First RP ‘root server’ now live, improves local Net traffic

By Erwin Oliva - INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines -- The first Philippine root server or “i-root” server run by various non-profit organizations went live just after the May 14 elections, the project coordinator and technical adviser of this project told INQUIRER.net.

Hoping to improve local Internet traffic in the Philippines, the Philippine "i-root" is now part of the Philippine Internet Open Exchange or PHOpenIX network which was launched in January 2007.

The i-root is currently operated by Autonomica from Stockholm, Sweden.

The PHOpenIX is a joint project managed by Advance Science Technology Institute of the Department of Science and Technology, the Philippine Network Operators Group, and the Asia Pacific Network Information Center, which awarded the hosting of the root server.

"The root server instance will provide faster response to domain resolution to all Internet service providers here in the country if they are connected to the exchange point," said Amante Alvaran who is currently managing the PHNOG and PHOpenIX project of PHNOG together with ASTI.

"Having the root server here in our country provides greater benefits to our local ISP's since redirection to the root server will now be localized instead of going out from the country, which also means faster response time since it is now local," he added.

Hoping to also a help the local Internet community to grow, Alvaran pointed out that the i-root server is now part the of the global Internet backbone infrastructure.

"This is an advantage to us since we are hosting an instance of the root which is considered part of the Internet backbone infrastructure. Initially there are only 13 root servers http://www.root-servers.org/ in the world, 1 from Japan 2 in Europe and 10 in US. Now, there are few more since they've cloned and [created] additional instances of root servers (namely F, I, J,K root servers) to properly redistribute the load and response time if a root server answer is required," Alvaran said.

He said that this is the first ever root server in our country, but stressed that it was not about "who was first."

"[It is] more of a question of who's more qualified or eligible to host the server since it places an important role to the Internet backbone. The main requirements are that it should be inside an Internet Exchange and the Internet exchange should be a run by neutral organizations. Which is why PHOpenIX is hosting it due to its nature of being a neutral a Internet exchange," he added.