PING
PING is a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the Internet, exploring its inner workings and the people who build and maintain its health. Every two weeks, the show features conversations with individuals who have contributed to the development and improvement of the Internet's infrastructure. The episodes provide insights into the technical and operational aspects of the Internet, aimed at those curious about how it all functions. The views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of APNIC.
Episodes
Measuring the impact of locally served root zone
In this episode of PING, we talk with Willem Toorop from NLNet Labs and Ilyas Rahimi who recently completed a masters in Security and Network Engineering at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). They’ve been looking at the effects of local root serving.
Ilyas was on a masters programme called “OS3” at UvA (from the triplet of Open Standards, Open Software and Open Security). NLNet labs is on the cam
DNS Cold Start
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston and I discuss the behaviour of the DNS system when you have to come up from nothing: the “cold start” where no data exists from prior queries in your “cache”. This stems from a talk given by Ondřej Surý, that Geoff saw at the recent RIPE-92 Meeting held in Edinburgh, in the DNS working group.
Cache, is the things you hold on to, from pri
Canonical Cache Representation
In this episode of PING, we talk with Job Snijders about secure Internet routing again, focusing on an approach to preserving the state of RPKI as a longterm historical record for research and analysis. Job was last on PING to discuss the “Erik” protocol.
Job has been running an archive of RPKI state for some time, as a volunteer activity but an exercise which was feasible when BGP speakers produ
DNS Query Duplication
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston and I discuss a traffic behaviour in the DNS which Geoff has noticed in the labs advertising based experimental data capture. Virtually every DNS query Geoff sees, he sees twice (or more). For a cohort of about 150 million unique DNS labels on a given day, The Labs system is collecting 270 million incoming DNS queries. Thats a lot of dupl
Testing RSSAC 028 DNS root server name choices
In this episode of PING, we talk with Willem Toorop about a measurement of 6 choices for naming the root servers of the global DNS. This measurement was motivated by RSSAC 028, a 2017 technical analysis for ICANN of the naming scheme used by the root DNS servers.
Root name servers are part of the global DNS system, and they provide basic bootstrapping for every other DNS resolver and authoritativ
What ‘name-based routing’ really means
In recent PING episodes, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston has asserted that Internet routing has shifted away from traditional IP packet forwarding. Instead, it is increasingly driven by processes that map names to addresses. It’s no longer just about your IP address or the specific endpoint you think you’re connecting to, it’s about your location and which intermediary services can most effecti
The Erik protocol: improving RPKI data fetch
In this episode of PING we’re hearing about secure Internet Routing and its data distribution problem from Job Snijders who has been on PING before talking about his measurements in BGP and RPKI.
We caught up at IETF125 in Shenzhen where Job presented to the SIDROPS working group on a new protocol he’s been designing, called Erik. The Erik protocol was named in honour of Erik Bais who died in May
About Time
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston and I discuss Network Time Protocol or NTP. NTP is one of the older systems we depend on, designed and implemented by Dave Mills who died in 2024. Dave had been working on time synchronisation from the mid 1970s, and cared deeply about synchronising the emerging ARPAnet and the Internet, with the pre-existing worldwide collaborative frame
The socialised cost of online abuse
This time on PING I'm talking to Alban Kwan from the Trusted Notifier Network (TNN). I caught up with Alban at the APRICOT/APNIC61 meeting held recently in Jakarta, where Alban was attending the policy and governance sessions with a particular interest in the problem of online abuse mitigation.
Alban is interested in bridging the gap between the business and technical communities in this problem
CIDR inside
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses the tortuous history of The CIDR report
Classless Inter-Domain Routing or CIDR, is a mechanism defined in the 90s, to replace the former model of fixed sized networks defined in RFC791 called class-A class-B or class-C (there were actually class-D and class-E but for now we can ignore them) -the "Classless" part means no longe
IP Networking in Deep Space
This episode of PING is an interview with Marc Blanchet from Viagenie in Quebec, Canada. Marc has been active in Internet Procotols and the IETF for decades, most recently focussed on Internet Protocol communications in deep space. Marc presented at the recent APRICOT/APNIC61 meeting held in Jakarta.
We've got used to the idea of IP working in Low Earth Orbit, with the rise of Starlink as a high
What does “BCP” really mean?
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses an emerging concern about how the IETF interprets the concept of ‘Best Current Practice‘ (BCP).
In his previous episode, Geoff explored emerging questions around DNS provisioning over IPv6, including experimental observations on its performance characteristics. Towards the end of the discussion, we turned to how the Internet En
bgproutes.io: A next-generation BGP data collection platform
This episode of PING features Thomas Alfroy and Thomas Holterbach from the University of Strasbourg, talking about bgproutes.io - A new approach to BGP data collection and analysis.
We've featured bgproutes.io on PING before, when we discussed GILL and DFOH with Professor Cristal Pelsser from Louvain University. At that stage, the project was in an early stage and we focussed on the machine learn
Measuring the use of DNS over IPv6
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses running advertising-based experiments and a problem of interest in the modern DNS.
DNS fundamentally requires end users, their chosen resolver provider, and the authoritative servers for the names they query to cooperate in a coordinated exchange over IP protocols to answer DNS questions. The specifics of how these queries are
Internet measurement in Thailand
This episode of PING features two members of the Thai academic and research community and was recorded last year at IETF 122 in Bangkok. With a population of more than 70 million, Thailand has around 80 publicly funded universities and a further 70 or more private institutions, and undertakes substantial research in telecommunications and computing. A leading example is the Asian Institute of Tech
BGP in review for 2025
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston returns with his annual review of BGP, reflecting on developments across 2025. Geoff has been publishing this year-in-review analysis of BGP dynamics for more than a decade, and this time he has uncovered some genuinely surprising shifts. His 2025 analysis has been published in two parts on the APNIC Blog.
Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) i
NITK Students at IETF: Fresh Minds for standards development
Welcome back to PING for 2026 and season 6.
This time on PING, we have a pair of interviews with students from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal (NITK), recorded last year at IETF 122. This is the second time we've heard from students from NITK. We previously heard from Vanessa Fernandes and Kavya Bhat when they attended IETF 119 in 2024.
NITK is a large, technically focu
Going Dark: measurement when the Internet hides the detail
In the final podcast for 2025, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses the problem of independent measurement in an Internet which is increasingly “going dark”.
Communications has always included a risk of snooping, and a matching component of work to enhance privacy, from the simplest ciphers used in ancient times, techniques of hiding and discovering messages, attempts to prevent and detec
Adjusting for data source bias in Internet Measurements
This time PING features Emile Aben from the RIPE NCC R&D Department. Emile is a Senior Research Engineer, and for over a decade and a half has been looking at Internet Measurement at RIPE in the Atlas system, and in the RIPE RIS BGP data collection.
Emile and a collaborator Romain Fontugne from IIJ Labs in Tokyo have been exploring a model of the influence and effect on global connectivity in BGP
the Realpolitik of undersea cables
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston explores the complex landscape of undersea cables. They have always had a component of strategic interest, communications and snooping on communications has been a constant since writing was invented, and the act of connecting two independent nation states by a telegraph wire invokes questions of ownership and jurisdiction right from the
Greasing the wheels
In this episode of PING, Shumon Huque from Salesforce discusses how protocols with extensible flag fields can benefit from regular testing of the values possible in the packet structure. This technique is known as "greasing" and has a strong metaphorical meaning of "greasing the wheels" to ensure future uses aren't blocked by mistaken beliefs about the possible values.
Intermediate systems (so-ca
Geolocation and Starlink
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses a problem which cropped up recently with the location tagging of IP addresses seen in the APNIC Labs measurement system. For compiling national/economic and regional statistics, and to understand the experimental distribution into each market segment, Labs relies on the freely available geolocation databases from maxmind.com, an
Measuring RSSAC047 Conformance
RSSAC047 - a document from the Root Server System Advisory Committee proposed a set of metrics to measure DNS root servers, and the DNS root server system as a whole. the document was approved in 2020, and ICANN worked on an implementation of the metrics as code, and a deployment into 20 points of measurement distributed worldwide.
ISC and Verisign, two of the root server operators proposed a rev
Faster Network design with simpler hardware: TCP Flow control and ECN.
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston shares a story from the recent AusNOG in Melbourne and connects it to measurement work at APNIC Labs, exploring how modern IP flow control manages ‘fair shares’ of the network.
At AusNOG 2025, Geoff attended a talk by Lincoln Dale of Amazon AWS titled “No Packet Left Behind: AWS’s Approach to Building and Operating Reliable Networks”. Th
Whats going on in bad traffic in 2025
In this episode of PING, Adli Wahid, APNIC's Security Specialist discusses the APNIC honeypot network, an investment in over 400 collectors distributed throughout the Asia Pacific, collecting data on who is trying to break into systems online and use them for malware, destributed denial of service, and command-and-control systems in the bad traffic economy.
Adli discusses how APNIC Members can ge
The Inevitability of Centrality
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses the economic inevitability of centrality, in the modern Internet. Despite our best intentions, and a lot of long standing belief amongst the IETF technologists, no amount of open standards and end-to-end protocol design prevents large players at all levels of the network (from the physical infrastructure right up to the appl
Rob Kisteleki on RIPE Atlas
In this episode of PING, Robert Kisteleki from the RIPE NCC discusses the RIPE Atlas system -a network of over 13,000 measurement devices deployed worldwide in homes, exchange points, stub and transit AS, densely connected regions and sparse island states.
Atlas began with a vision of the world at night -a powerful metaphor for where people are, and where technology reaches. Could a measurement s
A Day in the Life of BGP
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses "a day in the life of BGP" -Not an extraordinary day, not a special day, just the 8th of May.
What happens inside the BGP system, from the point of view of AS4608, one ordinary BGP speaker on the edge of the network? What kinds of things are seen, and why are they seen?
Geoff has been measuring BGP for almost it's entire l
Kentik's view of Secure BGP in 2025
In this episode of PING, Doug Madory from Kentik discusses his rundown of the state of play in secure BGP across 2024 and 2025. Kentik has it’s own internal measurements of BGP behaviour and flow data across the surface of the internet, which combined with the Oregon University curated routeviews archive means Doug can analyse both the publicly visible state of BGP from archives, and Kentik’s own
Downloading the root
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses the root zone of the DNS, and some emerging concerns in how much it costs to service query load at the root.
In the absence of cacheing, all queries in the DNS (except ones the DNS system you ask is locally authoritative for anyway) have to be sent through the root of the DNS, to find the right nameserver to ask for the spe
Global Cyber Alliance and measuring the bad traffic
In this episode of PING, We’re talking to Leslie Daigle from the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) again, discussing GCA’s honeynet project. Leslie spoke with PING back in January 2024, and in this episode we re-visit things. Honeynets (or Honey farms) are deliberately weakly protected systems put online, to see what kinds of bad traffic exist out in the global Internet, where they come from and what ki
DELEG: Changing the DNS engine in flight again
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, revisits changes underway in how the Domain Name System (DNS) delegates authority over a given zone and how resolvers discover the new authoritative sources. We last explored this in March 2024.
In DNS, the word ‘domain’ refers to a scope of authority. Within a domain, everything is governed by its delegated authority. While that au
DFOH,MVP & GILL: New ways of looking at BGP
In this episode of PING, Professor Cristel Pelsser who holds the chair of critical embedded systems at UCLouvain Discusses her work measuring BGP and in particular the system described in the 2024 SIGCOMM “best paper” award winning research: “The Next Generation of BGP Data Collection Platforms”
Cristel and her collaborators Thomas Alfroy, Thomas Holterbach, Thomas Krenc and K. C. Claffy have bui
The multiple ways to do multiple paths
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses the history and emerging future of how Internet protocols get more than the apparent link bandwidth by using multiple links and multiple paths.
Initially, the model was quite simple, capable of handling up to four links of equal cost and delay reasonably well, typically to connect two points together. At the time, the Inter
Pulse Internet Measurement Forum at APRICOT 2025: Part 2
Last month, during APRICOT 2025 / APNIC 59, the Internet Society hosted its first Pulse Internet Measurement Forum (PIMF). PIMF brings together people interested in Internet measurement from a wide range of perspectives — from technical details to policy, governance, and social issues. The goal is to create a space for open discussion, uniting both technologists and policy experts.
In this second
DNS Computer says "NO"
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses the surprisingly vexed question of how to say ‘no’ in the DNS. This conversation follows a presentation by Shumon Huque at the recent DNS OARC meeting, who will be on PING in a future episode talking about another aspect of the DNS protocol.
You would hope this is a simple, straightforward answer to a question, but as usual
Pulse Internet Measurement Forum at APRICOT Pt 1
At the APRICOT/APNIC59 meeting held in Petaling Jaya in Malaysia last month, The internet society held it's first PIMF meeting. PIMF, or the Pulse Internet Measurement Forum is a gathering of people interested in Internet measurement in the widest possible sense, from technical information all the way to policy, governance and social questions. ISOC is interested in creating a space for the discus
Night of the BGP Zombies
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston explores bgp "Zombies" which are routes which should have been removed, but are still there. They're the living dead of routes. How does this happen?
Back in the early 2000s Gert Döring in the RIPE NCC region was collating a state of BGP for IPv6 report, and knew each of the 300 or so IPv6 announcements directly. He understood what s
RPKI Views: The archive of RPKI state
In this episode, Job Snijders discusses RPKIViews, his long term project to collect the "views" of RPKI state every day, and maintain an archive of BGP route validation states. The project is named to reflect route views, the long-standing archive of BGP state maintained by the University of Oregon, which has been discussed on PING.
Job is based in the Netherlands, and has worked in BGP routing f
How Many DNS Nameservers is enough?
In his first episode of PING for 2025, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston returns to the Domain Name System (DNS) and explores the many faces of name servers behind domains. Up at the root, (the very top of the namespace, where all top-level domains like .gov or .au or .com are defined to exist) there is a well established principle of 13 root nameservers. Does this mean only 13 hosts worldwide
RISKY BIZ-ness
Welcome back to PING, at the start of 2025. In this episode, Gautam Akiwate, (now with Apple, but at the time of recording with Stanford University) talks about the 2021 Advanced Network Research Prize winning paper, co-authored with Stefan Savage, Geoffrey Voelker and Kimberly Claffy which was titled "Risky BIZness: Risks Derived from Registrar Name Management".
The paper explores a situation wh
Post-Quantum Cryptography
In the last episode of PING for 2024, APNIC’s Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses the shift from existing public-private key cryptography using the RSA and ECC algorithms to the world of ‘Post Quantum Cryptography. These new algorithms are designed to withstand potential attacks from large-scale quantum computers and are capable of implementing Shor’s algorithm, a theoretical approach for using
Measuring DNSSEC keying "drift" between parent and child
This time on PING, Peter Thomassen from SSE and DEsec.io discusses his analysis of the failure modes of CDS and CDNSKEY records between parent and child in the DNS. These records are used to provide in-band signalling of the DS record, fundamental to the maintenance of a secure path from the trust anchor to the delegation through all the intermediate parent and grandparent domains. Many people use
The IPv6 Transition
In his regular monthly spot on PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses the slowdown in worldwide IPv6 uptake. Although within the Asia-Pacific footprint we have some truly remarkable national statistics, such as India which is now over 80% IPv6 enabled by APNIC Labs measurements, And Vietnam which is not far behind on 70% the problem is that worldwide, adjusted for population and con
A student-led IPv6 deployment at NITK Karnataka
In this episode of PING, Vanessa Fernandez and Kavya Bhat, two students from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK) discuss the student led, multi-year project to deploy IPv6 at their campus. Kavya & Vanessa have just graduated, and are moving into their next stages of work and study in computer sciences and network engineering.
Across 2023 and 2024 they were able to attend IETF1
The back of the class: looking at 240/4 reachability
In his regular monthly spot on PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses a large pool of IPv4 addresses left in the IANA registry, from the classful allocation days back in the mid 1980s. This block, from 240.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 encompasses 268 million hosts, which is a significant chunk of address space: it's equivalent to 16 class-A blocks, each of 16 million hosts. Seems a sha
Focusing purely on technology limits the understanding of Internet resilience
In this episode of PING, Nowmay Opalinski from the French Institute of Geopolitics at Paris 8 University discusses his work on resilience, or rather the lack of it, confronting the Internet in Pakistan.
As discussed in his blog post, Nowmay and his colleagues at the French Institute of Geopolitics (IFG), University Paris 8, and LUMS University Pakistan used a combination of technical measurement
Privacy and DNS Client Subnet
In his regular monthly spot on PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses another use of DNS Extensions: The EDNS0 Client Subnet option (RFC 7871). This feature, though flagged in its RFC as a security concern, can help route traffic based on the source of a DNS query. Without it, relying only on the IP address of the DNS resolver can lead to incorrect geolocation, especially when the
The APNIC Labs Measurement System
In this episode of PING, Joao Damas from APNIC Labs explores the mechanics of the Labs measurement system. Commencing over a decade ago, with an "actionscript" (better known as flash) mechanism, backed by a static ISC Bind DNS configuration cycling through a namespace, the Labs advertising measurement system now samples over 15 million end users per day, using Javascript and a hand crafted DNS sys
DNS and UDP truncation
In his regular monthly spot on PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist Geoff Huston re-visits the question of DNS Extensions, in particular the EDNS0 option signalling maximum UDP packet size accepted, and it’s effect in the modern DNS.
Through the APNIC Labs measurement system Geoff has visibility of the success rate for DNS events where EDNS0 signalling triggers DNS “truncation” and the consequent re-que
