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Teraco announces sponsorship to help boost Africa's Internet infrastructure

The decision to sponsor root operators is another way Teraco can support the growth of the African Internet market, says Andrew Owens, technical manager for Interconnection & Peering at Teraco.


Johannesburg, 05 Sep 2017
Andrew Owens, Teraco's Technical Manager for Interconnection & Peering.
Andrew Owens, Teraco's Technical Manager for Interconnection & Peering.

SAFNOG hosting sponsor Teraco says this year's event remains highly relevant to the local industry as more opportunities are sought to build and sustain regional Internet communities. In its role as one of the industry's fundamental foundations, Teraco has announced a vital sponsorship providing quality colocation infrastructure to all 13 global root operators.

Teraco Technical Manager for Interconnection & Peering, Andrew Owens, says the decision to sponsor root operators was another way in which Teraco can continue to support the growth of the African Internet market: "Root operators have been recognised as an important element of the Internet and in sponsoring colocation infrastructure, we hope to increase the number of root operators available within the continent."

Owens says Teraco invites all root operators to join Teraco in its mission to build strong digital communities and improve Internet services throughout the continent: "We are especially hoping that root operators such as Packet Clearing House (PCH), an international organisation responsible for providing operational support and security to critical Internet infrastructure, will join the Teraco community."

Root operators, which Owens says are not widely understood, are a critical part of Internet infrastructure. 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). The root name servers are the first step in translating (resolving) human readable host names into IP addresses that are used in communication between Internet hosts.

Currently, within Teraco, Owen says root operators can access over 280 unique ASNs and service multiple African countries through a single deployment in our Johannesburg facility: "We recoginse the support our community has given us over the years to grow Teraco and its Internet exchange, NAPAfrica. We feel it's now time to do more than just fund NAPAfrica to help improve a user's Internet experience in Africa. We believe that sponsoring the needed infrastructure for root operators will further improve the African Internet experience"

Should you wish to talk to Owens about this sponsorship or Teraco's other African Internet community initiatives, we invite you to SAFNOG, taking place at the Southern Sun Elangeni & Maharani Hotel, in Durban, South Africa, from 4-7 September 2017. For more information, and to find out how you can join Africa's largest Internet community, visit www.teraco.co.za.

Teraco

Founded in 2008, Teraco Data Environments is the first provider of resilient, carrier, cloud and vendor-neutral data environments in South Africa. It is also the biggest data centre in Africa. Clients benefit from the cost savings and improved resilience of securely housing their information systems and networking equipment in a colocation facility purpose-built and operated to global best practice by an expert organisation with an absolute focus on data centre technology and infrastructure. Teraco is also home to Africa's largest Internet eXchange Point (IXP), NAPAfrica. It is one of the top 20 largest global IXPs by membership. Since its launch in 2012, it has grown to over 140 GBPS of traffic and 200 members, and is now a critical component of Africa's Internet ecosystem.

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