[discuss] rootservers

[David Conrad]

Elisabeth,

On Feb 24, 2014, at 12:10 PM, Elisabeth Blanconil <info at vgnic.org> wrote:
> Here is the distribution of the 365 top zone name servers (root servers)

I suspect creating a new term for the root name servers is unlikely to be helpful to anyone.

> made available by the two VGNICs I know of (ICANN/IANA and ORSN).

What's a "VGNIC"?  I presume it is not the Network Information Center for the British Virgin Island (a la JPNIC, CNNIC, KRNIC, TWNIC, etc).

> They are broken down per countries as follows:

A graphical representation of root name server instance distribution can be found at:

http://www.root-servers.org

(Note that the location of the "B" root name server instance is not in the South Atlantic just off the coast of western Africa (Lat: 0, Lon: 0), but in Los Angeles, US).

It might also be useful to observe that a common technique at larger ISPs and other resolver operators is to mirror the root zone into their resolvers, thereby removing the need of those resolvers to actually query the root servers.  As such, those resolvers could be considered to be a form of root name servers as well. Of course, it is a bit challenging to identify which resolvers actually do this mirroring... 

Regards,
-drc