The National Telecommunications and Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce has published notice in the Federal Register (PDF) today announcing that its testing and evaluation report on DNSSEC is available, and indicating the agency intends to proceed “with the final stages of DNSSEC deployment in the authoritative root zone.”  The public is invited to review and comment on the report and the final steps in signing the root zone. Comments will be posted on the agency’s website.

CircleID reports on details of the first ICANN key signing key ceremony — at which ” first root zone KSK will be initialised and the first production KSR will be processed” — to be held June 16 in Culpeper, Virginia.  The post notes:

…since this event has generated significant interest, we have made additional space available in an adjacent room for observers who wish to attend the event. Observers will be able to watch the proceedings within the ceremony room in real-time using a closed-circuit audio-visual feed from the ceremony room, and staff will be available to answer questions those attending might have about what they are seeing.

A half-day workshop on DNSSEC is scheduled for Thursday, June 3, at the TERENA Networking Conference, TNC 2010, in Lithuania.  Starting at 1:30 local time/MET, the workshop panelists will examine an introduction to DNSSEC, open source and commercial solutions, and hands-on experiences.  Go here for a live video and audio stream, and a recording will be available after the event.  A Google Wave also will be available for remote participation.

InfoWorld’s 2010 CTO 25 Awards include Ram Mohan of Afilias for his leadership in DNSSEC deployment. Mohan’s citation notes the work Afilias has done on behalf of the Public Interest Registry and .org, and says that he:

…set the strategy and architected the deployment of DNSSec at PIR allowing for all 7.5 million .org domain names to be accessed without being hijacked on the Internet. Mohan has also established a technology strategy to support the rollout of DNSSec for the other top-level domains in 10 countries, and for the global top-level domain registries that Afilias supports, which together account for more than 15 million domains. This has set a standard for DNSSec deployment worldwide.

A packed agenda is planned for the DNSSEC Workshop at the ICANN Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, to be held Wednesday, 23 June 2010 from 9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. (local time).   The discussion will include such topics as DNSSEC deployment around the world, operational Issues with DNSSEC, using data and getting it out, tool development, and activities from the region.  The session, which comes shortly after the expected signing of the root zone, also will include an update on that topic.

“Lessons from the Trenches: Deploying DNSSEC” is an Afilias webinar targeting country code top-level domain registries with an hour of “key questions to ask yourself when deciding upon DNSSEC deployment parameters and timeline”  and “infrastructure changes required for your registry and DNS systems to support DNSSEC.”

Scheduled for 11:00 am EDT on June 9, the webinar speakers include Initiative partner and Shinkuro CEO Steve Crocker, along with John Kane, vice president, corporate services and Ram Mohan, vice president and chief technology officer, Afilias; Rickard Bellgrim of the .SE registry; and Lauren Price of .ORG and the Public Interest Registry.   Registration is required.

ICANN will delay by two weeks–to July 15–the scheduled July 1 deployment of DNSSEC at the root zone.  On that date, ICANN will distribute a “validatable, production, signed root zone” and publish a trust anchor. The announcement noted:

The schedule change is intended to allow ICANN and VeriSign an additional two weeks for further analysis of the DURZ rollout, to finalise testing and best ensure the secure, stable and resilient implementation of the root DNSSEC production processes and systems