The Austrian registry, nic.at, announced at the annual Domain Pulse
meeting on Friday that they will introduce DNSSEC late in 2011 following
its introduction 12 months ago by the Swiss registry at the 2010 Domain
Pulse and its planned introduction on 31 May 2011 by the German
registry. But in a survey among members of the German internet industry
association eco, there was resistance among a small but significant
group of companies to take it up.
Speaking on happenings among the registries, Richard Wein, General
Manager of nic.at said they were currently in the planning stages for
enabling DNSSEC for .AT and will make it available at the end of the
year. In preparation, nic.at will be holding a training day on 19 May.
Eco, the association of the German internet industry has over 500
members, and has conducted a survey, soon to be released, that looked at
whether German business was likely to support DNSSEC. The initial
findings of the survey found that there is a core group that has no
plans, while the largest group of respondents to the survey seem in no
hurry to introduce DNSSEC saying they will do so in the next 12 months.
Presenting a summary of the findings at the Domain Pulse conference,
Thomas Rickert noted that among different types of members, around 20 to
30 per cent of members had introduced DNSSEC, from ten to 33 per cent
had no plans to introduce DNSSEC while 43 to 62 per cent of members
planned to introduce it in the next 12 months.
Announcing its planned introduction of DNSSEC in May, DENIC described it as:
The Domain Name System (DNS) converts the domain entered by the user
into an IP address that can be processed by the computer. So the DNS can
be called the telephone directory of the Internet. At present, the
transfer of the DNS information - i.e. the resolution of the domain into
the corresponding IP address - is not encrypted. This situation
provides possibilities for altering the resolving name servers en route
or by cache poisoning and to redirecting the user to manipulated sites.
DNSSEC applies a digital signature to the name server records and thus
ensures that the information will reach the user without any
alterations. In addition to that, the sender of the information can be
reliably authenticated. The procedure cannot prevent, however, that
false information is signed or that the user is misled on a higher
level.
The eco survey of members on a range of internet issues will be released in coming weeks and be available on their website at eco.de.
To register your .AT or .DE domain name, check out EuroDNS here.