[discuss] rootservers

[Steve Crocker]

Marilyn, et al,

Thanks.  Two comments about root servers…

1. A list of which countries have root servers and which do not is the beginning but not the end of the discussion.  The technical question is whether a locale is being served well enough.  "Well enough" is usually measured in terms of delay to get an answer to a look up, e.g. 89 milliseconds, and reliability, e.g. answers are received 99.923% of the time.  (Both of the numbers in the previous sentence are illustrative and not related to any actual measurement.  I made them up as I typed.)  On the other hand, many people seem concerned with political questions, e.g. which countries are important enough to have root servers.  It would help the discussion to know what questions are being asked.  The list of root server locations may or may not be relevant.

2. The root zone is just the top level of the DNS hierarchy.  After receiving an answer from a root zone server, the resolver then has to make another query to the TLD's name server.  If the TLD's name server is far away, slow or not responding, having a local copy of the root zone isn't much help.  As a practical matter, it maybe *much* better to have a local copy of the .com zone than the root zone.

Steve




On Feb 24, 2014, at 10:26 AM, Marilyn Cade <marilynscade at hotmail.com> wrote:

> David is right, but this was probably an unintended change in 'terminology'.  
> So, we still should call a root server, as it is a root server. :-) 
> 
> I will just make a comment about definitions and terminology. 
> While not alone in this challenge, within the Business Constituency @ICANN, we found that we had to devote time to creating an "acronym buster" [sorry for the slang terminology], in order to decode the vast number of terms, and abbreviations. 
> 
> Others have undertaken similar challenging tasks, but creating new labels for existing 
> functions/things which are well entrenched in a lot of materials and working activities will to me delay our ability to focus on challenging work. 
> 
> Pasted here from David Conrad's response: 
> "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... "
> 
> I support David's comment about the function of the larger ISPs and web hosting companies, and actually even very large corporations that are NOT ISPs or networking companies, but who operate huge networks that may serve business functions -- for instance, many banks, in many part of the world, operate secure networks, and so they may also be mirroring the root zone in their resolvers. 
> 
> However, while the resolver  performs that function, I wouldn't call them a root server, but would agree with David's statement overall. 
> 
> It is interesting to me that we are talking about this, and I feel lucky that really informed and experienced contributors are contributing.  
> 
> Marilyn Cade
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
>> On Feb 24, 2014, at 11:44 AM, "David Conrad" <drc at virtualized.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 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).
>> 
>> Regards,
>> -drc
>> 
>> 
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