I’m back from a very DNS-related visit to Holland, where I (finally!) met some of the best people in the DNS and DNSSEC world in person.

I drove up for the NLUUG conference, which more then met my expectations. If you are based in central Europe, I very strongly suggest you go next year: there is a track in the English language (very important for me, as my Dutch is extremely rusty), and for say, from Germany, you can there and back in a day, which saves on travel expenses.

The evening before the conference, I met Bert Hubert and Peter van Dijk (both of the PowerDNS project) in Utrecht, and we talked, and talked, and enjoyed 21-dish rijsttafel. To be repeated.

Yesterday was the conference, with very good talks by Olaf Kolkman who spoke about DNSSEC and its current state, Jakob Schlyter who gave an excellent insight into the current state of PKIs and DANE, and Carsten Strotmann who spoke about DHCPv6 and gave a second talk on OpenDNSSEC.

I also spoke to Wouter Wijngaards, the man behind the excellent Unbound DNS server, and he is also the creator of dnssec-trigger (which I’ll be introducing to you soon).

After a short stop at Albert Heijn to fill the trunk with goodies, I drove home. I don’t think I’ve ever before chuckled to myself over a distance of several hundred kilometers. Why I was so amused? I’ll tell you, but don’t tell anybody else.

One of the gentlemen I spoke to at length, said he knew of a DNS country-code-top-level-domain (ccTLD) administrator who holds two jobs. I suppose there is nothing terribly funny about that, but the combination, ahem, surprised me: Gynecology and DNS. I won’t say more. My lips are sealed. ;-)

A most enjoyable journey, and I should go to Holland more often.