MSK-IX CEO Yelena Voronina speaks at Spectr 2021 forum
Yelena Voronina gave a talk Development of the Russian ccTLDs’ DNS Infrastructure, in which she provided a detailed description of every stage of building Russia’s DNS infrastructure as well as its current state and the development prospects of the Russian ccTLDs’ DNS cloud. Voronina began by reminding everyone that the history of the Russian internet segment, or Runet, starts in 1992, when the Russian Institute for Public Networks took over the function of delegating the top-level domain .SU, which Russia inherited after the collapse of the USSR. In 1994, the newly created .RU domain was also delegated.
In 1995, the first Internet eXchange (IX) was created in Russia, marking the moment MSK-IX was born. Today the company plays a key role in the development of Russian internet networks and services. In particular, MSK-IX manages the territorial distribution of the cloud of DNS servers to support the root domain zones and domains with increased requirements for DNS fault tolerance. This service is among the most important for the company, which pays a lot of attention to its performance and safety. The ccTLD DNS platform consists of 23 locations all over the world, including European, American and Asian countries, with 13 of them located in Russia. Its traffic reaches up to 10 billion requests per day. The IP-anycast technology ensures that the hubs can be interchanged and provides for the increased stability of the DNS service against network attacks and local internet shutdowns.
MSK-IX’s DNS network is used by the administrator of the Russian ccTLDs .RU and .РФ, as well as administrators of .ДЕТИ, .TATAR and .SU, state agencies and the largest private companies such as Yandex, Google, and Microsoft. In addition to this, MSK-IX hosts alternative DNS servers of the National Domain Name System developed by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, or Roskomnadzor, in 2019 as part of implementing the law on the national internet.
The multilevel monitoring system is an important element of the DNS cloud, making it possible to monitor numerous important parameters of the platform’s operation, such as the state of the equipment, network infrastructure, and data distribution parameters. Special focus is reserved for the security of the platform. All DNS data are open and do not contain personal or secret information. At the same time, in order to preserve the integrity, reliability and availability of data, various measures are taken to ensure information security, for example, means of preventing DDoS attacks, or systems to protect against data spoofing and equipment duplication within each hub.
“The Internet eXchange infrastructure is the best way to support the DNS network. This is why IXs all over the world are taking over the work with them, due to the terms of distribution of DNS information, which should be distributed as widely as possible and delivered as quickly as possible to the end user. We can ensure all that,” Yelena Voronina stressed.
