Domestic Content Hosting:Comparing .RU and .РФ

Jim Cowie, Chief Scientist

MSK-IX Peering Forum 2015Moscow, December 2015

@DynResearch

Global Content, Local Hosting

• Content localization is a form of international trade – import/export

• Choices made in each country affect enduser performance and are visible in the operation of their ccTLDs

• Policy folks are looking for ways to measure and understand Internet evolution

• Zone operators have something important to contribute here…

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Zones Are Maps, Let’s Peruse Them

• How does the “domain space” within a given TLD (including ccTLDs) map onto geographic space?

• Using Russia as a specific example, let’s see where domains “live,” and what impact that might have on consumers

• We tried two different experiments, one starting with published Alexadata, the other with ccTLD zone data

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EXPERIMENT 1:

FINDING THE ALEXA 100

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Where’s The Popular Content?• Retrieve Alexa.com’s public list of the top

100 sites for various countries

• Resolve the apex domains to determine one or more A records for each domain in the zone

• Geolocate each service IP and use BGP routing data to examine the origin and transit providers for each domain

• Calculate the fraction of each country’s popular content that is locally hosted according to this metric

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National Self-Hosting Percentages US

CN

VN

CZIR

HU

CA

MX

SA

AE

TR

KRJP

BR RU

PLDE

Correlates with ASN count, ρ = +0.69

(Importers) (Exporters)

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Russia’s Alexa 100 Hosting (1/2)

Has IPv6 Address?Hosted in Russia?

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Russia’s Alexa 100 Hosting (2/2)

Has IPv6 Address?Hosted in Russia?

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Russia’s Alexa 100 Hosting: Summary

• All told, 58 of Russia’s 100 most popular domains are hosted (at least partially) within Russia, adding up partial percentages

• 50-60% is fairly typical for larger economies that are the center of their own language sphere: Japan, Korea, Poland, Germany, Turkey

• CDNs do push significant site content closer to users – these are just the resolutions of the “front door” domains.

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EXPERIMENT 2:

*.RU and *.РФ

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Examining .RU/.РФ (thank you CCTLD.RU)

Examined the zones in September 2015, and re-scanned at the beginning of December 2015 – statistics are stable

• .RU: NS records for +4.7M zones, pointing at +166Kauthoritative servers

• .РФ: NS records for +738K zones, pointing at +30Kauthoritative servers

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Top contributors of NS authority

reg.ru.nic.ru.masterhost.ru.timeweb.ru.timeweb.org.jino.ru.r01.ru.beget.ru.salenames.ru.spaceweb.ru.

…and a long tail of nearly 80,000 more

The authoritative nameservers for the zones within .RU/. РФ are familiar Russian companies …

… but the A/AAAA records they return for the apex domains of those zones are not always Russian.

yandex.net.beget.pro.nameself.com.ihc.ru.majordomo.ru.privateperson.ru.spaceweb.pro.mchost.ru.fastvps.ru.hc.ru.

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Russia’s .RU Apex Hosting

65% of the apex domains within .RU delegations are hosted (at least partially) within Russia

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Russia’s .РФ Apex Hosting

Fully 80% of the apex domains within .РФ are hosted (at least partially) within Russia

This is one of the highest local hosting rates for a ccTLDworldwide

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Compare to Canada’s .CA Apex Hosting

18.7% of the domains within .CA are hosted (at least partially) within Canada

The USA still represents the most common hosting location for .CA apex domains

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Top Origin Providers: Worldwide .RU

Provider Global% Organization

…and a very long tail of smaller hosting providers

1.AS197695 8.20% DomainnamesregistrarREG.RU,Ltd2.AS24940 6.80% HetznerOnlineAG3.AS9123 4.90% TimeWeb4.AS47846 4.30% SEDOGmbH5.AS50245 4.20% ServerelCorp6.AS8342 4.20% OJSCRTComm.RU7.AS198610 3.70% BegetLtd8.AS29182 3.20% ISPsystem,cjsc9.AS25535 3.10% Autonomous Non-commercialOrganizationRegionalNetwork...10.AS25532 3.10% .masterhost

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Top Origin Providers: Russian .RU

Provider Russia% Organization Substantial domain hosting is focused in two major metro locations: Moscow and St Petersburg

1.AS197695 12.80% DomainnamesregistrarREG.RU,Ltd2.AS9123 7.50% TimeWeb3.AS8342 6.50% OJSCRTComm.RU4.AS198610 5.80% BegetLtd5.AS29182 4.90% ISPsystem,cjsc6.AS25535 4.80% Autonomous Non-commercialOrganizationRegionalNetwork...7.AS25532 4.80% .masterhost8.AS44112 4.20% SpaceWebCJSC9.AS48172 2.70% Oversun Ltd10.AS43362 2.50% Majordomollc

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More Top Origin Providers: Russian .RU

Provider Russia% Organization

…and a very long tail of smaller hosting providers

Substantial domain hosting is focused in two major metro locations: Moscow and St Petersburg

11.AS43146 2.30% AgavaLtd.12.AS48287 2.20% RU-SERVICELtd13.AS49505 2% OOONetworkofdata-centersSelectel14.AS30968 1.70% ZAO"NationalTelecommunications"15.AS35278 1.70% SPRINTHOST.RULLC16.AS60357 1.50% Megagroup.ruLLC17.AS62082 1.40% HostlandLTD18.AS41126 1.40% CJSCRegistrarR0119.AS31240 1.30% HostingTelesystems,JSC20.AS29076 1.20% Filanco Ltd

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Metro .RU Apex Hosting in Russia

Moscow 49%

St Petersburg 12%

Yekaterinburg 2%

Novosibirsk 1%

Other/Unspecified 36%

Long tail includes 686 individual cities within Russia containing at least one hosted domain!

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Top Origin Providers: Moscow .RU

Provider Moscow% Organization

1.AS8342 13.60% OJSCRTComm.RU2.AS25532 10% .masterhost3.AS25535 9.50% Autonomous Non-commercialOrganizationRegionalNetwork...4.AS29182 8.80% ISPsystem, cjsc5.AS197695 7.90% DomainnamesregistrarREG.RU,Ltd6.AS48172 4.70% Oversun Ltd7.AS48287 4.60% RU-SERVICELtd8.AS43146 3.10% AgavaLtd.9.AS41126 2.90% CJSCRegistrarR0110.AS31240 2.80% HostingTelesystems, JSC

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Top Origin Providers: St Petersburg .RU

Provider St Petersburg% Organization

1.AS9123 24.90% TimeWeb2.AS44112 18.40% SpaceWebCJSC3.AS43362 8.50% Majordomollc4.AS49505 8% OOONetworkofdata-centersSelectel5.AS30968 7.50% ZAO"NationalTelecommunications"6.AS60357 6.90% Megagroup.ruLLC7.AS62082 6.20% HostlandLTD8.AS35278 4.10% SPRINTHOST.RULLC9.AS49693 2.40% Best-HosterGroupCo.Ltd.10.AS30943 2% Utransit InternationalCarrierLimited

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How is .РФ Different from .RU?

• More strongly Russian-hosted (80% vs 65%)

• Nearly identical breakdown of city-level hosting

• .RU has 5x higher rate of DNSSEC signing

• .RU has slightly higher rate of IPv6

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Struggling DNSSEC?

• 0.010% of .РФ zones • 0.045% of .RU zones • …return a DNSKEY for the apex

• Neither .РФ nor .RU contain DS records –obstacles to adoption at registrars?

• Compare to 1.5% signed in a recent .com sample

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IPv6: Making Progress

• 15% of .РФ zones • 19% of .RU zones • …return a AAAA record for the apex

• Diversity is still growing

• Two providers (MasterHost and TimeWeb) originate more than 80% of the IPv6 responses

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WHY LOCAL CONTENT MATTERS:

IMPACTS ON ENDUSER EXPERIENCE

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US-based .RU Apex Hosting

8.1% of the domains within .RU are hosted (at least partially) within the USA.

Some are parked; others are hosted on Cloud infrastructure in California, Virginia, etc.

1.AS50245 51.80% Serverel Corp2.AS15169 7.70% Google3.AS13335 4.70% CloudFlare,Inc.4.AS46606 4% UnifiedLayer5.AS20473 2.30% Choopa,LLC6.AS26496 2% GoDaddy.com,LLC7.AS16509 1.90% Amazon8.AS39111 1.20% AmazonDataServicesIrelandLtd9.AS20013 1.20% CyrusOneLLC10.AS8075 1.20% MicrosoftCorporation11.AS14618 1.10% Amazon.com,Inc.12.AS40034 1% ConfluenceNetworks Inc13.AS36351 1% SoftLayer TechnologiesInc.

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NOTE: Some cities host multiple collectors. Cable Map credit: Telegeography

Active Measurement Infrastructure

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Latencies from Moscow

250-300+ms S America

150-250ms US West

100-150ms US East

50-100ms Europe

150-300msAfrica

200-300+South Asia

300ms+East Asia

Source: Dyn Internet Intelligence

50-100ms Eastbound

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Active Measurement Infrastructure

• Most providers reach AWS EU-West (Ireland) in 60-80ms from Moscow

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CONCLUSIONS

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TL;DR

Russian zones are strongly localized to Russia

This is especially true for the newer .РФ domains

Russian latencies to alternative Western Europe / US Cloud infrastructure are high

.RU and . РФ continue to evolve side by side

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Final Observations

• Interesting dynamics occur at the growing edge of big zones, so periodic measurement seems important

• Locality trends in the resolver audience for authoritative data are equally interesting – mapping regional clients

• We appreciate the help of [cc]TLD operators who have shared their data as part of this project!

Domestic Content Hosting:Comparing .RU and .РФ

Jim Cowie, Chief Scientist

MSK-IX Peering Forum 2015Moscow, December 2015