Internet Software Consortium and the Moscow Internet Exchange Install The First Root Nameserver in Russia

Business Wire, Nov 17, 2003

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 17, 2003

Internet Software Consortium (ISC) will install and operate the new F-root server in Moscow in conjunction with the Moscow Internet Exchange (MSK-IX). The new server is a mirror of the F-root nameserver managed by ISC in the United States. Considering there are no other root nameservers in the region, the new server will dramatically increase the speed of accessing web addresses for users in Russia and the surrounding the region. As well as decreasing the country's dependency on foreign Internet connectivity.

"We are thoroughly satisfied with the results of cooperation with ISC in installation of F-Root Name Server replication," says Elena Voronina, Director of MSK-IX. "Its location in Moscow leads to dramatically improved security and stability both for Russian and CIS networks, and consequently to efficiency and reliability of ISPs services. Moreover, it enables significant reduction of DNS response time and of international traffic. Also, it meets concern of Internet people in increasing safety worldwide, and thus serves the entire Internet community."

Joao Damas, ISC Senior Programme Manager, added, "Russia is one of the world's largest economies and we are pleased to support the development of the Internet in Russia with the deployment of this root nameserver. With this installation, ISC has added 13 new F-root mirror nameservers in 2003. We are excited about the progress we have made with our deployment of F-root servers around the world and with our collaboration with the Moscow Internet Exchange in particular."

The new server will store a series of information for identifying domain names that are included at the end of web addresses, for example '.' or '.com'. This enables it to find sites immediately in the region or to direct users to the other relevant servers located in other countries.

About MSK-IX

The Moscow Internet Exchange (MSK-IX as a point) where inter-ISP traffic can be exchanged has been established in 1995 by a group of Moscow Internet Service Providers in order to interconnect and exchange IP traffic with each other and hence to improve connectivity and service for their customers.

MSK-IX is the reliable, distributed network built on switched medium that consists of Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet switches currently present at eight locations in Moscow and connected to each other with Gigabit Ethernet technology.

Supporting the growth of the local and regional ISP industry and helping to cope with the increasing amount of local Internet traffic, MSK-IX provides its today's participants with uncongested high-speed interconnections and, therefore, minimizes their dependency on upstream connections and international backbones. Nowadays, 120 ISPs connect to MSK-IX.

Internet Service Providers willing to significantly improve the quality of the local connections for their users and thus the speed of accessing Internet resources are welcome to join the MSK-IX.

For more information contact Elena Voronina, Director MSK-IX or visit www.msk-ix.ru

About ISC

ISC was founded in 1993 to develop and publish high quality reference implementations of core Internet protocols including DNS and DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). ISC operates one of the 13 root DNS servers as a public service to the Internet. ISC has operated F.root-servers.net for IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) since 1993. F answers more than 272 million DNS queries per day, making it one of the busiest DNS servers in the world. F is a virtual server made up of multiple systems and runs ISC BIND 9 as its DNS server. ISC's DNS implementation, called BIND, was originally developed at UC Berkeley as part of the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) system, and has subsequently been completely rewritten at ISC. Most DNS servers on the Internet run BIND or BIND-derived software. The ISC's reference implementation of DHCP is the de facto standard for all UNIX and UNIX-like systems including Linux and BSD.

For more information contact Joao Damas, ISC Senior Programme Manager, at Joao_Damas@isc.org or visit www.isc.org