA, for its part, has gone further and demonstrated that they consider such transactional data to be theirs to snoop, aggregate, and mine without any kind of court order at all.
* This transactional data can be correlated to specific end users by indexing their phone number(s) into a wide array of commercially available databases that cover many other aspects of our financial and private lives.
* The NSA also has in place the ability to collect “transactional information” for IP-based communications, like Web sessions, email, FTP, VoIP, and more.

On a side note, both cases against the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping were denied information and effectively shut down by the Government.

DOJ Drops Wiretap Investigation

Government Intervenes in Surveillance Lawsuit

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
-James Madison

No Space for MySpace

The campaign to crowd out predators from MySpace.com is gathering steam in Washington. House of Representatives lawmakers proposed a bill on May 9 that would block access to social networks and Internet chat rooms in most federally funded schools and libraries.

You know its well with in the schools right to write up their own Internet usage policy that prevents students from using such sites. It’s no different than agreeing to your company’s network policy that says you can’t use their network for personal surfing. If students are caught, deal with it then. We don’t need the government to do anything about this, it’s not the governments job. Sure, they are “federally funded schools” but that is no excuse to bypass the schools administration and blanked the entire country’s worth of educational institutes. This is no more than politicians trying to drum up support by telling people what they want to hear. If your a parent concerned about your kid looking at these sites at school, go to the school about it and ask what they are doing to discourage or prevent it, it’s their network. This is all too common of a problem now a days, everyone thinks its the governments job to solve everything, yet they turn around and complain about how “Big Brother” is stepping on their rights when people only have themselves to blame for giving the government such control. This is also an ongoing example of parents pawning off responsibility to someone else for their kids instead of educating them themselves. You get what you ask for…

Also, MySpace is no different than Yahoo Chatrooms or other such places on the internet where people gather, its just the only one getting publicity at the moment. Yet another example of what little people (especially politicians) know about the internet.