VeriSign Calls Plan 'Biggest Build Up Of The Internet To Date'VeriSign Calls Plan 'Biggest Build Up Of The Internet To Date'

VeriSign, which manages the infrastructure for the .com and .net Domain Name System, is looking to expand the capacity of its global Internet infrastructure by 10 times by 2010. Under the code name Project Titan, the infrastructure's bandwidth also will increase by 10 times and computer servers will be based in 10 times as many locations, increasing the network's diversity and security.

The infrastructure today can handle a maximum of 400 billion DNS queries a day. Within the next three years, that capacity will jump to 4 trillion, according to Rufus Manning, a spokesman for VeriSign. Manning says this will be the largest-scale expansion of the Internet to date.

The added capacity should come in handy, as Internet traffic is expected to explode. VeriSign reports that the number of Internet users is expected to nearly double to 1.8 billion in the next three years. Most of the 2 billion cell phones will be Web enabled, tens of millions of households will switch over to voice over IP, and online entertainment and social networking are predicted to continue to burgeon.

"With the emergence of consumer-driven services and the surge in Web-ready wireless devices, the Internet we know today is radically different than the one we knew just five years ago," says Stratton Sclavos, CEO and chairman of VeriSign, which has headquarters in London and Mountain View, Calif. "We must make sure that VeriSign's infrastructure is ready to support a new era of the Internet, the Any Era, where billions of users demand anywhere, anytime, any device access to communications, information, and entertainment."

Manning says the planned expansion isn't in response to the denial-of-service attack on the 13 root servers that help manage worldwide Internet traffic. "It's an interesting coincidence," he says. "It raises the importance of being able to meet those kinds of threats." The attack nearly overwhelmed three of the root servers, but none of them ever went down and there was no effect to the Internet.

VeriSign manages the registration and resolution traffic for the .com and .net systems. That means every time someone types in, say, www.information.com or www.boingboing.net, that traffic goes over VeriSign's computer network. Manning says they handle an average of 24 billion DNS queries a day. The company also manages two of the 13 root servers.

Manning wouldn't say how much new hardware -- anything from servers to routers -- would be added to the infrastructure. He says keeping the specifics of the network a secret is part of the security.

Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, said in an interview this week that secrecy has to be a major piece of their security.

"The strength of those systems has to do with the number of those machines behind them," says Paller. "People don't know about this infrastructure, so it's hard to attack. It's one little window into a house with 50 rooms. You peek into the window and you can't see those 50 rooms. And that's good."

VeriSign would say that Project Titan includes:

Setting up chunks of the computer network in new regions. The company expects to expand to more than 100 total sites by 2010. "These [added sites] extend the .com and .net infrastructures across the world, which diversifies the systems, increases stability, and improves resolution speed for end users," according to a written statement.

Deployment of new network operations centers. VeriSign is building additional network operations centers in the United States and Europe to better manage and provide increased redundancy for Internet traffic. These sites will be designed to expand VeriSign's data center capacity and diversify its locations to improve Internet traffic management and counter region-specific cyberattacks and threats.

Research and development. VeriSign reports that it is developing next generation monitoring and response services to help better manage .com and .net traffic and better protect the systems against cyberthreats. The monitoring systems will be set up to rapidly diagnose Internet traffic anomalies, which often appear in advance of a cyberattack, enabling pre-emptive action to minimize impact.

"Fortifying and strengthening our Internet infrastructure is very technical in nature, but its impact is not," said Ken Silva, CSO of VeriSign, in a written statement. "Keeping the infrastructure reliable and secure keeps our economy working, our communications seamless and our government operations reliable. We believe that the Project Titan initiative is an important part of keeping the Internet a trusted platform and tool that we all rely upon."