.mil domain root only hosted by one server??

Wed Aug 21 20:04:43 UTC 2002

On Wed, Aug 21, 2002 at 03:46:22PM -0400, Vinny Abello wrote:
> 
> I just stumbled across something I thought was interesting. All the .mil 
> domain names used by the U.S. Military are served by one single root 
> server. I thought that was a bit odd. I'm sure that one server is more than 
> enough to handle the queries for all the .mil domains with no problem, but 
> it doesn't seem very redundant or safe at all. Especially for something our 
> military uses. There's something that could be beefed up a little bit. My 
> other thought (which others may know) was that perhaps the military runs 
> G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET and I'm just not aware of it. Maybe it's a policy to 
> only run .mil on what they can control? Even still, I think it might be in 
> their best interest to setup a few more.
> 
> These are the results I got when I queried A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET:
> 
> ; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> @a.root-servers.net mil.
> ;; global options:  printcmd
> ;; Got answer:
> ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 41
> ;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
> 
> ;; QUESTION SECTION:
> ;mil.                           IN      A
> 
> ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
> mil.                    86400   IN      SOA     G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 
> HOSTMASTER.N
> IC.mil. 2002082000 3600 900 1209600 86400
> 
Ummmm. The SOA MNAME field is always a single server.

bastet[~]$ dig +short mil ns @g.root-servers.net
PAC1.NIPR.mil.
H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
CON2.NIPR.mil.
EUR2.NIPR.mil.
E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
PAC2.NIPR.mil.
CON1.NIPR.mil.
B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
EUR1.NIPR.mil.
bastet[~]$

-Pete