<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,BT_CO_20040219_000372,00.html> The Wall Street Journal February 19, 2004 1:42 a.m. EST VeriSign To Set Up Internet Traffic Hub In China DOW JONES NEWSWIRES BEIJING -- U.S.-based VeriSign Inc. (VRSN), which provides Internet infrastructure services, Thursday said it has signed a deal which is expected to boost the efficiency of the Internet in China. Under a memorandum of understanding signed with China's Ministry of Information Industry, VeriSign, which provides the .net and .com infrastructure, will create a Domain Name Service Internet constellation site in Beijing. The site will directly route online traffic through China rather than an external location, a company executive told Dow Jones Newswires. The Beijing location will join California, Washington, London, Stockholm, Singapore and Tokyo, among others, as VeriSign's 14th such site worldwide. Internet traffic in Asia is currently typically handled through California, Tokyo or Singapore, Neil Edwards, vice president of VeriSign's Naming and Directory Services division, said. "China will now be one of the hubs in Asia. It'll be one of the prominent points for receiving Internet traffic, so that's significant," Edwards said. The Beijing site will contain a master list of .com and .net domain names originating from China. It will quicken response time for Chinese Internet users and boost online security and reliability, Edwards said, since a copy of the traffic will be available locally rather than through foreign connections. "The other benefit is that other Asian countries will depend on China's infrastructure, which makes China more prominent in terms of its network exchanges," Edwards said. The move is also expected to also help Asia as a whole, with the added bandwidth reducing the load placed on other hubs since Internet traffic is routed "based on the path of least resistance." VeriSign expects to complete and begin operating the site by year-end. "We hope very quickly to deliver the site, hopefully earlier rather than later, but we can't commit to the exact date yet," Edwards said. The executive said the company won't publicly disclose financial terms of the deal, but that it was "very significant." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'