LACNIC Region to Incorporate Four New Root Server Copies

30/10/2019

The +RAICES Program has selected Telesur (Suriname), Comteco (Cochabamba, Bolivia), TIGO (Guatemala City, Guatemala) and Transtelco (Monterrey, Mexico) as the organizations that will host new copies of the I-root server within the framework of LACNIC’s agreement with Netnod, the global operator of this DNS root server.

Twenty-seven Latin American and Caribbean organizations interested in hosting a root server copy responded to the call for proposals launched by +Raices. While four organizations have already been selected, the persons responsible for the program have admitted that this number may increase in the future.

The selection process considered various criteria, including countries with no installed copies of the I-root server, no copies of other root-servers, and locations with the potential to benefit the highest number of users. This, however, is not an exhaustive list of the criteria that were applied, as joint analyses with the DNS root server operators consider a balance between these and other factors.

Now that the organizations that will host the copies have been selected, the next step is to sign the confidentiality agreements and move forward with purchasing and possibly importing the root servers in each country. The installation phase will then begin once a server reaches its destination.

These copies will help improve DNS redundancy and robustness in Latin America and the Caribbean. Anycast technology allows sending and receiving domain name resolution information to the server closest to the network to which a user is connected. This means that root servers are not concentrated in any specific region but are instead increasingly decentralized and distributed worldwide as additional copies are installed.

This project is part of LACNIC’s +RAICES Program, whose main goal is the installation of anycast root server copies in countries that are part of the LACNIC service region. Since the program began, LACNIC has supported the installation of more than thirty such copies.