[NANOG] Just got on this thing (perhaps very belatedly) - root server trouble?

Wed Feb 19 06:27:21 UTC 1997

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

On Tue, 18 Feb 1997 15:22:27 -0600 (CST), karl at mcs.net writes:
>
>Well, the LONG TERM solution is to secondary and list the "known to be good"
>roots.
>
>You CAN run the cache file if you want -- but then you get the same problem
>that everyone else has -- that the IANA needs to change the roots too, and
>guess what -- there's a boatload of cache files out there.

The cache file is only a hint - when a name server starts up it uses
the information in the cache file to contact one of the root name
servers and gets the latest list of root name servers from
there. Actually, you probably only need to know about one other name
server that has a list of root name servers.

However, if you ever have to renumber ROOT-NS.MCS.NET, you're in
trouble because there's no way for most name servers to update their
configuation files automatically to take notice of the new location of
the primary server.

>Actually, root-ns is a beefy piece of hardware, and it runs NOTHING other
>than this.  I'm not worried about the load.  The SOA times need to come
>down, but frankly, 5 queries/second is diddly-squat on a production machine,
>and lost in the noise.
>
>The point here is that if you can't reach one of the roots for a period of
>time, its no disaster -- you know where the data is, so you just go there
>directly. 
>
>Yes, there are scaling problems.  Yes, there are with the IANA system.  
>When we have enough RFC-2010 roots in place then of course this changes.
>But for right now it gives better stability AND better performance than the
>IANA system -- which is, I believe, the point.

I don't care how beefy ROOT-NS.MCS.NET is, it's not going to handle
the load of all the zone transfers when you update the root zone's
serial number.  You can make attempts to balance the zone transfer
load among name servers but that's a manual process and you're bound
to overload one of your root servers. The current system automatically
balances the load across all of the root name servers.

[A copy of the headers and the PGP signature follow.]

Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 00:27:21 -0600
From: "Jeffrey C. Ollie" <jeff at ollie.clive.ia.us>
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 18 Feb 1997 15:22:27 CST."
             <199702182122.PAA23440 at Jupiter.Mcs.Net> 
Subject: Re: [NANOG] Just got on this thing (perhaps very belatedly) - root server trouble? 
To: nanog at merit.edu

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: AnySign 1.4 - A Python tool for PGP signing e-mail and news.

iQCVAwUBMwqdTZwkOQz8sbZFAQGEvwP/Qp69lT1YoJB0AePADmapx1ckXIKrQhh5
0U0KCWhQQpl1JrISWVOeOisSogl8eVqn4fdXv6duh0TWpQlNOhQybkYpAfkZlw8L
Htng+qHwRxwCzLZzV3HZp+JzwnZuLKwk7X8jbk5Xg7D0FSkLagFv5nO3k9rjnSGB
1uB3t6sy9Kg=
=r9y9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-- 
Jeffrey C. Ollie                     |            Should Work Now (TM)
Python Hacker, Mac Lover             |