Speeding Up the Web in 2007
Speeding Up the Web in 2007
To keep up with the growing strains put on the Internet by both legitimate users and online attackers, a Silicon Valley company is undertaking a $100 million expansion of a crucial part of the system that speeds Web users to their destinations in 2007. The company, VeriSign, is a leader in networking infrastructure and manages registration for the .com and .net Internet domains. It is among the stewards of an international system of computer servers running programs that translate domain names like google.com or wikipedia.org into numeric addresses. But the system is under increasing strain because of the explosion of human and machine Internet users and because of occasional assaults by automated software programs that threaten to overwhelm the ability to respond to routine requests. VeriSign executives said their expansion project, to be announced Thursday, was crucial because of the increasing role that the Internet plays in basic functions of modern life. This isnt just about Web sites anymore, and its not about online shopping, said Ken Silva, VeriSigns chief security officer. Its about the way humans communicate and the way everything is interconnected. The potential challenge was underscored on Tuesday when an automated attack against the domain name system was carried out for several hours by a distributed computer program known as a botnet. The attack initially affected all of the 13 root server systems the top level of the hierarchy of interconnected computers and then focused for several hours on servers operated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization responsible for the Internet address system, and the Pentagon. The attack impeded but did not halt any of the systems, according to several of the operators. Such attacks make expansion of the name server systems crucial, Mr. Silva said. The VeriSign project, to be completed by 2010, will offer a tenfold increase in the capacity of two root servers that the company operates and of the infrastructure that supports the .com and .net systems. VeriSign servers, now in 20 regional centers around the world, will be expanded to 70 sites. The effort would not only improve response time, the company said, but would also make it possible to diagnose and contain Internet attacks more quickly. VeriSign profits indirectly from the growth of Internet traffic from its business managing the .com and .net domains. In addition to resisting cyber attacks, the enhancement of the root server system is made necessary by the rapid growth in new types of Internet devices, many of which can communicate among themselves without direct human intervention. The company said it expected the number of Internet users to grow from one billion today to 1.8 billion in 2010. Many will reach the Internet with multiple devices, including cellphones, most of which are expected to be Internet-enabled.
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