How can we track the amount of DNSSEC validation happening globally? Is there a way we can see the trend over time to (we hope!) see validation rise? At the recent excellent DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 50 in London Geoff Huston let me know that his APNIC Labs team has now created this exact type of trend chart. I wrote about this new site on the Deploy360 blog, but the key URL I am going to be using to track DNSSEC validation is:

http://gronggrong.rand.apnic.net/cgi-bin/ccpage?c=XA&x=1&g=0&r=1&w=7

Use of DNSSEC Validation for World (XA) – A 7-day-average trend line showing DNS queries performing DNSSEC validation globally (Click to see the live chart.)

This provides a 7-day-average trend line showing DNS queries performing DNSSEC validation globally. You can change several settings, including whether you want to see use of Google’s Public DNS servers—in the end you can have a URL that is easily bookmarked for periodic viewing.

This site uses the Flash-based advertisement system that Geoff, George Michaelson and others at APNIC Labs have developed over the past few years. If you scroll down the page you can also get metrics for individual countries. Geoff tells me that it is being updated daily. They also have a world map view to show where DNSSEC validation is occurring.

While we can never know exactly how precise measurement systems like this are (for instance, I block flash in my browser, so I expect if the ad were displayed to me it would not send back any measurements), but it is extremely valuable to have these kind of sites available so that we can get a general view of what is happening out there on the Internet.

Many thanks to Geoff and his APNIC Labs team for running this site. I am looking forward to seeing the trend line grow up and to the right!