India's push for a local root server could slash DNS response times and reduce bandwidth consumption for its over 900 million internet users. The MeitY has formally asked ICANN to approve. Approval is uncertain.
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India's government is formally asking the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to place a root server on its soil. S Krishnan, Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, told reporters on Friday that the push aims to build long-term resilience for the country's internet infrastructure.
Root servers sit at the top of the domain name system. They translate human-readable website names into numerical IP addresses. Right now, Indian DNS queries often travel to root servers in other countries before resolving. A local instance would shorten that round trip.
Krishnan acknowledged the process is slow. There are other ways to build resilience, he said, including mirror sites and caching. From a governance perspective, spreading infrastructure matters. 'One root server for India is important from the overall Internet governance point of view,' he said.
The request is not new. In February 2024, a parliamentary standing committee on external affairs recommended a cluster of 18 root servers in India to speed response to cyber or malware attacks and check them at ISP gateways. The committee asked the government to work with ICANN.
ICANN itself notes that hosting a root server reduces DNS query response time and bandwidth consumption. For a country with one of the fastest-growing internet user bases – over 900 million, by government estimates – the efficiency gains are not trivial. Every millisecond of DNS resolution saved compounds across billions of daily queries.
The practical impact goes beyond general browsing. Faster DNS resolution benefits latency-sensitive applications: financial trading, video streaming, real-time communication, and cloud computing. A local root server reduces reliance on overseas infrastructure and lowers the attack surface for DNS-based attacks.
ICANN has not yet responded to the formal request. The timeline for approval is unclear. The government's next steps depend on negotiations with the nonprofit body, which manages the root zone under a contract with the U.S. Department of Commerce.
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