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You may want to give ORSN and their public nameservers a try. I have used them in the past when my ISP had persistent dns problems, and haven't run into any issues. The ORSN root servers are located mostly in Europe, you may need to check whether the network latency is acceptable to you depending on where you connect from.

You may want to give ORSN and their public nameservers a try. I have used them in the past when my ISP had persistent dns problems, and haven't run into any issues. The ORSN root servers are located mostly in Europe, you may need to check whether the network latency is acceptable to you depending on where you connect from.

I don't know much about them, but I think the "Open Root Server Network" might be a possible candidate. It's an alternate root system, independent from but currently mirroring ICANN's, located mostly in Europe. (The sole non-Europe rootserver seems to be run by Paul Vixie, actually.)

I gather from the Wikipedia page their major concern is monopolization of the DNS root by the U.S. Government.

Their site has instructions on switching to their roots, if you run your own DNS server, and a list of publicly-accessible DNS servers that use their roots, if you just want to re-point your workstation or router.

If they're not your style, WP has a list of other alt roots; most of them seem to revolve around the idea of having more or different TLDs than ICANN. The ones I'd probably consider first would be OpenNIC and the Open Root Server Confederation. The latter's website doesn't seem to indicate, at least to a quick reading, their root server addresses or any publicly-accessible DNS servers.

I am surprised that so far no-one has mentioned the Open Root Server Network. It serves exactly the same data as the ICANN root servers, and has supported IPv6 for some time now. The root hints is available from http://european.nl.orsn.net/tech-hint.php. I have been using it for a few years now without problems.

true, and it has. Take a look at ORSN, when this news was discussed on heise.de (an influential IT-news service in Germany) many posters linked to that European Open Root Server Network.

(re: your signature: as a German I should love him, but who is Hasslehoff?)

Rather then OpenDNS, why not use something like orsn, the Open Root Servers Network - not only does this not do anything stupid like "correcting spelling mistakes" using DNS, but it has the benefit of being run in accordance with the RFCs regarding the DNS root, and has a large amount of thought put into it by some very knowledgable people. There are instructions on orsn.net on how to configure ORSN with a wide variety of platforms, from Windows 95 to AIX, as well as a number of popular DNS packages.

http://european.nl.orsn.net/tech-switch.php

I adopted ORSN as a way to send a big "fuck you" message to the IANA, whose management of.. well, many things is less than fantastic, and I haven't looked back.

Rather then OpenDNS, why not use something like orsn, the Open Root Servers Network - not only does this not do anything stupid like "correcting spelling mistakes" using DNS, but it has the benefit of being run in accordance with the RFCs regarding the DNS root, and has a large amount of thought put into it by some very knowledgable people. There are instructions on orsn.net on how to configure ORSN with a wide variety of platforms, from Windows 95 to AIX, as well as a number of popular DNS packages.

http://european.nl.orsn.net/tech-switch.php

I adopted ORSN as a way to send a big "fuck you" message to the IANA, whose management of.. well, many things is less than fantastic, and I haven't looked back.

I've been looking at different alternatives to the standard root servers and didn't like OpenDNS either as they also change DNS replies.
My search ended with ORSN, a European "backup" of ICANN servers. This way I shouldn't be affected by attacks and outages on ICANN servers.

Indeed by maintaining the judgement he may have neared the day of an alternative european root DNS...
FYI, there is already the working ORSN servers, http://european.de.orsn.net/tech-pubdns.php

We already have, well sort of: http://european.nl.orsn.net/

Already happened: just look at the ORSN, European Open Root Server Network (The Independent DNS Solution with IPv6 support for the European Community) at http://european.ch.orsn.net/.

Sorry, I didn't express me well, I meant: there is no reason to have unique root servers for DNS requests.

It's how dupes are avoided at the DNS request level.

I'm not sure I understand this sentence but there is already cache, so dupes. You know, DNS propagation, etc.

Sure you can replicate the DNS database. If your willing to either lose built in synchronization, or add delays in when changes to it become available to DNS requests from users.

Yes, you would propagate the changes. However, I don't think that would introduce big delays. Basicaly, a record is changing once a year. With appropriate pulling, the changes would be almost instant. OTOH, multiple root servers would speed up because the root servers would be closer and probably at one or two hops from your ISP.

There's nothing technical in the way of using whatever you want to, right now.

Hmm, not really. That would suppose the ICANN is propagating changes. I don't know if they do or not and how. Thanks to this thread, I discovered ORSN. This is part of the idea and I will investigate.

You will also introduce some huge security issues. Hint: why is allowing zone transfers from your DNS server considered something to control?

No, read my post again, I said centralization is needed for allocation (creation, transfer, ...). But centralization is not needed for requests. And yes this is something that shouldn't be controlled. If I'm in spain and I want to visit a .com website hosted in germany, why should I hit an american DNS server?

or just with it's own trusted DNS Root servers
I'm already using it!! ORSN

A alternative to the evil US DNS servers :

http://www.orsn.net/

Kinda puts all this to rest .

Ex-MislTech

Like some ppl have mentioned, just setup a secondary DNS network on IPv6, and it has already been done .

Just read their info, and move on .

http://www.orsn.net/

You can go back to hating the US for some other reason now .

Take a number .

Ex-MislTech

If you want to be xenophobes and issue ultimatums, perhaps this may help those of us who don't like being held to ransom:

http://european.de.orsn.net/rootzone.php

IPv6 root servers, too. Rather nice.

why does efficiency matter? Transperancy is much more important. Of course we could just all use http://www.orsn.net/ for DNS.

I think the point of the grandparent was that anyone can offer or use an alternative dns system. Such systems already exist. Most of them can easily copy a lot of the IP addresses and names from the current system.
And if some governments unite and offer their own dns system, and tell their ISP do use it , then this dns system will be a main one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root
http://european.nl.orsn.net/
http://www.opennic.unrated.net/

It has sort of happened. Go to ORSN, www.orsn.net
Set their nameserver in you resolv.conf or your DHCP-server: http://european.nl.orsn.net/tech-switch-linux.php

It takes less than one minute and now you are ICANN-free. The internet still works, I can still post to /. so all is good.

Just shows that this is much ado about nothing. There is no big threat and no taking control of DNS.

That appears to be what the EU is doing, with the backing of even people like Paul Vixie. Ok, the EU hasn't mandated all of their ISPs to switch over, but that may well be done voluntarily anyway.

Once this alternate root has been set up and is being used and running well, it would be easy for everyone to switch over to it on a whim if ICANN every does anything really bad, thus reducing the chances that ICANN will do anything really bad. The US government has been known to do really stupid things all too often, but I think this reduces the chances that they will try and force ICANN to do something really bad.

Note that one of the key reasons why Paul Vixie supports OSRN is because they are *NOT* going to go around creating new TLDs and such that aren't supported by ICANN. This alternate DNS root is going to look *EXACTLY* the same as the ICANN root. Or, at least, it will until ICANN does something really stupid.

It is time for the world community to fork and start going on our own:

http://european.nl.orsn.net/

ORSN is an abbreviation for Open Root Server Network and stands for a network of DNS servers in member countries of the European Union and/or neighbouring countries.

The ORSN serves as a alternative for the existing root-server network since February 2002, which is coordinated by the ICANN. In contrast to the root servers of the ICANN, the ORSN servers should predominantly be placed in Europe. The maximum number of ORSN root-servers will be 13.

Until now, the administration is done by the USA and/or the ICANN. Therefor, a large number of root-servers is located in America. A loss or the modification of the root-server information could result in serious consequences for all other countries concerning their internet use. It is for example possible to stop a whole country from using the internet. In practice, this scenario didn't happen so far but it can't be excluded either.

The ORSN is based on a private initiative. The project isn't profit-oriented and won't be it in the future. The current root-server operators of the ORSN support the network by supplying resources such as server hardware and, if necessary, the administration of the appropriate server. The joined ISPs and operators administer and use the ORSN by conviction and in the interest of the autarcy of the network in Europe.

Visit our forum at http://forum.orsn.org/ to ask for more information.