Netnod

Introduction

NETNOD is a technical internet infrastructure organization based in Sweden. It is a non-profit internet Infrastructure organization. It is an owned subsidiary of a foundation “Stiftelsen for Telmatikens Utveckling” also known as “TU Foundation”. It was brought in light in late 1996 and became operational in 1997. It operates six Internet exchange points at five locations based in Sweden. Also an operator of 13 logical DNS root name servers in the world. It also provides variety of value added services like RIPE Internet Routing Registry (IRR), Bredbandskollen, slave services for several DNS’s TLD’s. Some of the above mentioned services were offered by “Autonomica (a subsidiary of NETNOD)”. The basic aim of NETNOD is to work for commercial gain but for the betterment of the internet. The basic concept includes that a telecom operator should not have direct influence of a competing telecom operator. [3]

History

It was established at Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and operated by KTHNOC. It did have its own staff in the beginning and thus all the operations were outsourced to Swedish Military. In 2001 NETNOD fully owned “Autonomica”. It thus ran operations for NETNOD and the i.root-servers.net on behalf of NORDUnet and other Internet related research. The staff in the beginning focused on DNS and management and the operations were handed over to the Military. Finally, in 2002 the manpower rose and the contract with the military was ended. Now the entire operation is carried by NETNOD staff. [2][1]

Physical Separation / Redundancy

From the beginning, the IX operated by NETNOD was considered as the critical national infrastructure. As per their decision that the operations should not depend on Stockholm alone NETNOD established IXes in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmo, Lulea and Sandsvall. Also Stockholm should not be the focus point during nation crisis for exchanging traffic. The exchanges between the locations were independent and not linked. But the major Swedish providers were linked with all the four cities. [3]

Technology

The first exchange point so called D-GIX was a 10Mbit/sec switch. It consisted of two FDDI switches when replaced by NETNOD in Stockholm and Gothenburg. The SRP was implemented by NETNOD whose rings used to run at 2*622Mbit/sec. Soon they upgraded SRP to 2*2.5Gbit/sec and hence was successfully installed. This step captured all the major telecom operators. Major breakthrough was when they built Gigabit Ethernet and got quick response of 8 customers. Today each location is equipped with single chassis Gigabit Ethernet switches. (this is Wikipedia modified now decide the hyperlink)

NETNOD Partners

The list of regional, national and international organizations are:

1. APTLD
2. CENTR
3. EPF
4. Equinix
5. U.S. Army Research Lab
6. WIDE Project
7. JPNAP
8. ICANN
9. SUNET
10. Renater [5]

NETNOD Board

The main focus is on strategies and management with long term goals and ensuring the ongoing activities are up to the mark to achieve the present goals. It also decides the annual budget and receives monthly financial update. The meetings are held at an interval of 6 in a year. Also it consists of a representative from the TU Foundation according to the promises made to the internet community. [4]

Top-Level Domain