Content Providers

GGC allows certain cacheable content to be served from a local copy, so for the peers’ clients, it means that all requests to Google go through the local cache, and if there is a copy, instead of using their Internet link they fetch it from the exchange point. Based on end-user patterns, around 70-90% of cacheable traffic can be served from the local copy.

Akamai is a web cacher, one of the world’s leading Content Delivery Network providers. Any content that is marked as cacheable is saved on the first request, and following requests will then be served with the local copy, available closer to the user thereby improving their experience.

Domain Name System (DNS) is the hierarchical naming system for computers, DNS works as an interpreter between human and the computer, Humans understands easier words, while computers ‘talk’ numbers. So the DNS maps between numbers and words. For example it is easier to remember www.nic.ls other than ‘196.11.175.53’ which is the IP address of the machine. At the top of the DNS hierarchy there is a root server, there are 13 root servers globally (from A to M). The root server responds to all DNS queries, and directs the query to the appropriate server that has the answer. This is done top-down in a hierarchical approach until the answer is found or there is a failure in case the answer does not exist.

The main reasons countries operate Internet Exchange Points is to facilitate direct sharing of traffic with peers, and for LIXP< to keep local traffic local. But this is not fully attainable in the presence of a root server in the country, because for all new DNS requests, a root server is queried, and that means if there is no local root server, that request will have to go outside the country to the nearest root server, but with a root server hosted in the country, query goes to the root server, then directed to the correct DNS server. This means that for that communication, exchange will happen local fully. This is why LIXP applied to host L-root server, which is managed by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The root server was implemented in 2018.