For a while I have had a tool idea at work. This post is an overview of development for What is my IP?.

First Approach

The concept was already loosely fleshed out at the start. I wanted a website that could detect a client’s IP address and provide useful feedback. It did not need to be complicated but there was a wealth of campus network data to tap.

Why?

The “what” is easy, but how about “why?” Before any work started the tool needed a reason to exist. Why did it need to be built at all considering many similar public tools already exist? That boiled down to a few points.

After several in-house development projects, maintaining business logic specific to our environment, we decided to publish a general module for ease of use. The code is published on GitHub (https://github.com/unc-network/akips) and is open for feedback or suggestions.

Recently I discovered this article about testing the effectiveness of public DNS malware filters. The details are appreciated as this type of comparison is not given due attention.

• Public DNS malware filters tested in September 2024

It reminded me to write up something I had been putting off sharing.

Background

I executed a DNS Firewall analysis back in 2017 with a similar methodology. Instead of focusing on free products, it evaluated three different commercial offerings. The results were only shared with the venders but anonymously they are still worth discussion.

After many iterations, I stood up a monitoring dashboard replacement at work. It sits on top of AKiPS which does all the heavy polling work. It is released as an opensource project that might interest other higher education environments relying on AKiPS.

https://github.com/unc-network/dashboard

DNS-OARC was a two-day conference being held in Charlotte, NC this year. It is held alongside the major North American Network Operators’ Group (NANOG) conference, but while NANOG covers overall networking the DNS-OARC is all about DNS. It is rare to find a conference that focuses on such a specific topic, therefore it is attended by significant names and parties from around the world. Being in driving distance, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to attend.

October 25-27, 2023
Winston-Salem, NC

2023 UNC CAUSE is a wrap.

I was part of a larger presentation on Thursday and have presentation slides up. It is an overview of our DEVOPS team, how it has evolved from September 2019 to now and what we’ve been able to accomplish.

March 31 - April 5, 2019
Las Vegas, NV

This is just a quick rundown and sync up for the sessions I went through. There was a lot to process.

Mobility v8 Level 1

It was 3 days of training on v8, and good stuff IMHO but I want go into details in email. My training books are in the office if you wanted to look through them. I feel better about the Mobility Master role and the configuration hierarchy.

My first UNC Cause conference was interesting. I met some new contacts over the various NC schools but also reconnected to a few old ones. I attended a number of sessions but also was on the schedule for two talks.

DNS Filtering

The first talk was co-led with Alex Everett of the UNC Security department. We covered how UNC evaluated, selected, and implemented a solution for campus. The session itself was packed with a number of people standing in the back. The slides are available for review.