Enable BIND cache server to resolve chinese domain name?

Mon Jul 4 05:20:13 UTC 2005

On Mon, 4 Jul 2005, Mark Andrews wrote:

>> Some of our customer complaint they could not visit
>> back to their web site, which use chinese domain name.
>> I google the net and found some one recommend to use
>> public-root.com servers in hint file.
>>
>> I found domain name like xn--8pru44h.xn--55qx5d could
>> not be resolved either.
>>
>> Our cache server runs BIND9.3.1 with root server list
>> from rs.internic.net.
>>
>> Do I need to modify our cache server configuration to
>> enable it?
>
> 	Only if you wish to do all your other customers a disfavour
> 	by configuring your caching servers to support a private
> 	namespace then yes.

There's no particular technical magic to the ICANN-run roots, except that 
it's what just about everybody else is using.  This means that if you 
enter the same hostname on two computers far away from each other, you're 
probably going to end up at the same place, or at least at places run by 
the same organization.  This standardization is valuable, so anybody 
trying to make a different standard that isn't widely used compete with it 
is going to have a hard time convincing people to switch.

That doesn't mean a competing system wouldn't work, for those who are 
using it.  They'd just be limited in who they could talk to, and that 
generally wouldn't be very appealing.

That said, a big country implementing a new DNS root on a national scale 
may not have that problem.  The telecom world is already full of systems 
that don't cross national borders. In the US case, think of all the cell 
phones that have international dialing turned off by default, and all the 
800 numbers whose owners probably aren't at all bothered by their 
inability to receive calls from other countries.

A system that would limit my ability to talk to people in other countries 
doesn't sound very appealing to me.  On the other hand, the Chinese 
government has been trying hard to limit or control communications between 
people in China and the rest of the world for years.  In that sense, 
maintaining their own DNS root, incompatible with the rest of the world, 
might be seen as a considerable advantage.  If they don't care about 
breaking compatibility with the DNS root the rest of the world uses, the 
disadvantages of such a scheme become fairly moot.

-Steve