PODCAST · news
PING
by APNIC
PING is a podcast for people who want to look behind the scenes into the workings of the Internet. Each fortnight we will chat with people who have built and are improving the health of the Internet.The views expressed by the featured speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of APNIC.
Episodes
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The [dismal] economics of AI
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston reflects on the tremendous economic consequences of the surge in capital investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the associated Data Center (DC) build out. This not involves so much money, it represents a tenth or more of the US...
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The October 2026 Root KSK roll
In this episode of PING we’re hearing from Duane Wessels, a fellow from Verisign who researches DNS and who we’ve had on PING before. This time Duane is discussing the history of changes of top level Key Signing Key (KSK) called “roll-over” of the KSK at the root of the DNS. This month on the…
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"Just say no" isn't as simple as you think
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston and I continue a discussion about the repeat queries Geoff sees on the APNIC Labs experiment. Across time this number has changed, as DNS protocol usage has changed. We now have DNS records which didn't exist when the problem was first...
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Measuring the impact of locally served root zone
In this episode of PING, we talk with Willem Toorop from NLNet Labs and Ilyas Rahimi who recently completed a masters in Security and Network Engineering at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). They’ve been looking at the effects of local root serving. Ilyas was on a masters programme called “OS3”…
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DNS Cold Start
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston and I discuss the behaviour of the DNS system when you have to come up from nothing: the “cold start” where no data exists from prior queries in your “cache”. This stems from a talk given by Ondřej Surý, that Geoff saw at the recent...
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Canonical Cache Representation
In this episode of PING, we talk with Job Snijders about secure Internet routing again, focusing on an approach to preserving the state of RPKI as a longterm historical record for research and analysis. Job was last on PING to discuss the “Erik” protocol. Job has been running an archive of RPKI...
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DNS Query Duplication
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston and I discuss a traffic behaviour in the DNS which Geoff has noticed in the labs advertising based experimental data capture. Virtually every DNS query Geoff sees, he sees twice (or more). For a cohort of about 150 million unique DNS...
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Testing RSSAC 028 DNS root server name choices
In this episode of PING, we talk with Willem Toorop about a measurement of 6 choices for naming the root servers of the global DNS. This measurement was motivated by RSSAC 028, a 2017 technical analysis for ICANN of the naming scheme used by the root DNS servers. Root name servers are part of the...
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What ‘name-based routing’ really means
In recent PING episodes, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston has asserted that Internet routing has shifted away from traditional IP packet forwarding. Instead, it is increasingly driven by processes that map names to addresses. It’s no longer just about your IP address or the specific endpoint…
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The Erik protocol: improving RPKI data fetch
In this episode of PING we’re hearing about secure Internet Routing and its data distribution problem from Job Snijders who has been on PING before talking about his measurements in BGP and RPKI. We caught up at IETF125 in Shenzhen where Job presented to the SIDROPS working group on a new…
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About Time
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston and I discuss Network Time Protocol or NTP. NTP is one of the older systems we depend on, designed and implemented by Dave Mills who died in 2024. Dave had been working on time synchronisation from the mid 1970s, and cared deeply about...
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The socialised cost of online abuse
This time on PING I'm talking to Alban Kwan from the Trusted Notifier Network (TNN). I caught up with Alban at the APRICOT/APNIC61 meeting held recently in Jakarta, where Alban was attending the policy and governance sessions with a particular interest in the problem of online abuse mitigation....
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CIDR inside
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses the tortuous history of The CIDR report Classless Inter-Domain Routing or CIDR, is a mechanism defined in the 90s, to replace the former model of fixed sized networks defined in RFC791 called class-A class-B or class-C (there...
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IP Networking in Deep Space
This episode of PING is an interview with Marc Blanchet from Viagenie in Quebec, Canada. Marc has been active in Internet Procotols and the IETF for decades, most recently focussed on Internet Protocol communications in deep space. Marc presented at the recent APRICOT/APNIC61 meeting held in...
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What does “BCP” really mean?
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses an emerging concern about how the IETF interprets the concept of ‘Best Current Practice‘ (BCP). In his previous episode, Geoff explored emerging questions around DNS provisioning over IPv6, including experimental observations…
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bgproutes.io: A next-generation BGP data collection platform
This episode of PING features Thomas Alfroy and Thomas Holterbach from the University of Strasbourg, talking about bgproutes.io - A new approach to BGP data collection and analysis. We've featured bgproutes.io on PING before, when we discussed GILL and DFOH with Professor Cristal Pelsser from...
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Measuring the use of DNS over IPv6
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses running advertising-based experiments and a problem of interest in the modern DNS. DNS fundamentally requires end users, their chosen resolver provider, and the authoritative servers for the names they query to cooperate in a...
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Internet measurement in Thailand
This episode of PING features two members of the Thai academic and research community and was recorded last year at IETF 122 in Bangkok. With a population of more than 70 million, Thailand has around 80 publicly funded universities and a further 70 or more private institutions, and undertakes...
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BGP in review for 2025
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston returns with his annual review of BGP, reflecting on developments across 2025. Geoff has been publishing this year-in-review analysis of BGP dynamics for more than a decade, and this time he has uncovered some genuinely surprising…
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NITK Students at IETF: Fresh Minds for standards development
Welcome back to PING for 2026 and season 6. This time on PING, we have a pair of interviews with students from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal (NITK), recorded last year at IETF 122. This is the second time we've heard from students from NITK. We previously heard from...
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Going Dark: measurement when the Internet hides the detail
In the final podcast for 2025, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses the problem of independent measurement in an Internet which is increasingly “going dark”. Communications has always included a risk of snooping, and a matching component of work to enhance privacy, from the simplest…
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Adjusting for data source bias in Internet Measurements
This time PING features Emile Aben from the RIPE NCC R&D Department. Emile is a Senior Research Engineer, and for over a decade and a half has been looking at Internet Measurement at RIPE in the Atlas system, and in the RIPE RIS BGP data collection. Emile and a collaborator Romain Fontugne from…
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the Realpolitik of undersea cables
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston explores the complex landscape of undersea cables. They have always had a component of strategic interest, communications and snooping on communications has been a constant since writing was invented, and the act of connecting two...
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Greasing the wheels
In this episode of PING, Shumon Huque from Salesforce discusses how protocols with extensible flag fields can benefit from regular testing of the values possible in the packet structure. This technique is known as "greasing" and has a strong metaphorical meaning of "greasing the wheels" to ensure...
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Geolocation and Starlink
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses a problem which cropped up recently with the location tagging of IP addresses seen in the APNIC Labs measurement system. For compiling national/economic and regional statistics, and to understand the experimental distribution...
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Measuring RSSAC047 Conformance
RSSAC047 - a document from the Root Server System Advisory Committee proposed a set of metrics to measure DNS root servers, and the DNS root server system as a whole. the document was approved in 2020, and ICANN worked on an implementation of the metrics as code, and a deployment into 20 points…
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Faster Network design with simpler hardware: TCP Flow control and ECN.
In this episode of PING, APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston shares a story from the recent AusNOG in Melbourne and connects it to measurement work at APNIC Labs, exploring how modern IP flow control manages ‘fair shares’ of the network. At AusNOG 2025, Geoff attended a talk by Lincoln Dale of...
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Whats going on in bad traffic in 2025
In this episode of PING, Adli Wahid, APNIC's Security Specialist discusses the APNIC honeypot network, an investment in over 400 collectors distributed throughout the Asia Pacific, collecting data on who is trying to break into systems online and use them for malware, destributed denial of…
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The Inevitability of Centrality
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses the economic inevitability of centrality, in the modern Internet. Despite our best intentions, and a lot of long standing belief amongst the IETF technologists, no amount of open standards and end-to-end protocol design...
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Rob Kisteleki on RIPE Atlas
In this episode of PING, Robert Kisteleki from the RIPE NCC discusses the RIPE Atlas system -a network of over 13,000 measurement devices deployed worldwide in homes, exchange points, stub and transit AS, densely connected regions and sparse island states. Atlas began with a vision of the world…
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A Day in the Life of BGP
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses "a day in the life of BGP" -Not an extraordinary day, not a special day, just the 8th of May. What happens inside the BGP system, from the point of view of AS4608, one ordinary BGP speaker on the edge of the network? What...
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Kentik's view of Secure BGP in 2025
In this episode of PING, Doug Madory from Kentik discusses his rundown of the state of play in secure BGP across 2024 and 2025. Kentik has it’s own internal measurements of BGP behaviour and flow data across the surface of the internet, which combined with the Oregon University curated routeviews...
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Downloading the root
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses the root zone of the DNS, and some emerging concerns in how much it costs to service query load at the root. In the absence of cacheing, all queries in the DNS (except ones the DNS system you ask is locally authoritative…
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Global Cyber Alliance and measuring the bad traffic
In this episode of PING, We’re talking to Leslie Daigle from the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) again, discussing GCA’s honeynet project. Leslie spoke with PING back in January 2024, and in this episode we re-visit things. Honeynets (or Honey farms) are deliberately weakly protected systems put...
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DELEG: Changing the DNS engine in flight again
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, revisits changes underway in how the Domain Name System (DNS) delegates authority over a given zone and how resolvers discover the new authoritative sources. We last explored this in March 2024. In DNS, the word ‘domain’ refers to…
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DFOH,MVP & GILL: New ways of looking at BGP
In this episode of PING, Professor Cristel Pelsser who holds the chair of critical embedded systems at UCLouvain Discusses her work measuring BGP and in particular the system described in the 2024 SIGCOMM “best paper” award winning research: “The Next Generation of BGP Data Collection Platforms”...
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The multiple ways to do multiple paths
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses the history and emerging future of how Internet protocols get more than the apparent link bandwidth by using multiple links and multiple paths. Initially, the model was quite simple, capable of handling up to four links of...
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Pulse Internet Measurement Forum at APRICOT 2025: Part 2
Last month, during APRICOT 2025 / APNIC 59, the Internet Society hosted its first Pulse Internet Measurement Forum (PIMF). PIMF brings together people interested in Internet measurement from a wide range of perspectives — from technical details to policy, governance, and social issues. The goal…
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DNS Computer says "NO"
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses the surprisingly vexed question of how to say ‘no’ in the DNS. This conversation follows a presentation by Shumon Huque at the recent DNS OARC meeting, who will be on PING in a future episode talking about another aspect of...
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Pulse Internet Measurement Forum at APRICOT Pt 1
At the APRICOT/APNIC59 meeting held in Petaling Jaya in Malaysia last month, The internet society held it's first PIMF meeting. PIMF, or the Pulse Internet Measurement Forum is a gathering of people interested in Internet measurement in the widest possible sense, from technical information all…
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Night of the BGP Zombies
In this episode of PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston explores bgp "Zombies" which are routes which should have been removed, but are still there. They're the living dead of routes. How does this happen? Back in the early 2000s Gert Döring in the RIPE NCC region was collating a state of...
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RPKI Views: The archive of RPKI state
In this episode, Job Snijders discusses RPKIViews, his long term project to collect the "views" of RPKI state every day, and maintain an archive of BGP route validation states. The project is named to reflect route views, the long-standing archive of BGP state maintained by the University of...
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How Many DNS Nameservers is enough?
In his first episode of PING for 2025, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston returns to the Domain Name System (DNS) and explores the many faces of name servers behind domains. Up at the root, (the very top of the namespace, where all top-level domains like .gov or .au or .com are defined to…
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RISKY BIZ-ness
Welcome back to PING, at the start of 2025. In this episode, Gautam Akiwate, (now with Apple, but at the time of recording with Stanford University) talks about the 2021 Advanced Network Research Prize winning paper, co-authored with Stefan Savage, Geoffrey Voelker and Kimberly Claffy which was...
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Post-Quantum Cryptography
In the last episode of PING for 2024, APNIC’s Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses the shift from existing public-private key cryptography using the RSA and ECC algorithms to the world of ‘Post Quantum Cryptography. These new algorithms are designed to withstand potential attacks from…
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Measuring DNSSEC keying "drift" between parent and child
This time on PING, Peter Thomassen from SSE and DEsec.io discusses his analysis of the failure modes of CDS and CDNSKEY records between parent and child in the DNS. These records are used to provide in-band signalling of the DS record, fundamental to the maintenance of a secure path from the…
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The IPv6 Transition
In his regular monthly spot on PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist Geoff Huston discusses the slowdown in worldwide IPv6 uptake. Although within the Asia-Pacific footprint we have some truly remarkable national statistics, such as India which is now over 80% IPv6 enabled by APNIC Labs measurements, And...
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A student-led IPv6 deployment at NITK Karnataka
In this episode of PING, Vanessa Fernandez and Kavya Bhat, two students from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK) discuss the student led, multi-year project to deploy IPv6 at their campus. Kavya & Vanessa have just graduated, and are moving into their next stages of work and…
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The back of the class: looking at 240/4 reachability
In his regular monthly spot on PING, APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, discusses a large pool of IPv4 addresses left in the IANA registry, from the classful allocation days back in the mid 1980s. This block, from 240.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 encompasses 268 million hosts, which is a...
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Focusing purely on technology limits the understanding of Internet resilience
In this episode of PING, Nowmay Opalinski from the French Institute of Geopolitics at Paris 8 University discusses his work on resilience, or rather the lack of it, confronting the Internet in Pakistan. As discussed in his blog post, Nowmay and his colleagues at the French Institute of…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
PING is a podcast for people who want to look behind the scenes into the workings of the Internet. Each fortnight we will chat with people who have built and are improving the health of the Internet.The views expressed by the featured speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of APNIC.
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APNIC
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does PING have?
PING currently has 50 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is PING about?
PING is a podcast for people who want to look behind the scenes into the workings of the Internet. Each fortnight we will chat with people who have built and are improving the health of the Internet.The views expressed by the featured speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views...
How often does PING release new episodes?
PING has 50 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to PING?
You can listen to PING on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts PING?
PING is created and hosted by APNIC.
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