Mícheál Ó Foghlú's Weblog

IPv6 DNS in Root DNS Zone

ICANN | Next-generation IPv6 Address Added to the Internet's Root DNS Zone

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (20 July 2004) – ICANN announced today that for the first time, an IPv6 nameserver address has been added to the Internet's root DNS zone. This next generation version of the Internet Protocol provides trillions more addresses than the IPv4 system that is in use by most networks today.

By taking this significant step forward in the transition to IPv6, ICANN is supporting the innovations through which the Internet evolves to meet the growing needs of a global economy.

On 20 July 2004 at 18:33 UTC the IPv6 AAAA records for the Japan (.jp) and Korea (.kr) country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) nameservers became visible in the root zone file with serial number 2004072000. It is expected that the IPv6 records for France (.fr) will be added shortly. Other requests are pending and will be added in accordance with documented procedure, which was developed through ICANN's unique multi-stakeholder consensus-based approach. .

Recognizing the importance of IPv6 to the Internet community, ICANN has coordinated with its Root Server System Advisory Committee, Top Level Domain managers, Security and Stability Advisory Committee, and other interested parties in careful analysis of this issue. After a period of thorough examination, the decision was made to move forward with deployment of the IPv6 address records in the manner prescribed by the community.

ICANN is the global public-benefit non-profit organisation responsible for coordinating the Internet's naming and numbering systems. For more information please visit: .

Bloggers get popular and get sued

According to this article 8,000 bloggers born every day | The Register there are over 3 million weblogs, and the bloggers are getting sued! Maybe I should go anonymous.

W3C Releases Public Working Draft for Full-Text Searching of XML Text and Documents

The W3C has released the Public Working Draft for Full-Text Searching of XML Text and Documents (link to "The Cover Pages" article on the announcement). This draft is entitled XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Full-Text. To quote "The Cover Pages" article:

As defined by the draft, "full-text queries are performed on text which has been tokenized, i.e., broken into a sequence of words, units of punctuation, and spaces." New full-text search facility is implemented by extending the XQuery and XPath languages to support a new "FTContainsExpr" expression and a new "ft:score" function.

Expressions of the type FTSelection are composed of:(1) words or combinations of words that are the search strings to be found as matches; (2) Match options such as case sensitivity or an indication to use stop words; (3) Boolean operators that allow composition of an FTSelection from simpler FTSelections; (4) Positional constraints such as indication of match distance or window.

The new Full-Text Working Draft endeavors to meet search requirements specified in an updated companion draft XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Full-Text Use Cases. This document provides use cases designed to "illustrate important applications of full-text querying within an XML query language. Each use case exercises a specific functionality relevant to full-text querying. An XML Schema and sample input data are provided; each use case specifies a query applied to the input data, a solution in XQuery, a solution in XPath (when possible), and the expected results."

Full-text query designed as an extension of XQuery and XPath will support several kinds of searches not possible using simple substring matching. It allows precision querying of XML documents containing "highly-structured data (numbers, dates), unstructured data (untagged free-flowing text), and semi-structured data (text with embedded tags).

Language-based query and token-based searches are also supported; for example, find all the news items that contain a word with the same linguistic stem as the English word "mouse" — which finds occurrences of both "mouse" and "mice" together with possessive forms.

Tokenization serves as the basis for full-text search in the W3C draft. Words, spaces, and punctuation are distinguished. A "word is defined as any character, n-gram, or sequence of characters returned by a tokenizer as a basic unit to be queried; consecutive words need not be separated by either punctuation or space, and words may overlap; a phrase is a sequence of ordered words which can contain any number of words." This model "enables functions and operators which work with the relative positions of words (e.g., proximity operators). It uniquely identifies sentences and paragraphs in which words appear. Tokenization also enables functions and operators which operate on a part or the root of the word, e.g., wildcards, stemming."

The W3C XQuery and XSL Working Groups invite public comment on the two full-text query drafts.

Putting this within the broader XQuery context:

"The mission of the XML Query Project is to provide flexible query facilities to extract data from real and virtual documents on the World Wide Web, therefore finally providing the needed interaction between the Web world and the database world. Ultimately, collections of XML files will be accessed like databases. The ambitious task of the XML Query (XQuery) Working Group is therefore to develop the first world standard for querying web documents, following the incredibly successful discussion started at the QL'98 event. However, the XML Query (XQuery) project is all-around, and also includes in its efforts not only the standard for querying XML documents, but also the next-generation standards for doing XML selection (XPath2), for doing XML serialization, for doing Full-Text Search, for providing a possible functional XML Data Model, and for providing a standard set of functions and operators for manipulating web data..." [from the XQuery page]

The development of robust searching techniques within XML documents is a crucial underlying technology for many evolving areas of distributed computing and eBusiness/eCommerce. It will be interesting to see if document-centric XML-based approaches mature the same way that relational database approaches have over the past 20 years to become a core compent of nearly all systems. However, trying to capture complex natural language concepts like alternative irregular plurals automatically in search queries may be pushing things further than can be actually be achieved in real world implementations at present.

Useful Articles on Routing

This is the latest in a set of useful postings (Chapters) describing routing: Elguapo's Guide to Routing - Part 4, OSPF || kuro5hin.org

Chapter 1 was an introduction. Chapter 2 was RIP. Chapter 3 was BGP. Chapter 5 will be the Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP). Chapter 6 will be the Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP). Chapter 7 will be the Intermediate System to Intermediate System protocol.

IPv9 - April Fool or Reality?

I saw some recent postings about IPv9 in China that had me very confused as any prior mentions of IPv9 (as I discivered from a Google search) had been April Fool's jokes. However the latest reports China disowns IPv9 hype | The Register do seem to have some reality, but are "true, but probably unimportant" (Gag Helfront's catch phrase in "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams). I'll stick to my interest in IPv6 for now. Here's the text of that article in full:

Evidence is growing that IPv9, hyped up the widely-adopted foundation of a next generation Internet infrastructure in China, is really a marginal project backed by few even in China.

Reports from China this week about widespread adoption of the previously unheard of Internet protocol have created bewilderment and something approaching a diplomatic incident in the sysadmin community.

Vint Cerf, SVP of technology strategy at MCI, and one of chief architects of the modern Internet, was bewildered by the reports. In an email sent to senior figures in the Chinese Internet community, he asked: "What could this possibly be about? As far as I know, IANA [Internet Assigned Numbers Authority] has not allocated the IPv9 designation to anyone. IPv9 is not an Internet standard. Could you please explain what is intended here? I am disturbed by the reference to root servers, 'control'. What is the 'ten digit text file' all about? Who is behind the Shanghai Jiuyao Digital Network Company?"

Professor Hualin Qian of the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences described IPv9 as a research project that turned out to have serious practical shortcomings and little support.

"CNIC explains IPv9 is proposed by the director, Mr. Xie Jian-Ping, of the Institute of Chemical Engineering located in Shanghai. Two years ago, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) invited them to introduce their idea about IPv9. According to my understanding, their proposal includes two main aspects: the first one is IPv9, the second one is Digital Domain Names.

"For IPv9, they think that the address space of IPv6 (128bits long) is not enough for future use, they expanded the IP address to 256 bits. I don't think the protocols for IPv9 have major difference from IPv6 except the longer IP address. Almost all the people working on networks in CAS do not agree with their opinion, because there is not any evidence showing that the IPv6 address is not enough and using 256 bits source and destination IP address will increase the overhead of an IP packet. And when communicating with IPv4/IPv6, equipment such as NAT-PT [Network Address Translation] must be installed. This will be the bottle neck for future high capacity interconnection with IPv4 and IPv6 global Internet."

Hualin added that IPv9 is unfamiliar to network experts from Fudan University in Shanghai who "do not know any deployment of IPv9 in Shanghai" contrary to initial reports by China's official news agency, Xinhua.

Tim Chown of Southampton University, and technology adviser to the IPv6 Task Force in the UK, told El Reg: "The consensus now seems to be it is one researcher or group trying to promote a 256-bit adaptation of IPv6, but it doesn't yet seem to have much traction. It is hard to tell how serious it is, or whether it is a complete non-starter in the same way as Jim Fleming's ludicrous IPv8 is. There may well be some sensible ideas behind IPv9, but IPv6 is the system that is standardised and now (very) widely implemented."

I know Tim Chown from various EU IPv6 Cluster meetings and so I'm happy to discount IPv9 for now.

RDF for the Desktop

I'm glad to see moves to push RDF onto the desktop as metadata for desktop resources: 2004: Metadata for the desktop. This ties in my my recent postings about MS Longhorn's new filesystem and Jon Udell's musings on these matters.

Linux kernel: Moving closer to Windows?

This article from ADNet shows that there may be more similarities between Windows and Linux kernels than you might think. Linux kernel: Moving closer to Windows? (ZDNet UK News)

Home Wi-Fi hotspots typically not encrypted

Whilst Wi-Fi security is a complex issue, is is worrying that many people use no form of encryption as reported in: Security-Free Wireless Networks (Wired News, 30th May 2004).

"SAN JOSE, California -- With a laptop perched in the passenger seat of his Toyota 4Runner and a special antenna on the roof, Mike Outmesguine ventured off to sniff out wireless networks between Los Angeles and San Francisco. He got a big whiff of insecurity.

"While his 800-mile drive confirmed that the number of wireless networks is growing explosively, he also found that only a third used basic encryption -- a key security measure. In fact, in nearly 40 percent of the networks not a single change had been made to the gear's wide-open default settings.

...

"During his wardrive, Outmesguine counted 3,600 hot spots, compared with 100 on the same route in 2000. Worldwide, makers of Wi-Fi gear for homes and small offices posted sales of more than $1.3 billion in 2003, a 43 percent jump over 2002, according to Synergy Research Group."

Cassini in Orbit Around Saturn

"The international Cassini-Huygens mission has successfully entered orbit around Saturn. At 9:12 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, flight controllers received confirmation that Cassini had completed the engine burn needed to place the spacecraft into the correct orbit. This begins a four-year study of the giant planet, its majestic rings and 31 known moons. " (from NASA Announcement)

Mono release ( .NET for other platforms)

Novell releases Mono (The Register)

Here's the full text of the Register posting:

"Novell has released the first version of Mono, which brings Microsoft's .NET framework to non-Microsoft platforms. It's available pre-compiled for SuSE and Red Hat distributions of Linux, and for Mac OS X. It's almost exactly three years since it was announced by Miguel de Icaza. Novell acquired Ximian last year.

"Mono is a run-time and C# compiler, but the team has included just-in-time support an IDE, and intriguingly, both a Visual Basic runtime and a Java VM. For a quick list of what's different from Microsoft's own .NET, consult this list. The biggest omissions in the initial release are lack of COM support - which may affect legacy applications - and no printing.

"The project has been controversial since the start, and remains so. Today the debate is about patents: Microsoft has claims on many core aspects of .NET. (See MS patents .Everything). But simply getting there and providing a level of compatibility is no small achievement. And keeping compatible is a problem Microsoft has with itself. ｮ"

The new Mono website has a Mono Downloads section and a Resease Notes Mono 1.0 section as well as a blog posting Mono Release 1.0 Announcement.

Intelligent Buildings

Using Internet to Reduce Electricity Bills describes the use of XML-based collaborative communication between buildings to optimise electricity usage.