Panama City, July, 2007.- In the frame of the +Raíces Project, LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry), ISC (Internet Systems Consortium) and UTP (Universidad Tecnológica de Panama) installed the first DNS root server in Panamá.

In the opening event that took place on July 17, participated the Manager of Policy and External Relations Department of LACNIC German Valdez, the representative of ISC Joao Damas, the Vice-Chancellor of UTP Salvador Rodriguez, the Director of NIC Panama / PANNet Armando Jipsion and the Vice-Executive President of Commercial Sales of Cable & Wireless Panama Pedro Diaz.

The installation of this new copy implies a suitable improvement in the direct access to the net by Panamanians users and Internet services providers. It is supported by LACNIC and received equipment from Cisco System and connectivity from Cable & Wireless Panama.

The +Raices Project is an initiative undertaken by LACNIC jointly with the ISC to promote the installation of F Root Server copies in Latin America and the Caribbean. This project has enabled the installation of copies in Chile, Argentina, Venezuela and Panamá, which in turn has translated into noticeable improvements in direct network access for users and Internet service providers of these countries and a relevant contribution to the stability of the Internet both within the entire region as well as at global level.

This project is an example of the multistakeholder cooperation models promoted by the World Summit on the Information Society, one through which both government and private organizations can work collaboratively in benefit of Internet stability and growth in the region, goals to which LACNIC is strongly committed.

Likewise, with this project LACNIC is contributing to the achievement of the goals agreed by the region's governments (eLAC 2007) and which will be evaluated in November 2007.

The domain name system (DNS) is made up by millions of interconnected servers. Root servers are the ones that possess the information that initiate queries to this system. A technical limitation does not allow the existence of more than thirteen root servers, and they are identified by the letters A through M. Of these thirteen original root servers, ten were located in the United States, two in Europe and one in Japan, a fact that generated quite a bit of concern in view of the small number of servers and their geographic concentration.

In order to solve this problem, during the past few years a new technique known as anycast is being used. This technique allows creating clones (known as mirrors) of these root servers; once these mirrors are in operation they are indistinguishable from the original servers. This adds more efficiency to the system and at the same time provides greater security and stability. The installations of the root servers are made by the anycast technology in the frame of +Raices project

+Raices