In 2010, it was an easy decision to use a commercial DNSSEC signer to deploy DNSSEC on APNIC’s reverse zones. Because much of the signer’s management was automated, we only had to worry about updating the parent delegation signer (DS) record separately.

So, even though we had to consider the scheduled Key Signing Key (KSK) rollover, updating the parent DS record on time was never an issue, since it would not roll-off the old key unless the new DS record had been updated in the parent zone.

In 2019, RFC 8624 (Algorithm Implementation Requirements and Usage Guidance for DNSSEC) was released. The minimum recommended DNSKEY algorithm changed to RSASHA256, and there was a strong recommendation to use ECDSAP256SHA256 as it provides more cryptographic strength with a shorter signature length than either RSASHA256 or RSASHA512.

RSASHA1 was APNIC’s DNSKEY algorithm for almost 10 years, so the need to upgrade was it was inevitable. When it was time to upgrade, algorithm rollover was supported and well documented.

Following the recommendations in RFC 8624, we decided to migrate APNIC’s existing DNSKEY algorithm from RSASHA1 to ECDSAP256SHA256. The whole process took about a week to complete, without breaking the DNSSEC chain of trust.

Once we’d migrated, it was great to see the new (short) signatures from our zones.

What else could we ask for?