Episode notes
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 longer obeying the fixed bit-pattern at the "top" of the address (in the top 3 bits) which defined which class you were in, the classes defining how many addresses were in that block: a Class-A was 17…
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APNIC · Tech & Science · English
PING is a podcast for people who want to look behind the scenes into the workings of the Internet. Each fortnight we will chat with people who have built and are improving the health of the Internet. The views expressed by the featured speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views
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S6 · 8 Jul 2026 · 41 min
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 authoritative name server worldwide. This is their primary role, but they also handle query load relating to the global DNS system all day and every day. There are 13 distinctly named root servers, each one…
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S6 · 24 Jun 2026 · 49 min
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 effectively handle your request. How does this actually work in practice? What processes determine where your request is served from, and who makes those decisions? In the latest episode of PING, we…
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S6 · 10 Jun 2026 · 38 min
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 2024. Erik was a stalwart of the RIPE routing community. He was a chair of the Address policy working group, and active in the Dutch cloud community and the data center association. RPKI, the…
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S6 · 27 May 2026 · 36 min
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 framework which regulates our sense of time, and how it relates to the world of science, astronomy and civil society. Geoff has been musing about NTP, moves to secure NTP, and the many dependencies in…
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S6 · 13 May 2026 · 45 min
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 space. When it comes to crafting a response, business tends to focus on brand integrity and the real world cost of mitigation when their products and services are abused, used for spam or fraud or…
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S6 · 15 Apr 2026 · 49 min
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 speed service which in many cases out-performs terrestrial services available in rural and remote locations. And, we've had IP services mediated via GeoSynchronous orbit satellites like DirecTV,…
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S6 · 1 Apr 2026 · 27 min
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 Engineering Task Force documents standards and protocols through Best Current Practice (BCP) publications. In the traditional view, BCPs are intended to provide clear, implementation-focused guidance…
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S6 · 18 Mar 2026 · 27 min
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 learning and approaches to selecting the "Most valuable Vantage Point" or MVP in the data sources available. This time, the two Thomases discuss the operational deployment of the service, and how they…
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S6 · 4 Mar 2026 · 53 min
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 encoded and transmitted become complex very quickly, but a particular issue is emerging in how we define, in normative and strongly binding terms, the way the protocol is expected to behave. This…
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S6 · 18 Feb 2026 · 21 min
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 Technology (AIT), which has run the AINTEC conference across the Asia Pacific. Both of our guests on this episode are associated with AINTEC. First, we hear from Sukumal Kitisin of Kasetsart University,…
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