The Ask Mr. DNS Podcast

In this episode, Matt and Cricket finally throw in the towel and give up on promising podcasts on any regular schedule.  But they do manage to clear Mr. DNS’s mailbag, answering questions from Ismael Lezcano about the availability of good programming APIs for working with DNS and why BIND doesn’t have a good mechanism for creating and deleting zones dynamically; and from William Brown  about how to induce major registrars to support DNSSEC.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In this episode, Matt and Cricket answer listener Paul Petersen’s question about how to register subdomains in country-code top-level domains around the world, and Ismael’s question about whether an RRSIG record’s signature validity can extend how long the signed RRset is cached.  (And if you understood that last part, you probably don’t need this podcast.)

In addition, Matt and Cricket talk about the latest news in DNS, including the signing of the root zone, which Matt knows all about, and the introduction of (and uproar over) Google’s Public DNS service.

Though Matt contributes most of the technical answers, Cricket does score a small coup by remembering that the late Frank Gorshin played the half-blackfaced/half-whitefaced Bele in the original Star Trek episode “Let This Be Your Last Battlefield.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In our ninth episode, Matt and Cricket answer listener Scott McClanahan’s excellent question about the “zone apex” and tell Duncan Hart what gear they use to produce the podcast and why it’s better than their old gear.  Except that Matt fails to mention the name of the mic he uses.  (It’s a Shure BG 4.1.)

As per usual, the discussion deteriorates into a windy exposition of how DNSSEC works, but you’ve come to expect that by now.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In this episode, Matt and Cricket congratulate an administrator at a community-spirited ISP for wanting to lock down recursion on his name servers and offer their opinions on when you should sign your zones using DNSSEC.  Cricket also invites all podcast listeners to an upcoming webinar on DNSSEC with Dan Kaminsky and Scott Rose, which is – gasp! – on Wednesday of this week.

You’ll especially want to stay tuned until the end, when you’ll hear Cricket sing (poorly) part of the revised version of the “Itchy and Scratchy” theme song.  Plus Matt thinks he sounds funny throughout.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download