There's a piece of news that's doing the rounds that has netizens a bit concerned. According to a wire report, internet users across the world might experience “widespread network failures”. The report says key domain servers will undergoing routine maintenance over the next 48 hours. However, we aren’t losing sleep over it.

According to ANI, which quotes Russia Today, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will be carrying out maintenance work over the next two days, “changing the cryptographic key that helps protect the internet’s Domain Name System (DNS)”.

This process is called the DNS Root Zone KSK Rollover. It’s where ICANN changes the top pair of cryptographic keys used in the DNSSEC protocol, commonly known as the Root Zone KSK (Key Signing Key). It’s also the first time this will be happening since 2010.

Do you remember a major Internet shutdown in 2010? No? That’s because there wasn’t. You see, that will only happen if network operators or ISPs haven’t made preparations for the rollover, and ICANN always provides plenty of warning.

In addition, we can categorically say you’re not going to experience a shutdown today. Why? Well…

The root KSK rollover has occurred: the new root zone signed by new KSK (known as KSK-2017) has been published to the root servers.#kskroll #keyroll pic.twitter.com/f6vak0qgiC — ICANN (@ICANN) October 11, 2018

Yeah, the rollover took place hours ago last night. And ICANN says there were a few issues in the first six hours that were resolved.

Relax people, there’d be a much bigger hue and cry if the Internet across the world was shutting off for two days. The stock market would collapse, flights would be grounded, there would be general anarchy, you get the picture. So Keep Calm and Stay Online this Friday.