On November 11, TechDay, a traditional element of ICANN meetings, took place as part of ICANN81 with Eberhard Lisse, Chair of the ccNSO Technical Working Group and Managing Director at Namibian Network Information Center, the .NA ccTLD registry, acting as a moderator.
TechDay’s first segment was devoted to discussing various ways of developing the domain name registration system depending on the type of registry, ensuring their security and reducing the number of fraudulent domain registrations. In his remarks, Timo Vohmar (.EE) talked about the limitations of the EPP protocol and advantages the RESTful architecture offers when interacting with the domain name registry, as well as about efforts by SIDN Labs to standardize the Restful Provision Protocol as per the IETF charter. Elmer Lastdrager (SIDN Labs) picked up on this topic in his presentation on a test stand developed by his company for assessing whether DNSSEC can rely on post-quantum crypto algorithms. Michael Hausding, who represented Switch, a Swiss registry in charge of .CH and .LI, discussed the deferred delegation technology they use for new domain names in order to reduce the number of fraudulent domain registrations.
TechDay’s second part took the form of a roundtable discussion on domain auctions. Hallie Cao from Dynadot Inc, an ICANN-accredited registrar, talked about the DAX (Dynadot Auction Exchange) platform for holding domain name auctions and integration opportunities using APIs. She also shared statistics on the way this platform has been used. Timo Vohmar contributed to the conversation by presenting the opportunities and special features of the domain auction platform the Estonian registry has built.
Jaromir Talir (CZ.NIC) shared the experience of a Czech registry in developing a domain name registration auction platform by stressing that his registry sold registration rights as per the national law instead of auctioning the domain names. Czech nationals can use the platform through MojeID, and it is also available to EU citizens with an eID.
Kristian Ormen (Internetstiftelsen — .NU and .SE registry) focused on methods the Swedish registry uses for offering vacant domains on the open market. He talked about the challenges registrars face when trying to get vacant domains, which led his registry to come up with a platform for auctioning them. It has now opted for listing vacant domains in a premium list with high registration costs with the view to gradually reducing the registration price all the way down to the standard rate.
TechDay continued with a presentation by Cagatay Bal (METUnic), who talked about enabling domain names to migrate from the Turkish registry, which used to operate as a sole registrar, to accredited registrars. The speaker offered a detailed step-by-step description of the process and talked about using verification codes and SMS for confirming migration. He also shared statistics on the transferred domains and the number of requests.
Swedish Internet Foundation’s Mats Dufberg reported on Zonemaster updates. This tool is designed to verify DNS parameters for a specific zone, for example the responses coming from NS servers, DNSSEC data, resource record accuracy, etc.
TechDay concluded with a presentation by Ibrahim Akyel on a system developed by TRABIS, a registrar, to counter DNS Abuse. He described the mechanism for verifying registration requests from registrars and TR-CERT’s role in responding to incidents, as well as shared statistics on the incidents as reported by this system.
TechDay ended with a presentation of a SSAC report on automating DS DNSSEC records. It was released on August 12, 2024. Peter Thomassen (deSEC) talked about automating DS records, its applications, and the four implementation models, the associated risks and SSAC’s three recommendations.
ICANN’s Mikhail Anisimov and RIPE NCC’s Vaan Ovsepyan discussed plans to expand Internet Measurement Day’s geography to include the entire RIPE NCC region, attracting new partners and covering a wide range of internet research parameters. They informed the audience about Internet Measurement Day (IMD) by saying that this initiative is aimed at facilitating the exchange of tools and research on internet measurements. They also covered the outcomes of the preceding events and plans to expand IMD across the RIPE NCC region by reaching out to new partners and taking more research on board.
Furkan Çolhak (Kadir Has University) presented the outcomes of a research project on using AI for fighting DNS abuse. In his presentation, he compared Deep Neural Network approaches and Machine Learning algorithms in terms of identifying DNS Abuse.
