India may get cluster of servers mirroring internet root servers

A ROOT SERVER CLUSTER WILL HELP REDUCE LATENCY, MANAGE INTERNET TRAFFIC, AND REDUCE THE EFFICACY OF A COMMON TYPE OF CYBERATTACK KNOWN AS DDOS

- Aditi Agrawal

India could potentially get a cluster of servers that mirrors the thirteen root servers in the world after "major negotiations" with ICANN, the organisation that carries out key functions of the internet, the director general of Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) informed the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs in March 2023.

If the efforts are successful, this will be the first time India will get a cluster mirroring all 13 root servers that underpin the internet.

The submission was mentioned in a report on countering global terrorism at regional and international levels tabled in the Lok Sabha on February 5 by the committee, which had asked about the outcome of negotiations with ICANN for having internet root servers in India.

According to it, Sanjay Bahl, the director general of CERT-In, had replied: "We had a major negotiation on the root server. They have agreed for putting up a cluster. We are negotiating with them... Probably, we will get a cluster of 18 servers which will be now based somewhere in India. That is a good beginning."

IČANN, or Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is a US-based nonprofit that plays a crucial role in the management and coordination of the global internet's domain name system (DNS) and the allocation of IP addresses.