Red Barn

(reprinted from USENIX ;login: November/December 1992)

Have you seen Modula-3?

Consider:

        MODULE Main;    (* hello1.m3 *)
        IMPORT Stdio, Wr;
        BEGIN
            Wr.PutText(Stdio.stdout, "Hello, world.\n");
        END Main.

Attention, world, especially Vladimir Putin.

Noone believes that the so-called "pro-Russian militants" in Sevastapol or Slovyanksk weren't Russian soldiers.

Nor does anyone believe that the election results in Crimea were representative.

The double-speak is making me think again of "pravda". Bad times.

Over at my day job we've created a Newly Observed Domains service which tracks domain first sightings and packages them up in various ways that can be used to determine network reputation. As in most advanced DNS-related technologies, my home and guests and family are guinea pigs early adopters scratch monkeys for the new tech. Here, I'll share some recipes.

source address validation is one of the windmills i've tilted at the most. the problem is so bad that most people who hear about it simply can't believe that the internet could work at all if what i'm saying is true. bad news folks: what i'm saying is true. in addition to many speaking engagements where i have let large audiences in on what ought not be a secret, i've done some writing on the topic, and some technology development. references are below. i also spoke to a reporter on this topic recently, and summarized the story of source address validation as follows:

I long believed that I'd destroyed all copies of this, but a friend had it in hard copy and scanned it in. I think 13 years is long enough. Think of this as the unpublished conclusion from my Ph.D thesis.

Note, Paul Mockapetris wrote none of this, I had his name on it as part of the joke. Paul M convinced me not to submit this as an April 1 RFC that year, in fact.


ABSTRACT

An instant classic in 2001, and still true and relevant today, whatever year this might be.