SAFNOG hosting sponsor, Teraco, says this year’s event remains highly relevant to the local industry as more opportunities are sought to build and sustain regional Internet communities. In its role as one of the industry’s fundamental foundations, Teraco has announced a vital sponsorship providing quality colocation infrastructure to all 13 global root operators.
Teraco’s Technical Manager for Interconnection & Peering, Andrew Owens, says that the decision to sponsor root operators was another way in which Teraco can continue to support the growth of the African Internet market: “Root operators have been recognised as an important element of the Internet and in sponsoring colocation infrastructure, we hope to increase the number of root operators available within the continent.”
Owens says that Teraco invites all root operators to join Teraco, in its mission to build strong digital communities and improve Internet services throughout the continent: “We are especially hoping that root operators such as Packet Clearing House (PCH), an international organisation responsible for providing operational support and security to critical Internet infrastructure, will join the Teraco community.”
Root operators, which Owens says are not widely understood, are a critical part of Internet infrastructure. A root name server is a name server for the root zone of the domain name system (DNS) of the Internet. It directly answers requests for records in the root zone and answers other requests by returning a list of the authoritative name servers for the appropriate top-level domain (TLD). The root name servers are the first step in translating (resolving) human readable host names into IP addresses that are used in communication between Internet hosts.
Currently, within Teraco, Owen says that root operators can access over 280 unique ASN’s and service multiple African countries through a single deployment in our Johannesburg facility: “We recognise the support our community has given us over the years to grow Teraco and its Internet exchange, NAPAfrica. We feel it’s now time to do more than just fund NAPAfrica to help improve a user’s Internet experience in Africa. We believe that sponsoring the needed infrastructure for root operators will further improve the African Internet experience”
Should you wish to talk to Andrew Owens about this sponsorship or Teraco’s other African Internet community initiatives, we invite you to SAFNOG, taking place at the Southern Sun Elangeni & Maharani Hotel in Durban, South Africa from 4-7 September 2017. For more information, and to find out how you can join Africa’s largest Internet community visit here.
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