Re: [ga] who are the root server operators?

[Joe Baptista <baptista@dot-god.com>]

On Tue, 5 Nov 2002, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 07:07:11PM -0500,
>  Joe Baptista <baptista@dot-god.com> wrote
>  a message of 33 lines which said:
>
> > > Are there any plans to expand the list of root-servers, maybe to 26
> > > from 13, for greater internet stability?
> >
> > they can't.  the limit is 13 mainly due to protocol limitations.
>
> I'm not aware of any such limitation in the DNS protocol. Read RFC
> 1035.
>
> If you refer to the 512-bytes limit of UDP packets (you can check the
> size of the current root with 'dig . ns' and read the MSG SIZE field:
> there is room for two more servers), I do not regard it as a good
> reason:

That is correct the 512 byte limit.  I do not dispute our estimate that 2
more root can be added provided the byte limit does not exceed the magic
512 number.  At this time I estimate they have about 70 bytes to fit in
those 2 extra roots.

>
> * with DNSSEC (cryptographical signatures in the DNS replies) and IDN
>   (long labels), the DNS will have to move to TCP anyway,

I agree UDP has it's limitations.

> * there is never a DNS query for the root name servers: they are
>   hardwired in the hints file (/etc/bind/db.root or something like
>   that). Unlike the TLD name servers (which ICANN limit to 13 per
>   TLD), there is no good technical reason to limit the number of root
>   name servers.

Actually a good server should be able to refresh it's root server list
from the hints file.  It only needs to contact one of those servers listed
in the hints and if the list of roots is different from the hints that
data would be captured.

regards
joe

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