DNS zones revisited

Recent research [Pap04b] suggests DNS reliability and performance is not up to the levels it should be due to misconfigurations. This paper checks the configuration of nameserver zones against additional requirements, recommendations and best-practices. It shows that almost one in four domains fails to pass one or more of these checks. During the checks an interesting correlation is established: a higher number of nameservers for a single zone usually decreases reliability and performance instead of increasing both

Scheduling Feed Retrieval

The popularity of RSS and similar feed formats is growing fast. This paper gives an overview of the standards and implementations in this field, and analyzes whether they allow scheduling the retrieval of feed updates. As will be shown, such support is very limited and current feed readers therefore poll providers at fixed rates. The measurements performed as part of our study show that in general a clear mismatch exists between such fixed polling rate of feed readers and the rate at which providers update their feeds; a significant performance gain is therefore possible by embedding scheduling information within feeds. This paper proposes a scheduling approach that both reduces lag in updates for active feeds and reduces wasted resources for less active feeds. Simulations show that our approach reduces the perceived lag by twenty percent, while having the same resource requirements as a fixed-rate algorithm

Filtering spam from bad neighborhoods

One of the most annoying problems on the Internet is spam. To fight spam, many approaches have been proposed over the years. Most of these approaches involve scanning the entire contents of e-mail messages in an attempt to detect suspicious keywords and patterns. Although such approaches are relatively effective, they also show some disadvantages. Therefore an interesting question is whether it would be possible to effectively detect spam without analyzing the entire contents of e-mail messages. The contribution of this paper is to present an alternative spam detection approach, which relies solely on analyzing the origin (IP address) of e-mail messages, as well as possible links within the e-mail messages to websites (URIs). Compared to analyzing suspicious keywords and patterns, detection and analysis of URIs is relatively simple. The IP addresses and URIs are compared to various kinds of blacklists; a hit increases the probability of the message being spam. Although the idea of using blacklists is well known, the novel idea proposed within this paper is to introduce the concept of ‘bad neighborhoods’. To validate our approach, a prototype has been developed and tested on our university’s mail server. The outcome was compared to SpamAssassin and mail server log files. The result of that comparison was that our prototype showed remarkably good detection capabilities (comparable to SpamAssassin), but puts only a small load on the mail server

Scheduling Feed Retrieval

The popularity of RSS and similar feed formats is growing fast. This paper gives an overview of the standards and implementations in this field, and analyzes whether they allow scheduling the retrieval of feed updates. As will be shown, such support is very limited and current feed readers therefore poll providers at fixed rates. The measurements performed as part of our study show that in general a clear mismatch exists between such fixed polling rate of feed readers and the rate at which providers update their feeds; a significant performance gain is therefore possible by embedding scheduling information within feeds. This paper proposes a scheduling approach that both reduces lag in updates for active feeds and reduces wasted resources for less active feeds. Simulations show that our approach reduces the perceived lag by twenty percent, while having the same resource requirements as a fixed-rate algorithm

DNS Zones Revisited

Recent research suggests that, due to misconfiguration, DNS reliability and performance is not always as good as it should be. This paper therefore investigates the correct configuration of DNS zones, by checking if main configuration requirements, recommendations and bestpractices rules have been followed. Our research shows that almost one out of four zones fail to pass one or more of our tests. Our study reveals an interesting correlation: if the number of name servers for a single zone exceeds a certain number, reliability and performance usually decreases

DNS Zones Revisited

Recent research suggests that, due to misconfiguration, DNS reliability and performance is not always as good as it should be. This paper therefore investigates the correct configuration of DNS zones, by checking if main configuration requirements, recommendations and bestpractices rules have been followed. Our research shows that almost one out of four zones fail to pass one or more of our tests. Our study reveals an interesting correlation: if the number of name servers for a single zone exceeds a certain number, reliability and performance usually decreases