National Internet Exchange of India(NIXI): Activities and Achievements

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Agenda

• Introduction

• Internet Exchange Operations

• .IN Registry Operations

• National Internet Registry Operations

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NIXI It is a not for profit Organization under section 25 of the

Companies Act 1956 .

It was registered on 19th June, 2003, with joint efforts by DeitY (Department of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India) , ISPAI (Internet Service Providers Association of India) and academia.

NIXI is the neutral Internet Exchange in the country.

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Objectives To Promote Internet.

To set up, when needed, in select location(s)/parts/regions of India Internet Exchanges/Peering Points.

Set up Internet domain name operations and related activities.

To act as the National Internet Registry (NIR) for India .

To act as Registry for any IDN ccTLD (Internationalized Domain Names country code Top Level Domain) in official languages of the country.

To act as Registry for any gTLD (generic Top Level Domain) which it may choose to apply to ICANN. 4

Challenges and Opportunities of IX

Presently only ISPs having ISP license from DOT are allowed to connect to the NIXI exchange points

Following should be allowed to connect at NIXI directly to increase the traffic exchanged at NIXI for leading to improved quality of Internet services experienced by users:

- Domestic companies, government, the educational sector, the banking sector, international content provides , Content Data Networks (CDN).

- The way forward is to allow any registered legal entity (a company) with an Autonomous System Number (ASN) to interconnect at NIXI and working as a Regional Exchange Point in Asia.

Challenges and Opportunities of IX

Local hosting of content .

Website and software development .

To increase the quantum of traffic exchange from

25 Gbps to 100 Gbps by 2016.

.IN Registry Operation

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What is Registry• A database of all domain names registered in a top-level

domain.

• A registry operator, is the part of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet that keeps the database of domain names, and generates the zone files which convert domain names to IP addresses.

• Domain names are managed under a hierarchy headed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) under ICANN.

• Country code top-level domains (ccTLD) are delegated by IANA to national registries such as NIXI in India for .IN Registry.

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Domain Name System

Translate host names to IP addresses• E.g., www.google.com 74.125.91.103• Hostnames are human-friendly• IP addresses keep changing

And back• From IP addresses to DNS name

Analogy: Phone book for the Internet• Where they differ?

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Global Internet Governance Structures

• ICANN• IANA• IETF• ASO• gNSO• ccTLDs/ccNSO

• IAB• RIRs • gTLD

Registries• GAC • ISOC

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ICANN The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a non-

profit private body organized under the California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law in September, 1998 as the United States sought to transfer vital Internet-related governance functions from Government control to private hands.

Among other functions, ICANN under the ‘Affirmation of Commitments’ signed between ICANN and the United States Department of Commerce on September 30, 2009 is responsible for the functioning of the Domain Name System (DNS). It’s role is coordination of the “global internet's systems of unique identifiers, and in particular to ensure the stable and secure operation of the internet's unique identifier systems.”

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Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a department of ICANN which oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the DNS, media types, and other Internet Protocol-related symbols and numbers.

ICANN performs the IANA function under a specific IANA functions contract with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce.

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What is root serverThe DNS root servers are thirteen DNS server clusters which are responsible for delegating DNS requests to the top level domain (TLD) name servers.

Root Server Name Operator IP Address

A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.

VeriSign Naming and Directory Services 198.41.0.4

B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.

Information Sciences Institute 192.228.79.201

C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.

Cogent Communications 192.33.4.12

D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.

University of Maryland 128.8.10.90

E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. NASA Ames Research Center 192.203.230.10

F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. 192.5.5.241

G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.

U.S. DOD Network Information Center 192.112.36.4

H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.

Autonomica / NORDUnet 128.63.2.53

I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. Autonomica/NORDUnet 192.36.148.17

J.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. VeriSign Naming and Directory Services 192.58.128.30

K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.

Reseaux IP Europeens – Network Coordination Centre 193.0.14.129

L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

198.32.64.12

M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.

WIDE Project 202.12.27.33

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Mirror Root Servers

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Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) are domain names represented in local language characters. Such domain names could contain letters or characters from non-ASCII scripts. In India , the IN Registry is also responsible for registering IDN in Indian Languages.

Why IDN?

• A very small proportion of the Indian population is English literate.

• IDN will be an enabler to increase the penetration of the Internet through the use of local languages and help penetrate local content.

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)

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IDN in 7 Languages approved in Feb, 2011 by ICANN

Products to be made available in IDN

Unlimited registrations available for allUnlimited registrations available for all

IDN ZonesIDN Zones

S.No IDN Language

1 .भा�रत .Bharat in Devanagari

2 .ভা�রত .Bharat in Bengala

3 .భారత్ .Bharat in Telgu

4 .ભા�રત .Bharat in Gujarati

5 بھارت . .Bharat in Urdu

6 .இந்தி�யா� .Indiya in Tamil

7 . ਭਾ�ਰਤ .Bharat in Gurumukhi (Punjabi)

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Where are we today? More than 1.6 million domain names registered

More than 104 Registrars appointed across the world.

Qualified Arbitrators appointed for dispute/conflict management of domains, with a vibrant Dispute Resolution Policy (No. of arbitrators is 27 and No. of Disputes 624)

Proactively taking steps to reduce abuse of domain names.

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Challenges and Opportunities of .IN

Greater potential in the growth of .IN domain registrations with the India’s increasing Internet base and growing eco-system.

A massive media campaign to reach out to various sectors of economy is required which will help to boost the .IN domain growth.

Launching of .Bharat IDN in 6 Indian languages viz Gujarati, Bangla, Punjabi, Urdu, Telugu and Tamil by November-December,2014.

Reaching 5 millions .IN domain registrations by December,2016.

Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers (IRINN)

• Govt. of India, Department of Electronics & IT (DeitY) endorsed the operations of National Internet Registry (NIR) to NIXI.

• NIR software developed locally by NIXI and evaluated by APNIC.

• APNIC accorded recognition to NIXI on 3rd March, 2012 after evaluation of it’s s/w to become the NIR for India.

• Collective efforts of NIXI and Internet Service Provider Association of India.

• NIR in India has been named as Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers (IRINN)

• IRINN is operational from December, 2012. Till the date we have more than 700 IRINN affiliate both transfer and new one’s.

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218 affiliates have taken IPv4 as well as IPv6

506 affiliates have taken IPv4 only

4 affiliates have taken IPv6 only

Most of the Banks and Universities are approaching IRINN seeking to become affiliate & with request for IPv6 .

IRINN IP Allocation Status

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Challenges and Opportunities of NIR

To increase the no. of affiliates joining IRINN from 700 to 1000

Helping SME to grow more by delegating their own IP block ,so that they can setup their ISP independent network .

To setup IPv6 based demo application in health and building sector.

To setup Internet of things demo setup.

Need a greater participation from India in Asia and global forums like Asia pacific Network Information centre (APNIC) conferences, SANOG.

Restructuring NIXI .IN and NIR activities are sovereign functions being performed

by NIXI on behalf of the Govt of India

Stakeholders in respect of these functions are at present not represented in the management structure of NIXI

Need to give adequate representation to the stakeholders from these sovereign functions in NIXI Board.

“Thus there is a strong case to increase the representation from .IN Registry and IRINN operations to make the NIXI Board truly multistakeholder in nature.”

Vision for NIXI To make it Asian hub of the Internet Exchange.

Multilingualization of Internet by local language domain name in all the Indian Languages (by December, 2015).

Domain registration to reach 10 million by 2020.

Thank You

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