DNS-OARC Supports High-Risks Strings Collisions Studies

As well as running twice-yearly workshops, various public benefit tools and inter-member co-operation platforms, OARC operates a number of large-scale data gathering initiatives, which collect data from its members' infrastructure. One of these, initiated in 2004 in co-operation with CAIDA and funded by the NSF, is a "Day in the Life of the Internet"" (DITL). This gathers detailed data-sets of DNS queries to root and top-level DNS operators for a 48-hour period at least once a year.

Verisign Make Major Donation in Support of DNS-OARC

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DNS-OARC is pleased to announce that we have received a substantial one-off donation from <a href="http://www.verisign.com">Verisign</a> to assist with OARC development.
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This, together with future member meeting sponsorship support as well as higher than expected rates of member upgrades and premium renewals, has allowed us to revise our 2013 budget on a notably increased revenue base.
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Verisign's donation is being used for two main purposes:<ul>

New Root Operator Representative Appointed to OARC Board

After more than 4 years of service to DNS-OARC, Matt Larson of Verisign recently took the decision to stand down as the Root Operator's representative to the OARC Board. After deliberation, OARC's Root Servers Advisory Committee has decided to appoint John Crain, representing ICANN/L-Root, as his replacement. DNS-OARC would like to congratulate John on his appointment and to thank Matt for his contribution and commitment.

Names Without Dots

ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee recently solicited input (again) on the issue of "Dotless Domains." A fellow OARC member asked me if I could generate a list of the top 50,000 dotless domains seen at the root name servers. This type of data is available in the annual Day in the Life of the Internet (DITL) collections that OARC performs annually. I ran the analys is for the April 2012 data. Out of 30.1 billion queries in the data set, 1.76 billion (5.8%) were queries for single-label names. Here are the top 20:
Rank  Count        Query
====  ===========  =====================
   1  287,650,115  local
   2   31,698,784  localhost
   3   16,562,544  wpad
   4   13,367,843  com
   5   12,983,976  ru
   6    8,970,691  _nfsv4idmapdomain
   7    5,490,837  net
   8    4,416,080  \032
   9    4,187,822  org
  10    3,372,632  mail
  11    2,776,746  de
  12    2,658,933  uk
  13    1,940,390  unifi
  14    1,795,716  jp
  15    1,725,496  yotaaccessinterface
  16    1,679,345  mybooklive
  17    1,507,665  pl
  18    1,406,996  http
  19    1,294,151  arpa
  20    1,264,372  helvetica,

Call for Nominees - 2012 OARC Board of Directors

At the upcoming AGM DNS-OARC members will be electing two directors for its board of directors. We are looking for nominations for candidates willing to serve a two-year term on the Board and contribute to the continued growth of OARC. The Board meets monthly, by teleconference, to review DNS-OARC operations. We expect our directors to actively contribute to the various ongoing, email based, discussions and provide feedback as needed. An ideal candidate will be one with the business experience to help formulate strategy and guide the policy that drives DNS-OARC. To be eligible, a candidate must be from an DNS-OARC Member in good standing. If you would like to nominate (or self-nominate) a candidate, please send an email to board2012@dns-oarc.net with a brief background. We will be asking nominees for a statement of interest. The list of current nominees is available online and will be updates as candidates step forward. (https://www.dns-oarc.net/oarc/workshop-201210/elections). Cut off for nominations is September 30th. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me directly. Thanks Matt Larson Chairman, DNS-OARC mlarson@verisign.com