Panama City, May 2009

Continuing with the effort for the development and the stability of the Internet in Latin America and the Caribbean, LACNIC jointly with OCIX, signed on May 27th, 2009, an agreement which will allow the installation in Sint Maarten, Netherlands Antilles, of the first anycast copy in the Caribbean of a F Root Server.

This important event took place during LACNIC's annual meeting, LACNIC XII, in Panama, where Raul Echeberria, LACNIC's Executive Director and Eldert Louisa, representative of OCIX, signed the agreement.

As five other countries have already done, within the framework of the +Raices project, LACNIC (Internet Address Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean), the ISC (Internet System Consortium), and OCIX (Open Caribbean Internet eXchange) formalized today their intention of installing a copy of the F Root Server in Sint Maarten, Netherlands Antilles.

The +Raices Project is an initiative undertaken by LACNIC jointly with the ISC to promote the installation of F Root Server copies in Latin America and the Caribbean. This project has enabled the installation of copies in Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador which in turn has translated into noticeable improvements in direct network access for users and Internet service providers of these countries and a relevant contribution to the stability of the Internet both within the entire
region as well at a global level.

This project is an example of the multistakeholder cooperation models promoted by the World Summit on the Information Society, one through which both government and private organizations can work collaboratively in benefit of Internet stability and growth in the region, goals to which LACNIC is strongly committed.

The domain name system is made up by millions of interconnected servers. Root servers are the ones that possess the information that initiate queries to this system. A technical limitation does not allow the existence of more than thirteen root servers, and they are identified by the letters A through M. Of these thirteen original root servers, ten are located in the United States, two in Europe and one in Japan, a fact that generated quite a bit of concern in view of the small number
of servers and their geographic concentration.

In order to solve this problem, during the past few years a new technique known as Anycast is being used. This technique allows creating clones (known as mirrors) of these root servers; once these mirrors are in operation they are indistinguishable from the original servers. This adds more efficiency to the system and at the same time provides greater
security and stability. The installations of the root servers are made by the Anycast technology in the frame of +Raices project.

As you will remember, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Address Registry (LACNIC) is the organization, based in Montevideo, that administrates IP address space, Autonomous System Numbers (ASN), reverse resolution and other resources for the region of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), on behalf of the Internet community.