The first L-Root instance in India has been successfully installed in Kolkata, increasing the Domain Name System’s (DNS) overall fault tolerance and its resilience against certain types of cyber threats, such as Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.
This will help make the Internet run faster and make it more resilient – something India needs now more than ever. It is important that the first step of domain resolution for access to Internet should be possible in India and there should be minimal traffic flowing for this outside the country”
The launch of the L-Root server node, which was initiated by the team at the Internet Society – Kolkata Chapter, is a joint operation between ICANN and India’s BASIS Technologies. A leading player in the web hosting industry, BASIS Technologies supplied the equipment necessary for the installation of the new L-Root node – we’re very thankful to them!
This cooperation is an effort to enhance the security, stability and resiliency of the DNS to Indian Internet users and reduce the response time experienced when making some DNS queries.
There are 13 “root” DNS servers, identified by the letters A through M — the “L” root server operated by ICANN being one. Computers typically communicate with each other using numeric addresses, while humans find it easier to use and remember names (for instance, users typically remember the domain name “ICANN.ORG” more easily than the Internet Protocol address, 2620:0:2d0:200::7). The DNS translates domain names into addresses and the root servers provide the pointers to the server for top-level domains (the last part of domain names, for example, “ORG” in “ICANN.ORG”).
Spreading the service that provides these pointers out geographically by duplicating the root servers leads to a resilient, dispersed system that reduces the risk of users being taken offline by a problem or attack and reduces the time it takes to look up names on the Internet.
For more information about L-root, please visit www.dns.icann.org/.