Root zone changes may shake up Net in Africa

The root zone is at the apex of the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy and will go through major changes next year as ICANN introduces Internationalized Domain Names, new top level domains (TLDs), IPv6 and DNSSEC (DNS Security extension).

From January 2010, ICANN will implement DNSSEC -- using a technique also known as root signing -- on the root zone, which will affect the performance of the Internet. Currently, queries from domain servers to the root are 512 kilobytes or less, but DNSSEC will make them larger because it introduces new signatures and keys as part of the security features.

"The root signing is planned to start in January and will be introduced gradually as a way to test the problems that may arise; this will make Internet slower in some cases because the files coming from the root zone will be larger and heavier," said Bill Manning, a professor at the University of Southern California who runs the "B" root server.

"If ICANN is concerned about the stability of the Internet, the root signing is going to destabilize the system, especially in areas with low bandwidth, given the size of the responses," added Manning.

The effects of the root signing, IPv6 and addition of the new TLDs was addressed in a report titled "The Impact on the DNS Root System of Increasing the Size and Volatility of the Root Zone," which was prepared by the Root Scaling Study Team for ICANN.