“We have been pushing for the establishment of a root server in India, given the number of people using the internet and in view of the long-term resilience of the internet system itself,” said MeitY Secretary S Krishnan on June 19, as quoted on camera in an IANS news agency report.

The Indian government had articulated this request to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) at least two years ago. According to a February 2024 parliamentary report, India was in discussions with ICANN seeking to set up root servers in India. 

“In view of the increasing incidents of cyber/malware attacks perpetrated by terrorists/terrorist organizations, the Committee have stressed the need to be proactive and not merely reactive towards such incidents,” read the report.

Additionally, according to the Doordarshan report, NIXI announced four products: an AI-powered WHOIS screening platform, an IX portal, the My IRINN portal and an auction portal.

What are root servers? When you navigate through the internet, you usually don’t enter IP addresses in the address bar, right? You enter the website’s URL, or you just search Google using the keyword. The Domain Name System, or DNS, is the phonebook that maintains records of host names and IP addresses. 

This directory is hierarchical, divided into root zones. Typically, each country has its own top-level domains (TLDs). For example, .in domain extension for India. So, when you enter a URL, it points your request to the right top-level domain (TLD) server (the ones handling .com, .in, .org, etc.), which then passes it down the chain to the requested domain/address. Cloudflare has more information on DNS root servers.

How many root servers are there? According to ICANN, there are 12 independent root server operators that manage 13 root identities worldwide. However, Cloudflare clarifies that “a common misconception is that there are only 13 root servers in the world. In reality, there are many more, but still only 13 IP addresses are used to query the different root server networks.”

This means these “13 addresses” do not necessarily correspond to 13 server machines. These addresses are labels for a cluster of servers that automatically direct your query to the nearest server in the cluster, without users knowing which physical server answered it.

At the time of writing this report, the root server system has 2002 instances operated by the 12 independent root server operators. According to an ICRIER policy paper titled Understanding Root Server System, there is no ‘real difference’ between anycast root server instance and an original root server.

Arguments against a separate root server for India:

• It would be just a mirrored copy and could potentially split the internet: “If we have a 14th root DNS server (from India), it is going to be an exact mirrored copy of the existing 13 root DNS servers. If even a single bit is forcefully altered, the cryptographic signatures would just fail, and anyone doing DNSSEC validation would simply not resolve the DNS. If we run the 14th root DNS as an “Indian” one isolated from the world, it would just split the internet,” wrote Anurag Bhatia, network researcher. 
• DNS is not even the only problem in times of extreme geo-political situations: “Are we fine otherwise? In the hypothetical case of war and assuming countries turn against each other, will the internet still work as we know it? There can be over a dozen possible attack vectors and kill switches in the current version of the public internet if a powerful state decides to use them. Thus, it’s pointless to just protect the DNS (and that too with the flawed idea of the 14th root).”

Instead of focusing solely on DNS-level “resilience,” Bhatia argues that it would make much more sense to plan isolated networks from layer 1 to layer 4 for critical establishments, such as the Prime Minister’s Office or Defence systems, rather than India-based ‘resilient’ root servers focused on the general public.

Read Anurag Bhatia’s proposal on building a completely isolated network here.

Also Read:

• Strategic Move: India to Host ICANN Root Server Clusters
• India’s First M-Root Server Instance Goes Live in Mumbai, Expected to Boost DNS Stability
• ICANN Rejects .ORG Sale Proposal To Private Equity Firm