Jim Cowie presented research comparing the domestic hosting of content within the .RU and .РФ top-level domains. The research found that 65% of domains within .RU and 80% within .РФ are hosted within Russia. Moscow and St. Petersburg hosted the majority of locally hosted content. Latencies from Russia to alternative hosting locations in Western Europe and the US were found to be high. The research concluded that Russian domains have a strong preference for domestic hosting within the country.

1. Domestic Content Hosting:
Comparing .RU and .РФ
Jim Cowie, Chief Scientist
MSK-IX Peering Forum 2015
Moscow, December 2015

2. @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…

3. @DynResearch
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 Alexa
data, the other with ccTLD zone data

4. @DynResearch
EXPERIMENT 1:
FINDING THE ALEXA 100

5. @DynResearch
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

6. @DynResearch
National Self-Hosting Percentages US
CN
VN
CZ
IR
HU
CA
MX
SA
AE
TR
KR
JP
BR RU
PL
DE
Correlates with ASN count, ρ = +0.69
(Importers) (Exporters)

7. @DynResearch
Russia’s Alexa 100 Hosting (1/2)
Has IPv6 Address?
Hosted in Russia?

8. @DynResearch
Russia’s Alexa 100 Hosting (2/2)
Has IPv6 Address?
Hosted in Russia?

9. @DynResearch
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.

10. @DynResearch
EXPERIMENT 2:
*.RU and *.РФ

11. @DynResearch
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 +166K
authoritative servers
• .РФ: NS records for +738K zones, pointing at +30K
authoritative servers

12. @DynResearch
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.

13. @DynResearch
Russia’s .RU Apex Hosting
65% of the apex domains within
.RU delegations are hosted (at
least partially) within Russia

14. @DynResearch
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 ccTLD
worldwide

15. @DynResearch
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

16. @DynResearch
Top Origin Providers: Worldwide .RU
Provider Global% Organization
…and a very long tail of smaller hosting providers
1. AS197695 8.20% Domain names registrar REG.RU, Ltd
2. AS24940 6.80% Hetzner Online AG
3. AS9123 4.90% TimeWeb
4. AS47846 4.30% SEDO GmbH
5. AS50245 4.20% Serverel Corp
6. AS8342 4.20% OJSC RTComm.RU
7. AS198610 3.70% Beget Ltd
8. AS29182 3.20% ISPsystem, cjsc
9. AS25535 3.10% Autonomous Non-commercial Organization Regional Network ...
10. AS25532 3.10% .masterhost

17. @DynResearch
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% Domain names registrar REG.RU, Ltd
2. AS9123 7.50% TimeWeb
3. AS8342 6.50% OJSC RTComm.RU
4. AS198610 5.80% Beget Ltd
5. AS29182 4.90% ISPsystem, cjsc
6. AS25535 4.80% Autonomous Non-commercial Organization Regional Network ...
7. AS25532 4.80% .masterhost
8. AS44112 4.20% SpaceWeb CJSC
9. AS48172 2.70% Oversun Ltd
10. AS43362 2.50% Majordomo llc

18. @DynResearch
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% Agava Ltd.
12. AS48287 2.20% RU-SERVICE Ltd
13. AS49505 2% OOO Network of data-centers Selectel
14. AS30968 1.70% ZAO "National Telecommunications"
15. AS35278 1.70% SPRINTHOST.RU LLC
16. AS60357 1.50% Megagroup.ru LLC
17. AS62082 1.40% Hostland LTD
18. AS41126 1.40% CJSC Registrar R01
19. AS31240 1.30% Hosting Telesystems, JSC
20. AS29076 1.20% Filanco Ltd

19. @DynResearch
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!

20. @DynResearch
Top Origin Providers: Moscow .RU
Provider Moscow% Organization
1. AS8342 13.60% OJSC RTComm.RU
2. AS25532 10% .masterhost
3. AS25535 9.50% Autonomous Non-commercial Organization Regional Network ...
4. AS29182 8.80% ISPsystem, cjsc
5. AS197695 7.90% Domain names registrar REG.RU, Ltd
6. AS48172 4.70% Oversun Ltd
7. AS48287 4.60% RU-SERVICE Ltd
8. AS43146 3.10% Agava Ltd.
9. AS41126 2.90% CJSC Registrar R01
10. AS31240 2.80% Hosting Telesystems, JSC

21. @DynResearch
Top Origin Providers: St Petersburg .RU
Provider St Petersburg% Organization
1. AS9123 24.90% TimeWeb
2. AS44112 18.40% SpaceWeb CJSC
3. AS43362 8.50% Majordomo llc
4. AS49505 8% OOO Network of data-centers Selectel
5. AS30968 7.50% ZAO "National Telecommunications"
6. AS60357 6.90% Megagroup.ru LLC
7. AS62082 6.20% Hostland LTD
8. AS35278 4.10% SPRINTHOST.RU LLC
9. AS49693 2.40% Best-Hoster Group Co. Ltd.
10. AS30943 2% Utransit International Carrier Limited

22. @DynResearch
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

23. @DynResearch
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

24. @DynResearch
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

25. @DynResearch
WHY LOCAL CONTENT MATTERS:
IMPACTS ON ENDUSER EXPERIENCE

26. @DynResearch
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 Corp
2. AS15169 7.70% Google
3. AS13335 4.70% CloudFlare, Inc.
4. AS46606 4% Unified Layer
5. AS20473 2.30% Choopa, LLC
6. AS26496 2% GoDaddy.com, LLC
7. AS16509 1.90% Amazon
8. AS39111 1.20% Amazon Data Services Ireland Ltd
9. AS20013 1.20% CyrusOne LLC
10. AS8075 1.20% Microsoft Corporation
11. AS14618 1.10% Amazon.com, Inc.
12. AS40034 1% Confluence Networks Inc
13. AS36351 1% SoftLayer Technologies Inc.

27. @DynResearch
NOTE: Some cities host multiple collectors. Cable Map credit: Telegeography
Active Measurement Infrastructure

28. @DynResearch
Latencies from Moscow
250-300+ms
S America
150-250ms
US West
100-150ms
US East
50-100ms
Europe
150-300ms
Africa
200-300+
South Asia
300ms+
East Asia
Source: Dyn Internet Intelligence
50-100ms
Eastbound

29. @DynResearch
Active Measurement Infrastructure
• Most providers reach AWS EU-West (Ireland) in 60-80ms from Moscow

30. @DynResearch
CONCLUSIONS

31. @DynResearch
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

32. @DynResearch
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!

33. Domestic Content Hosting:
Comparing .RU and .РФ
Jim Cowie, Chief Scientist
MSK-IX Peering Forum 2015
Moscow, December 2015