VeriSign to Expand in Dozens of Centers

VeriSign says it will dramatically expand mirroring of the "J" Domain Name System root server it maintains, expanding it from 18 data centers to more than 100, and eventually more than 200 sites around the world, the company said today.

The announcement is good news for data center operators, as VeriSign says the installations will require at least a a half-rack of space in most centers. That may not translate into breakout revenue for any one facility, but will be welcome news to the data center providers who host VeriSign operations across multiple locations. Much of the expansion will be overseas, as VeriSign indicated it will place root server mirrors in Cape Town, Taipei, Hong Kong, Madrid, Warsaw and Sao Paulo, as well as in unspecified cities in the Middle East.

There are 13 official root servers, which are currently run on about 80 different physical servers. VeriSign, which also maintains the "A" root server, says the extra DNS servers could make the Internet infrastructure more resilient.