Tanzania Telecoms First AfriNIC Internet Beneficiary

According to a recent report by that was published by the IDG magazine, the Tanzania telecoms sector has become the first beneficiary of an AfriNIC led Internet infrastructure project that is intended to improve the resilience to distributed denial of service attacks by setting up copies of root servers.

Based on these findings, the Tanzania Internet Exchange (TIX) point has reportedly received a copy of the “K” DNS root server that is being operated by the regional Internet registry in Europe known as RIPE NCC.

Currently, Tanzania is the fifth African country to receive a root server, behind Kenya, which has two, South Africa, which has three, Egypt, which also has three, Cape Verde Island, which is currently in possession of one root server.

The incorporation of this root server in Tanzania is expected to help improve scalability and resilience in case of a DDoS attack in addition to reducing the overall delay in the data that is passed between clients and servers.

In addition, it is anticipated that the root server will help to improve the overall stability of the Internet in the country by guaranteeing that any external disruptions will not affect local Internet users, but rather all users will be able to connect via the exchange point and share information faster.

“I am very happy AfriNIC plays a very active role, even in areas outside their core task to develop Internet infrastructure and human capacity in Africa,” said the TIX manager, Frank Habicht, “the partnership with AfriNIC made the project a lot easier.”

Additionally, according to the CEO of AfriNIC, Adiel Akplogan, the deployment of this program will help to address the issue of access in the country, among other things.

“This deployment is very critical as it helps to address the issue of “access” in Tanzania, and it is an important milestone towards our objective to contribute more to the Internet infrastructure development in our region,” said Mr. Akplogan, “We are looking forward to more deployments of this kind in the coming months.”

The establishment of this root server follows the launch of the SEACOM cable project last month, the result of which is expected to be cheaper bandwidth and faster response to DNS queries.

According to Mr. Habicht, while campaigning for cheaper bandwidth is not a direct function of the Internet exchange point operator, the cost must be taken into account in order to maximize benefits of the installation as it will influence the amount of people that are able to access the root.

“With time, TIX will establish a time server for network time protocol that can be used for all peers at the exchange and can help concentrate much of the traffic,” he said.