As of Friday, Cambodia officially has another “root” server with the Swedish company Netnod to support the latest to arrive in the country, local media Khmer Times reports.
The internet globally relies on just 13 “root” servers, all named a letter from A to M. Cambodia now hosts four of them, F, D, E, and I, the latter being the country’s newest addition. Netnod is a neutral and independent Internet infrastructure organization based in Sweden.
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).
Generally speaking for Cambodia, it means that the global internet infrastructure is more robust and substantially reduces the likelihood of a nationwide internet blackout.
Mike Gaertner, Cambodia Network Exchange (CNX) co-founder told Khmer Times, “The biggest single threat to the internet is that one of these DNS root servers will be poisoned with wrong information; hackers are constantly orchestrating attacks on the 13 servers so that they can emulate versions of bank websites, e-commerce platforms or email addresses to phish for passwords and account numbers,”
About the country’s fourth addition, Mike Gaertner said “It was a big investment on NetNod’s part and this is an important step forward for Cambodia. The costs are significant, especially in ongoing maintenance. However, this new server will significantly improve security for the DNS system in Cambodia, so the investment is worthwhile.”
“The investment is also an indication of the trust placed not only in CNX but also in Cambodia’s ability to host a critical piece of global infrastructure,” he added.
