DNS

Offerings such as Google Public DNS, OpenDNS and other public domain name system services promise increased security and privacy but can fall short on Web performance, according to a Northwestern University research team that has developed a tool it says can address that shortcoming.

In 2008 ICANN announced it would add between dozens or millions of top-level domains to expand the virtual space available online.This week it again delayed the application deadline, again. OTOH, alternative registrar OpenNIC register as a .pirate (or anything else) for free.

A new, free tool from OpenDNS promises to make domain name system (DNS) lookups--the conversion of a plain-English domain name into a numeric Internet address--more secure. DNSCrypt prevents third parties from intercepting your DNS requests and rewriting them to point your browser, email client, or other software to malicious or fake sites. That may sound like a tedious bit of Internet plumbing, but it profoundly improves your security.

A new vendor-sponsored study of the 1,000 biggest websites quantifies how much better third-party managed service providers are doing at operating DNS services across the Internet cloud than enterprises that run this critical network service themselves.

Infoblox is adding two new features to its DNS appliances to help its service provider and enterprise customers transition to IPv6, the long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol.

Despite 12 years of warning, most companies appear to have done little to get ready; appearances are often deceiving.

Within days of the ICE/DHS seizures, at least three separate initiatives to work around the DNS had been announced. Here's a look at some of these proposals — two to route around and one to supplant the DNS — and the obstacles they face.

Some of the shady crowd behind the Pirate Bay file sharing Website have announced plans for a peer-to-peer domain name system (DNS), called P2P DNS.

There is no service more basic to Internet performance and security than DNS -- the set of functions that turns names users can remember and type into addresses that the computer uses to find stuff. There's only one part of the entire mobile enterprise infrastructure that gets less attention than DNS. (Which part is that?

Boise State University, the largest university in Idaho, has replaced its aging Cisco Network Registrar software with appliances from BlueCat Networks that it says are easier to manage and less expensive to operate for Domain Name System and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol services.

Serial numbers in zone files help your DNS service determine when it should re-ingest your zone files or ignore them. But there's more to these pseudo timestamps than meets the eye. In fact, the number that you put in your file and the one that DNS extracts from it might be as different as 200907270001 and 3338774385.