This article is intended to share the news of a milestone achieved by IIFON (India Internet Foundation), by installing F-Root Server instance and making it operational. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed with Internet Systems Consortium INC on 16th August, 2021. The benefit will be reached to those users whose Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are connected to Kolkata IXP
IIFON with its strong Technology Support, is working relentlessly for Critical Internet Infrastructure for the benefit of multi-stakeholders of Internet. IIFON, as an early adopter of Internet Technology, started its journey for hosting Root Server instances in the year 2015. Starting from the scratch the Foundation has already setup Global instance of L-Root and Local instance of J Root Servers previously with the support of local stakeholders and ISOC Kolkata Chapter. Being, a community initiative, the team experienced plenty of operational problem statements in keeping the light on continuously for these instances and for the initial efforts that could not be done ultimately. During the pandemic there has been a larger push from local service provider community to join at Kolkata IX (Previously known as IIFON IX). To provide better root server latency its peers IIFON team signed an MoU to bring F-Root instances for Kolkata IX
Let us discuss some contextual knowledge around DNS Root Servers and how it plays a role in building Critical Internet Infrastructure.
Concept of DNS and Root Servers
Translating a Domain Name into an IP Address – the fundamental concept
As an analogy the DNS may be understood with the help of a phone directory service or mobile phone contact list, where names are mapped to mobile or phone numbers to better memorise, however the DNS has lot more and significant importance for Internet in providing services in a seamless manner So the question is, how that domain name is resolved into the corresponding IP Address?
In the picture above, Application could be a browser. Whenever we are trying to access iifon.org – it needs to know its IP Address. For that, the Operating System provides us stub resolver, which with the help a caching recursive server gets the IP Address of iifon.org. In this process the caching recursive server maintains its cache and when it finds the address it picked up from there. However, if the information is not available there (first time search or removed from cache) then it looks for the Root Server – which provides the names server details of TLD Server (in this case nameserver details of .org as referral) and the TLD Server then provides the nameserver details of iifon.org authoritative Names servers which holds the record of iifon.org zones and answers the query by providing the IP Address of iifon.org.
For more details: https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2004/the-internet-domain-name-system-explained-for-non-experts-by-daniel-karrenberg/
What is a Root Server?
The authoritative name servers that serve the DNS root zone, commonly known as the “root servers”, are a network of hundreds of servers in many countries around the world. They are configured in the DNS root zone as 13 named authorities. These servers can directly answer queries for records stored or cached within the root zone.
The administration of the Domain Name System (DNS) is structured in a hierarchy using different managed areas or “zones”, with the root zone at the very top of that hierarchy. Root servers are DNS nameservers that operate in the root zone. These servers can directly answer queries for records stored or cached within the root zone, and they can also refer other requests to the appropriate Top Level Domain (TLD) server. The TLD servers are the DNS server group one step below root servers in the DNS hierarchy, and they are an integral part of resolving DNS queries.
How many Root Servers are there and who maintains them?
13 Root Server are managed by various entities in 3 countries. For more details: https://www.iana.org/domains/root/servers . There is a common misconception is that there are only 13 root servers in the world. In fact there are many more, but still only 13 IP addresses used to query the different root server networks. Each of these 13 IP addresses has several servers, which use Anycast routing to distribute requests based on load and proximity. Right now there are over 1404 anycast instances as of now (Ref: https://root-servers.org) distributed across every populated continent on earth.
What’s the difference between a Global and a Local instance?
In each operator’s list of sites, some instances are marked as global (globe icon) and some are marked as local (flag icon). The difference is in how widely available that instance will be, because of how routing for that instance is done. Recall that the routes for an instance are announced by BGP, the inter-domain routing protocol. For global instances, the route advertisement is permitted to spread throughout the Internet, i.e., any router on the Internet could know the path to that instance. Of course, for a particular source, the route to that instance may not be the optimal route, so some other instance could be chosen as the destination. With a local instance, however, the route advertisement is limited to only nearby networks. For example, the instance may be visible to just one ISP, or to ISPs that connect at a particular exchange point. Sources from farther away will not be able to see and query that local instance.
IIFON hosting F Root instance in Kolkata IX
It is a local instance within the Kolkata IX. Peers within this exchange can avail the benefits of this local instance. Find Kolkata IX in Peering DB (https://peeringdb.com/ix/1577).
Benefits that can be encashed
Since it is within the Kolkata IX, it can serve the predictable local users supported by the ISPs and peers. Servers will not be overwhelmed with unpredictable loads of request for DNS query resolution from outside. Hence it will be within control. Because of the presence of Root Server instance within the exchange point, the Root Server Latency and hence the DNS Latency will be considerably low and it will give the users experience on real time basis. The local root instance will help towards building a more stable and resilient Internet infrastructure in the region.
Way forward and roadmap
IIFON always work towards the National interest of building Critical Internet Infrastructure and this is a great milestone to achieve its objective. With the knowledge and experience of the group more number of such instances can be hosted across India for a better faster and secure internet infrastructure. Efforts are on the bring more local service providers and networks to operate with Kolkata IX to provide better user experience, keeping local traffic local and bring more resiliency in name resolution.