MSK-IX provides multiservice platforms for secure traffic exchange
On September 12, TLDCON 2023, the 16th international conference of ccTLD registries and registrars of the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe kicked off in Petrozavodsk, organized by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ (CC). This year’s hybrid-format meeting brought over 150 participants together.
Opening the conference, СС Director Andrey Vorobyev highlighted the most prominent recent trends and statistics of the Russian domain landscape. In 2023, the .RU zone exceeded 5 million registered domains, and .РФ, 700,000.
He also noted the key role played by the MSK-IX traffic exchange provider in the development of Runet.
“The entire infrastructure of the .RU and .РФ domains rests on three pillars – the Coordination Center, the Technical Center of Internet, and MSK-IX,” Andrey Vorobyev said.
Yevgeny Morozov, CEO of MSK-IX, also delivered a report in which he presented the company’s new products and solutions that will strengthen its clients and partners’ security.
He underscored security as the key concern for the Russian telecom and IT markets in the last 18 months or so. MSK-IX duly joined the effort and took a number of steps to improve traffic security. In particular, the company increased the number of tools to protect traffic exchange platform participants from DDoS attacks; specifically, they added two solutions – the expanded Blackhole functionality and the FlowSpec service.
MSK-IX channels two types of traffic – public internet traffic and corporate traffic, pertaining to a specific group of users. To service corporate traffic, MSK-IX introduced a solution to securely exchange data within a closed perimeter, with internal connectivity distributed through dedicated channels, separated from the public internet. At the architectural level, it is resistant to external threats and attacks, providing a high level of reliability and SLA. This is a great opportunity for professional communities to move their traffic from the public internet to a private network.
With regard to its DNS platform, MSK-IX has reformatted and improved the service formerly known as DNS hosting, and now called Anycast DNS. The number of nodes and each node’s ability to repel attacks have been increased.
“With our Anycast technology, we strive for SLA 100% and, according to statistics, we usually succeed,” Yevgeny Morozov said.
MSK-IX specialists have developed a proprietary solution, OSS, to ensure high fault tolerance in the DNS network, as well as to manage and collect analytics. OSS is a Russian made software product that fully substitutes imported solutions. The company uses it to offer a DNS solution for mobile and fixed-line telecom operators and DNS providers. At the moment, the product is being tested by large mobile operators.
Another MSK-IX service, Data Escrow, is focused on registries, but the company plans to provide it to registrars as well. The Data Escrow service provides backup storage for domain registries.
“This product solves the problem of localization of personal data on the territory of the Russian Federation. MSK-IX is the only ICANN-accredited company in Russia that provides this service. The solution is already being used by registries, but we will be happy to offer it to registrars as well,” Yevgeny Morozov explained.
