RIPE DNS/DNSSEC course

Most of today I spent in the Mediterranean hotel. Together with about twenty other administrators from most Cyprus ISPs, I attended DNS/DNSSEC course given by RIPE NCC.

We all gathered together around 9:00am and started off with some tea and coffee. Until about 11:00am we went through some organizational stuff, introduced ourselves, and had a brief reminder of DNS protocol, its implementations, and security limitations. I knew most of this stuff and felt pretty confident.

Then we had a break for tea and coffee. As usual, at this sort of gatherings, people started talking to each other, getting to know each other and exchange contact details.

Back to the conference room for the introduction to network security, cryptography, and other similar concepts. We also started with DNSSEC approaches and continued until about 13:00.

Lunch was a regular hotel buffet with some excellent food.

After lunch we continued with indepth study of DNSSEC until about 17:00 with another coffee break at 15:00.

I have to say that I enjoyed the course – it was very well done and presented. I’ve understood and learned the specifics of DNSSEC. I would have enjoyed it a bit more with some practical examples, but they didn’t make it into class, although I found them later in printed course materials.

I have to say that I am very doubtful that we will be implementing DNSSEC any time soon. It’s just too young. It will change and improve over the next few month and years. And at this very point, I think, it’s not worth the trouble. Although the final decision, of course, is not for me to make.

While this all was a pretty standard gathering, I have to say that I was positively surprised by the increased number of women in the audience. Traditionally, things like this are men-only. But this time about 1/4th of the crowd were women. And from two trainers, one was a woman, who was pretty fluent in cryptography and network security. I’m glad that women are stepping out of the closet and take part in events like this.