Increasing Asia Pacific root server capacity and bolstering the resiliency of the root server system
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 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.