Why India wants its own internet root server from ICANN

Every time you open a website, send an email or run a search, your phone or computer has to do one thing first. It has to find the address.
You typed a name — say, “thepioneer.com.” But machines don’t understand names. They understand numbers. So your device asks: which number goes with this name? That question travels up a chain of computers until it reaches the very top of the internet’s address book. At the top sit a small set of machines called root servers. For most of the internet’s history, they have been based in the United States. For a country with more than a billion people online, that can feel like depending on someone else for something basic. That feeling is what’s driving India’s push to bring a root server home.

On June 19, a senior official raised the idea again. Speaking at an event held by the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), the body that runs much of the country’s internet backbone, IT Secretary S Krishnan said India has been asking ICANN — the international organisation that oversees the internet’s address system — to place a root server in the country. His reasons: India has a huge online population, and the network should be more resilient. The request isn’t new. India first raised it at least two years ago, and a parliamentary report in February 2024 pushed for it too, pointing to a rise in cyber and terror-linked attacks. Krishnan admitted the process is slow, and said India is building backups in other ways as well. To see why this matters — or doesn’t — it helps to know what a root server actually does.

Think of the internet’s address system as a giant phone book. You know the name. The machine needs the number. This system, called DNS, looks up the number for you. The phone book is organised in layers, and the root servers sit at the top. They don’t know the address of every website in the world. They simply know where to send your question next — to whoever handles “.in”, or “.com”, or “.org”. From there, your question is passed down the chain until it reaches the right place. It is the first signpost on a very fast trip — one that happens billions of times a day, in a fraction of a second. Here is where most people get it wrong. They picture 13 lonely computers sitting in a basement somewhere abroad. That’s not how it works. There are 13 “addresses” at the top of the system, run by 12 organisations. But each address isn’t a single machine. 

Each one is copied onto thousands of computers spread across the world — more than 2,000 of them today. When your device sends its question, it’s answered by whichever copy is closest to you. You never know which one replied, and you never need to. It works a bit like a single phone number that automatically connects you to the nearest branch of a chain: same number, but the call is picked up wherever you happen to be standing.

This is the part the political talk tends to skip — and it changes everything. India already has copies of these root servers. The first one went live in Mumbai in 2024. Adding more is normal, easy and genuinely helpful. A question answered inside India is faster. It uses less costly international bandwidth. And it keeps working even if an undersea cable — the kind that has cut India’s internet before — is damaged out at sea. So if “a root server in India” just means more of these copies, should you care? A little — in the same way you’d welcome a new electricity substation in your neighbourhood. Useful, sensible, and not very exciting. But the language around this often suggests something bigger — a truly “Indian” root server that India controls on its own. And that’s where the idea runs into a wall.

Here’s the problem. A new Indian root server would have to be an exact copy of the existing ones. The internet’s master address list is sealed with a kind of digital tamper-proof stamp (engineers call it DNSSEC). If anyone changes even a single character, the stamp breaks — and computers around the world instantly reject the data as fake and refuse to connect. So you’re stuck. A copy that stays identical gives India no special control; it’s just another mirror. And a copy that’s changed in any way simply stops working. The only way to run a truly separate Indian root is to cut India’s internet off from everyone else’s. That isn’t independence. That’s breaking the internet into pieces — what experts call the “splinternet.” A policy paper by the think tank ICRIER reaches the same conclusion: there is no real difference between a copy and the so-called original. They are the same thing.

There’s a second problem, and it matters even more given the security fears behind India’s push. The address system isn’t actually the weak spot. If the real worry is an enemy knocking India offline during a crisis, the dangerous targets are elsewhere — the physical cables on the ocean floor, the way internet traffic is steered between networks, the basic rules that move data around. A root server in Mumbai does nothing about any of that. It won’t stop a cable being cut or traffic being hijacked. The real fix is to build separate, self-contained networks for the places that truly need them — defence systems, the Prime Minister’s Office — not a public root server whose main product is a feeling of safety.

So why does almost every ambitious country now want a piece of this? Because “internet sovereignty” has become a global trend. The idea makes sense on its face: a country shouldn’t have to depend on rules, companies or hardware it can’t influence. Europe is writing laws about which cloud providers its  Government may use. Countries from the Gulf to Southeast Asia are keeping data and equipment on home soil. Hosting a piece of the internet’s backbone is partly practical and partly a statement. It says a country with a billion users deserves a seat at the table where these systems are run — not just a spot in the waiting room.

That argument isn’t empty. For a long time, control of the internet’s core has sat mostly in the West. India’s basic request — host more of the infrastructure your own people rely on — is completely fair. India is reportedly asking for a full set of copies of all 13 addresses on home soil. As an upgrade, that’s real and worth having. So here is the honest score card. As a practical upgrade, hosting more copies brings small but real gains: faster access, local backup, lower costs, and a stronger voice in the rooms where these decisions are made. As a path to independence, a root server gives India almost nothing. It can’t hand over control India doesn’t already have. It can’t be changed without breaking. And its only truly “sovereign” version — a walled-off Indian internet — would damage the openness that makes the internet worth using in the first place.

The real risk isn’t the server. It’s the story told about it. If “a root server in India” is sold as a shield against some future digital attack, people may believe a problem has been solved when it hasn’t — while the real weak spots get ignored. But if it’s understood for what it is — a sensible local upgrade and a fair claim to a place at the table — then it’s worth doing, and worth not overselling.
So should you care? Care less about where the server physically sits. Care more about whether the people in charge are honest about what it can and can’t do. On the internet, as everywhere else, a power you can’t actually use is just a flag planted on someone else’s map.