DNSSEC once again plays a major role at this week’s ICANN meeting, taking place in Cartagena de Indias from December 5-10.

ICANN President Rod Beckstrom gave a report that opened the meeting, and noted:

Thanks to community efforts, DNSSEC is being deployed aggressively around the world. Fifty TLDs have been signed and are in the root, and at least 15 more are in the works. A number of new registry operators are implementing DNSSEC in top level domain zones. .net will be ready for DNSSEC validation this week – a major milestone – and .com is on track for validation by March 2011, when we meet in San Francisco for the 40th ICANN meeting.

Yesterday, a workshop on DNSSEC for Beginners featured speakers from VeriSign, Nominet and ISC, as well as Sparta’s Russ Mundy, a partner in the DNSSEC Deployment Coordination Initiative.   Go to the link for resources from the workshop, and listen to an MP3 audiocast here.

Noting that “we are now entering an exciting phase where DNSSEC can become an operational reality for everyone,” Initiative partners and a host of speakers will convene on Wednesday for an all-day DNSSEC Workshop.  Panels and presentations in this workshop will cover:

• DNSSEC adoption issues for registries and registrars and successful marketing approaches for DNSSEC.
• The diversity of approaches for implementing DNSSEC across both registrars and registries, with a focus on how the size of each organization affects the tools and technologies deployed.
• An overview of open-source DNSSEC tools.
• Presentations on the uptake of DNSSEC validating resolvers from a group of leading ISPs.
• Updates on regional and worldwide DNSSEC deployment activities.

Featured will be speakers from the Initiative and from Afilias, AusRegistry, Comcast, CZ.NIC, GoDaddy, ICANN, Internet Infrastructure Foundation (.SE), Internet Systems Corporation, LACTLD, Monster, NIC.br, Nominet, Public Interest Registry,  SIDN, SURFNet, and VeriSign. Remote participation can be accessed through this virtual meeting room. Links to presentations are already available, and transcripts will be available later this week at the main workshop link noted above.