Advisory — D-root is changing its IPv4 address on the 3rd of January.

Sun Dec 16 19:36:45 UTC 2012

On 12/14/2012 9:50 PM, bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 08:48:07PM -0800, David Conrad wrote:
>> On Dec 14, 2012, at 11:02 AM, Joe Abley<jabley at hopcount.ca>  wrote:
>>> Other root servers have renumbered out of institutional, general-purpose networks into dedicated networks in the past. I think the last one was B-Root in 2004,
>>
>> Actually, it was "L" in 2007... :)

> SOME people have very long memories.

Actually, I have an excellent memory also. The one thing I do NOT 
remember is this much Sturm und Drang over any of the past changes. I 
believe that the first few changes were actually painful (they were for 
me), but really, everything has gone along just fine and dandy until now.

I gently point out the following resource (which I'm sure nearly 
everyone here already knew about):

http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/

DNS first reared its head in 1984. For the very longest time I even kept 
my copy of hints updated by hand, leaving notes as to the old IP, so 
that I'd notice if anything from my end was trying to reach an old IP 
(the amount of stupidity hard coded in was just as bad then as now).

I downloaded one of the last hosts.txt files, in 1992, out of sentiment. 
It still makes me nostalgic to look at it.

Is it just me? I do not remember L or previous entries garnering this 
much attention, and it seems there was actually a bit less time between 
announcement of the change, and my ::face::palm:: when I saw log 
entries, and realized I was lazy. I have no idea when the IP was turned 
off, since it wouldn't have *mattered* to me. I do remember quite a bit 
of discussion here and there when the first ones were changing, but it 
was local discussion, when my world was a bit more narrow and focused.

I did actually look (although not very hard) for an actual history of 
the original hosts, and the migrations from legacy IPs and legacy names 
into the less colorful format of *.root-servers.net that we know and 
love today.

For those of you still worried, I promise it will all be okay. I promise.

-- 
Put a smile on it, even if you don't feel like it.
Try building something up, instead of tearing it down.
Santa believes in you, even if you don't believe in him.