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VeriSign expands plan to strengthen Net infrastructure

As part of Project Titan, company aims to enhance the security infrastructure of the Internet.

Robert Vamosi Former Editor
As CNET's former resident security expert, Robert Vamosi has been interviewed on the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and other outlets to share his knowledge about the latest online threats and to offer advice on personal and corporate security.
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Robert Vamosi

Update 3:15 p.m. PDT: The headline and opening sentence have been changed to clarify that VeriSign is expanding its Project Titan initiative to strengthen and secure Net infrastructure.

On Thursday, VeriSign announced plans to increase the level of security within Project Titan, a global initiative to expand the infrastructure of the Internet to anticipate future demand brought by increased e-commerce transactions.

In its announcement, VeriSign said that it is going to spend more than the $100 million-plus initially budgeted.

One of the goals of Project Titan is to increase the overall capacity of the Internet to sustain a predicted increase in the daily load of Domain Name Server (DNS) queries. DNS is how a domain's common name (say CNET.com) is converted to its Internet address consisting of numbers. It also allows major companies to move their Internet-facing servers yet keep the common name for its customers.

Currently the DNS system handles about 400 billion queries today; VeriSign predicts a load of 4 trillion queries by 2010. To do this, Project Titan will better distribute the current infrastructure so that the .com and .net systems will have greater redundancy and reduced latency. This should improve the end-user experience for users by reducing bottlenecks and increasing speed despite ever increasing demand. It will also introduce more security to prevent attacks on the DNS system.