The Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will create an autonomous DNS root server system in the BRICS countries

At the end of October of this year, the Security Council of Russia instructed the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to develop and create in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) an autonomous system of root DNS servers. So far, we are talking about initiating a discussion on the creation of an autonomous system of duplicate domain name root servers (DNS), which would be “independent of ICANN, IANA and VeriSign control and capable of servicing user requests from listed countries in case of failures or targeted impacts.

Information about this order is included in the minutes of the Security Council meeting, which was signed on November 5 by Russian President Vladimir Putin, RBC reports . Currently, the global DNS system is based on 13 root servers providing access to information on all top-level domains. But since these servers are under the control of Western states, this is causing serious concern to domestic politicians.

“... A serious threat to Russia's security is the increased ability of Western countries to conduct offensive operations in the information space and readiness for their use. The dominance of the United States and a number of European Union countries in matters of Internet governance remains, ”explains the reason for the proposal in the Security Council materials.
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The Russian authorities have repeatedly argued that the independent international organization ICANN, which administers the Internet’s address space, is under the control of the United States. Igor Schegolev said that Russia insists on changing the decision-making system in ICANN.

Experts who are familiar with the project of creating an autonomous DNS system for the BRICS countries doubt the possibility of implementing such a project. So, a company representative
The Internet Technical Center (TCI), which supports the Runet’s DNS infrastructure, stated that the Internet’s domain name system is hierarchical and can have only one root. Therefore, independence cannot be achieved within the framework of the current structure of the global network, since information will diverge from one point along the root servers - this is IANA. Thus, the creation of a domain name root server system independent of international administrators is equivalent to the creation of an alternative Internet independent of the existing one, ”the TCI representative said.

As reported at Geektimes, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media in 2014 conducted exercises on the Runet’s resilience to external threats. The purpose of these exercises is to check the possibility of violations in the addressing system. “Under the terms of the exercise, the DNS network worked inadequately due to the fact that information on the domain.ru was removed from the ICANN database. TCI, MSK-IX and other telecommunications companies had to keep the national segment of the Internet working, of course, at the level of the model network, ”said Alexey Platonov, general director of TCI.

He believes that if in Russia there were a mirror of the root DNS server, then the system would be able to work. If ICANN, for example, removed the domain information from the root servers, then the Russian server would have saved this data. If the entire Russian Internet was closed to this server, everything would work as required. Such a scheme was worked out on the exercises several years ago. True, then it was said about the emergency situation, and not the permanent work of the Russian mirror.

In the fall of 2014, representatives of the TCI reported that a duplicate system of infrastructure of mirrors for top-level servers. This task is currently solved. As for the project to create an autonomous private infrastructure that duplicates the global DNS, this approach will gradually contribute to the fragmentation of the global network. “It is strange that movement in this direction is activated in parallel with the development of initiatives to build a digital economy in Russia. Such a movement is mutually exclusive, ”says PIR Center consultant Oleg Demidov.

By the way, the Russian project is not the only one where it is proposed to create an alternative to root DNS servers. Previously, several organizations have developed and implemented a similar structure. We are talking about projects Open Root Server Network, OpenNIC and others. They copy the current state of the root zone, but if necessary, allow you to create your own address space with the top-level domain.

For example, OpenNIC to fight against censorship has created its own domain .pirate, which, however, is available only to those users who will register in the system an alternative DNS. The Engineering Council of the Internet back in 2000 criticized alternative root DNS, as they "open up the potential possibility of a split of the single Internet."