[ALAC] Fwd: ICANN News Alert -- ICANN Root Server Cluster in Singapore Now Live

[Maureen Hilyard]

[image: ICANN Announcement Alerts]


*ICANN Root Server Cluster in Singapore Now Live
<https://newsalerts.icann.org/V8RP000d420E200CP02glN0>*

08 October 2020

*SINGAPORE – 8 October 2020 –* The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN) today announced the successful activation of the ICANN
Managed Root Server (IMRS) cluster in Singapore. This cluster, composed of
dozens of servers with substantial Internet connectivity, will help to
increase the root server capacity for the Asia Pacific region and bolster
the resiliency of the entire Root Server System.
Adding an IMRS Cluster in Singapore

"The Singapore IMRS cluster will be our fourth cluster, in addition to two
in North America and one in Europe," said David Conrad, ICANN SVP and Chief
Technology Officer. "Our existing, smaller IMRS sites in the Asia Pacific
region already receive twice as many queries as Europe, the next-busiest
region. Adding an IMRS cluster in Singapore is both strategic and a good
use of ICANN org resources."

As documented in the OCTO-008
<https://newsalerts.icann.org/r00m0E240RQP8NC2g0020d0> paper, global Domain
Name System (DNS) traffic increased by nearly 30 percent during the current
COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The IMRS cluster in Singapore will enable more
of the queries originating in Asia Pacific to be answered regardless of the
behaviour of networks or servers in other regions. In the event of an
attack resulting in significant additional traffic globally, the extra
capacity provided by the Singapore cluster will absorb the traffic and help
to mitigate the attack. Queries in the region can then continue to be
answered, thus reducing the risk of downtime caused by an inability to
query the top of the DNS name hierarchy.
Domain Name System queries and root servers

Root servers respond to initial DNS lookup requests made by DNS resolvers
generally operated by Internet service providers. For all other queries,
the root server will respond with either a referral to the appropriate
top-level domain (TLD) name server or an error response (e.g. to indicate a
non-existent TLD). For example, a query sent to a root server by a DNS
resolver for "company.example" will elicit a response that directs the DNS
resolver to query one of the name servers for the ".example" TLD.

The root name server system is comprised of over 1,000 instances operated
by 12 independent organizations, including ICANN. Each root server is made
up of a number of independent machines at multiple locations. The IMRS is
made up of nearly 170 large and small sites across the world. The machines
at the large sites are known as clusters, while the ones at small sites are
known as instances.

ICANN's Asia Pacific regional office is located in Singapore, where the
Internet infrastructure is highly developed and robust, making it
well-suited to support an IMRS cluster. "We are very grateful to the
Singapore government for its support in establishing the IMRS cluster,"
said Conrad.

For more information about the IMRS cluster in Singapore, please refer to
David Conrad's blog <https://newsalerts.icann.org/NR00nC2d0002g4E0RN0082P>.
About ICANN

ICANN's mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global
Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you have to type an
address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That
address must be unique, so computers know where to find each other. ICANN
helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world.
ICANN was formed in 1998 as a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation and
a community with participants from all over the world.


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