Thanks! Re: Re: Root DNS Server Issues?

Fri Oct 4 08:17:48 UTC 2002

On Tue, 1 Oct 2002, John Neiberger wrote:

>
> Thanks to everyone who helped me out and I hope you don't mind
> me making a fool of myself.  :-)  I (and others that I work
> with) learned quite a lot from your responses to this little
> incident.  If I have to be a little bit foolish to learn
> something valuable, then so be it!  <g>

If you have a copy of "DNS and BIND" laying around the office somewhere,
grab it and read the first two or three chapters. They do an excellent job
of describing how the distributed domain name system works. This would be
good background knowledge for anyone in the business at this level, and it
should only take you 30 minutes (or so) to read.

The one difference between what older versions of the book describe and
current reality is that the root servers, [a-m].root-servers.net, are no
longer authoritative for most of the gTLD zones. They have moved to
[a-m].gtld-servers.net.

For those who would like to see a reader's digest version of how the
delegation chain works, try the following:

dig @a.root-servers.net. com. ns

dig @a.gtld-servers.net. yahoo.com. ns

dig @ns1.yahoo.com. www.yahoo.com. ns

dig @za.akadns.net. www.yahoo.akadns.net. a

That's roughly the path that a resolver would take to figure out how to
deal with you typing "www.yahoo.com" into your browser.

Doug

-- 
   "We have known freedom's price. We have shown freedom's power.
      And in this great conflict, ...  we will see freedom's victory."
	- George W. Bush, President of the United States
          State of the Union, January 28, 2002

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