LACNIC Assigns Number Resources to the USC/ISI DNS Root Server

31/05/2023

One of the thirteen root servers —the b.root-servers.net server— will be renumbered using LACNIC IP address space to (help) increase Domain Name System (DNS) stability and resilience.

The University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute (USC/ISI) and LACNIC have signed an agreement to allow USC/ISI to renumber the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses of b.root-servers.net this coming 27 November 2023.

The Domain Name System (DNS) operates based on a hierarchical assignment structure resembling a tree. Looking up DNS records begins at the root servers, which are responsible for operating the highest level of this hierarchy. The root of the DNS system is provided by twelve Root Server Operators (RSOs) that serve the DNS root from 13 named identifiers at 13 IPv4 and 13 IPv6 addresses.

USC/ISI’s root server is renumbering into LACNIC’s numbering space to increase the resilience of the Root Server System (RSS) by further diversifying the number of Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) that have allocated IP addresses to Root Server Operators.  Currently, two of  the 13 root servers use European region IP addresses (RIPE NCC), one uses Asia Pacific region IP addresses (APNIC), and the remaining ten use North American region IP addresses (ARIN). With this change, b.root-servers.net’s addresses will move from ARIN to Latin America and the Caribbean region (LACNIC) IP addresses space.

B.root-servers.net’s newly assigned addresses will be the first in the Root Server System to have been allocated by LACNIC and verifiable through LACNIC’s Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) Trust Anchor Location (TAL).

The new IPv4 address for b.root-servers.net will be 170.247.170.2, and the new IPv6 address will be 2801:1b8:10::b. USC/ISI will continue to support root service over their current IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for at least a year (until 2024-11-27) in order to provide a stable transition period while new root hints files are distributed in software and operating system packages.

We at LACNIC promote the construction of a better global Internet, which is precisely what we are trying to achieve with this agreement: to improve the resilience of the DNS Root Server System.

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