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DNS Root Servers Outside US Surpass Those Inside

penciling_in writes "Paul Rendek, head of member services and communica of RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) has reported on CircleID that: 'For the first time in Internet history the number of instances of DNS root servers outside the United States has overtaken the number within. The balance was tipped by the recent launch in Frankfurt of an anycast instance of the RIPE NCC operated K-root server.' In the same report, Daniel Karrenberg, Chief Scientist of the RIPE NCC says: 'We monitor the quality of the root name service from more than 50 locations worldwide, and we publish the results for everyone to see.'"

333 comments

  1. Er by millisa · · Score: 5, Funny

    So it was a K-raut K-root server that tipped the balance?

    *dodges the thrown fruit*

    1. Re:Er by millisa · · Score: 1, Troll

      I could care less if it was modded 'troll'. I'm still giggling over saying 'Krautkroot krautkroot' over and over . . .

    2. Re:Er by Cosmik · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Now it's +5 Funny. Hooray for the cavalry!

    3. Re:Er by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's show him who's boss in metamod!

  2. This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The number of countries outside the U.S. outnumber the number of countries inside the U.S.

    1. Re:This just in by cujo_1111 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not according to the average American who thinks there is nothing outside the US except terrorists...

      --
      If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
    2. Re:This just in by cujo_1111 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Do the puppet governments that the US put in place count as other countries?

      --
      If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
    3. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Wait... there's an internet outside the U.S.?

    4. Re:This just in by Jin+Wicked · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Don't forget Canadia, otherwise who would Bush have to blame for mad cow disease? Of course they couldn't possibly have servers there, it's nothing but snow and crazy cows, right... ? =D

      --
      My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
    5. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The terrorists have won, notice the amount of security at every stadium/airport/large public gathering in the US. Americans are scared of their own freakin shadows.

    6. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also note that this thread is going on ACs, why would be that ;-)

    7. Re:This just in by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Don't forget Canadia

      How could we forget the Maple Leaf state.

    8. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      be carefull with what you wish, they seem to be wanting to grant it.

    9. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you sure didn't forget the knee-jerk /. response there, good job! keep 'em coming!

    10. Re:This just in by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Not according to the average American who thinks there is nothing outside the US except terrorists...

      You have just proven that at least one person in Australia is a moron, not a terrorist.

      Congratulations.

    11. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The number of countries outside the U.S. outnumber the number of countries inside the U.S.

      Not for long.

    12. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't forget Canadia

      How could we forget the Maple Leaf state.

      What are you talking about? It's easy to miss them down there.

    13. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I imagine most of South and Central America is similar to the slums of Mexico.

      If you would do some simple research on the internet you would find your guess to be quite incorrect. Go on have a look you ignorant american...

    14. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The state flower is bacon.

    15. Re:This just in by LnxAddct · · Score: 1

      No I'm not. Even on 9/11 I wasn't scared. It bothered me emotionally, but I wasn't scared. I even still took the subway home and I live in the closest major city to New York and I work in center city.You damn europeans can believe what you want, but I'd sooner be in a government building in Washington on 9/11 then step foot in Iraq. I feel safe in the U.S. and I'd only leave it to go to England, Spain, Germany or the other major powers in the world and even then I'd feel less safe.
      -Steve

    16. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's the problem. People like you imagining the world without ever understanding what are you talking about or caring. Give up, you are not equiped to do imagination.

    17. Re:This just in by Catharz · · Score: 1

      The number of countries outside the U.S. outnumber the number of countries inside the U.S.

      Hmm, maybe the US should invite some of the the outside US countries to the world series?

      --
      To know that you know what you know, and that you do not know what you do not know, that is true wisdom. --Scooby Doo
    18. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah Actually they are quite nice, sorta like LA even.

      Crazy Portuguese Spanish Mix.

      Now the Mountains, theirs where you will find some crazy mofos. Carry a gun, and dont look like a gringo.

    19. Re:This just in by Jin+Wicked · · Score: 1

      Knee-jerk for Slashdot? More like standard joke for Leno, Letterman, Conan, Jon Stewart... heh.

      Or me. =)

      --
      My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
    20. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      If that's true then why do they call the internet America Online?

    21. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cos it will eat mod points that won't be used on comments that are ontopic...

    22. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At least they both make a mess of the cars they land on...

    23. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I felt less safe in NYC and Washington DC than I did in Bangkok, Jakarta or Islamabad. I made sure people knew I wasn't an American though.

    24. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I don't know who is feeding you this nonsense, but the fact that you believe it is really sad.

      I pity you.

    25. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think the parent watches Fox news, thats all... he should really become like the rest of us.

    26. Re:This just in by aled · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Zero. I mean the number zero. Arabic numbers. That thing used to navigation by stars. A culture of religious tolerance that used to acept jews hunted by the inquisition. Buildings designed to be cool in the desert.
      I mean before western introduced crusades and petrol. More recently I'm not well informed.

      --

      "I think this line is mostly filler"
    27. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      hahaha, shut up. someday canada is gonna rise up and overthrow you arrogant american pricks. you think you control the world. the only thing you control is nothing you scared of flying losers. hehe.

    28. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It bothered me emotionally

      Aaaaaaaaw. You're so sensible. I bet the girls love you. (not)

    29. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      only 50% of america supports bush, the other is animus towards him. if he gets re-elected, america will be the closest its come to civil war in over a century.

    30. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From his description, I reckon he could be one of the Queer Eye guys... prolly the really poofy one :)

    31. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ROTFL, must add that one to my 9/11 jokes collection. Thanks!

    32. Re:This just in by Canadian_Daemon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I find it kind of funny that the rest of the world thinks we're ignorant
      You are sort of simple minded aren't you. Just because you refuse to acknowledge their existence doesn't mean that they do not exist. You should visit "Euorotrash states" like Belgium, or France. They are really quite nice. Why don't you like Asia? What did Asia ever do to you? (and don't start in on the Bird Flue or SARS). Try not going to an 'amricanized' resort. You'll find that there are other, more interesting cultures, that are totally different from your American ones. I pity you, because you have not the understanding, or the sense to go travelling.

      --
      This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
    33. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I watch Fox News (and CNN and MSNBC and others). I see no such message. You just have a warped view of anything that doesn't match your narrow "USA SUCKS LOL" worldview.

    34. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just because we dont care if their are other shit stained countries outside the US doesnt mean we dont know.

      Naah, there aren't any. The US is pretty much the only shit stained country in the world.

    35. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think he is more scared of flying so he makes lame excuses

    36. Re:This just in by Adam9 · · Score: 1

      What do you plan on doing? Secede?

    37. Re:This just in by cujo_1111 · · Score: 1

      All of the news outlets you listed are amazingly US-centric. Try getting out more.

      --
      If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
    38. Re:This just in by blockhouse · · Score: 1

      Well, what do you expect? The entire country is descended from criminals. :-p

    39. Re:This just in by cujo_1111 · · Score: 1

      And yours is descended from terrorists, so what?

      --
      If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
    40. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then again, the parent is probably busy masturbating to gay porn with photoshopped George W. Bush faces, so he isn't interested in an answer anyway.

    41. Re:This just in by AvengerXP · · Score: 1

      Remember the first word in USA is "us".

      --
      Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
    42. Re:This just in by JudgeFurious · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No of course they don't count as other countries.

      And just to be fair neither do the puppet governments that the US didn't put in place regardless of how far along they are.

      Eventually it's almost all going to be the same thing. Then the only question will be "Do you want fries with that Big Mac?"

      --
      Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
    43. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Alabama doesn't have a state flower, it is always broken at the earliest opurtunity.

    44. Re:This just in by cujo_1111 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Then the only question will be "Do you want fries with that Big Mac?"

      I thought that was what arts graduates say to computer science graduates...

      --
      If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
    45. Re:This just in by JudgeFurious · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Just a minor point but Spain hasn't been a "major power" for a very, very long time. Spain isn't even a minor power. While we're there we might as well point out that England and Germany also don't exactly fall into the "major power" catagory either.

      England doesn't fart without checking with Washington first and Germany hasn't had a pair since the end of WWII. They're "Legacy" powers who get accorded respect because the United States feels silly just sitting in the big power room with China.

      --
      Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
    46. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would the mod who modded this interesting please pick-up your brain at the customer service desk. You left your brain at the customer service desk.

    47. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like you are familiar with this subject.

    48. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yup. I know everything about you Americunts.

    49. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Speaking of imagination, that is some pretty imaginitive grammar you're using there.

    50. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would like to make a remark here: you do not have a single idea what you are talking about.

      The french have elected a right-wing president on last elections. It's not because the Americans only have choice between extreme-right-wing and ultra-mega-right-wing that the rest of the world should.

      Your comment on being superior is the kind of attitude that spawned the holocaust. We are actually arguing that americans think the rest of the world suck without knowing and should open themselves to other cultures and you come yelling that you don't want to open yourself to other cultures because they suck. I call that pulling the rug under your own foot.

    51. Re:This just in by WhiteWolf666 · · Score: 1

      Do the puppet governments that the US put in place count as other countries?

      You haven't been wearing your tinfoil hat lately, eh?

      Obviously, the Chinese government controls world politics.....

      --
      WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
    52. Re:This just in by Snoopy77 · · Score: 1
      You have just proven that at least one person in Australia is a moron...

      As opposed to the guy in Nashville who we had believe that we all have kangaroos as pets, only have paved roads in Sydney and Melbourne, that we watch out all the time for crocs and killer koalas and go walkabouts for 3 months once every year. Even worse was when I was asked how long it took to drive to America.

      Sad to say that a certain proportion (hopefully smaller than I think) of Americans know that the rest of the world exists but know absolutely nothing about it. Hell your own President thinks they speak Mexican south of the border (and from memory Al Gore thought they spoke Latin in Latin America).

      --
      "She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
    53. Re:This just in by Rotten168 · · Score: 1

      How pathetic is it that you're so concerned about internal US sports? I mean, it's not like we care about rounders or cricket or hopscotch or whatever sport it is that you play?

    54. Re:This just in by kasperd · · Score: 1

      The number of countries outside the U.S. outnumber the number of countries inside the U.S.

      I would have moderated parent Insightful, but unfortunately it was already on the limit. The US is not all the world, in fact it is not even one third of the world. My first thought when I read the head line was: "That was about time". We don't want too much control over the internt to lie in the hands of one country, no matter which country it is. I know the way DNS is designed it is still possible to mess up the system with control over less than one third of the root DNS servers, but so far the problems we have seen with root DNS servers were DoS attacks, not malicious responses. So I think spreading the root DNS servers across the world is a good start.

      --

      Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
    55. Re:This just in by Tokerat · · Score: 4, Funny


      Apparently they call it "MSN" everywhere else...

      --
      CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
    56. Re:This just in by Vancorps · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Sorry to inform you that there are ignorant people in every country. People that are only concerned with the immediate fascinity. I believe is was Dan Quayle that said they speak Latin in Latin America and well, he's a moron just like Bush Jr. I'm ashamed such a person came to power, I was 4 months shy of being able to vote for that election and I will definitely be working to ensure he doesn't stay in office. At any rate there are stereotypes people keep about others, some people reject them and some people don't. Back to the real topic of DNS servers, I'm glad to see that the rest of the world is integrating themselves into the Internet. The system is inherently stronger with more people connected to it. Plus, imagine a couple hundred million more people using Bittorrent! mmmmmmmm, the more the merrier!

    57. Re:This just in by Vancorps · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You are missing the point, the United States government funded a LOT of the research that went into creating the Internet, obvious they had help from people around the world. But for a while the fastest growing Internet populous was the United States. Now the rest of the world has picked up the pace and a few countries have surpassed the pace. The DNS servers aren't being spread across the world, there are just plain more of them. Its nothing but a great thing for it will allow for an even larger capacity and greater ability to sustain a DoS attack. I'd say its a great day for the whole Internet community as a whole. I am an American and I have no problem with spreading the control over as many countries as possible seeing how so much can change in so little time here it just makes sense. Changes to the system will take longer which can be considered both a positive and negative depending on if you like how everything works now.

    58. Re:This just in by LittleBigLui · · Score: 1
      ...accorded respect because the United States feels silly...


      or maybe (in the case of germany, also france, probably less in the case of spain) it is because they are influential in europe and europe is a friggin big part of world economics and politics?

      nah... it's just a little in-joke by the big US of fuckin' A :)
      --
      Free as in mason.
    59. Re:This just in by LittleBigLui · · Score: 1

      Just a side note - apart from that being way before islam - the zero (and i think that whole way of writing numbers that is now known as "arabic", too) originally came to arabia from india (which nowadays is partially muslim), and from arabia to europe.

      --
      Free as in mason.
    60. Re:This just in by pimpmaster · · Score: 2, Funny

      Don't forget Canadia

      Look, you need to remember one thing before making fun of something or someone. Use spell check or stay in school and learn how to spell. Canada not Canadia

      --


      "Now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb." Dark Helmet - Spaceballs
    61. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      nah, its more complicated than that. first we legalize marijuana, then we set up secret deals to get oregon, washington, and northern california to secede and form a new state called 'Columbia'. then we get mexico to invade the southwest, while we invade the midwest. the usa will splinter apart, leaving mere fragments of its one glorious experiment in a federal republic. tee hee hee!

    62. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      England: Has nuclear weapons and is a G8 member. Looks like a major power to me!

    63. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How pathetic is it that you're so wound up about your precious country that you can't get a frigin' joke?

    64. Re:This just in by CmdrGravy · · Score: 1

      How amusing, you are moaning about someone pointing out that the "World Series" is a stupid name for a competition which doesn't involve anyone else in the world by saying we shouldn't concern ourselves with Americas "Internal" sports.

    65. Re:This just in by JustAnOtherCodeSerf · · Score: 1

      American -> America
      Canadian -> Canadia

      No problem eh?

      --
      -=sig=-
    66. Re:This just in by iantri · · Score: 1
      Actually, you joke, but AOL provides service in Canada.

      They call it AOL Canada.. I guess COL just didn't have a good ring to it..

    67. Re:This just in by Zeinfeld · · Score: 1
      Zero. I mean the number zero. Arabic numbers. That thing used to navigation by stars. A culture of religious tolerance that used to acept jews hunted by the inquisition. Buildings designed to be cool in the desert.

      Yeah, and why was the West stuck in ignorance? It was the religious nutters who threatened to torture anyone who said that the earth goes round the sun.

      Today the middle east is a mess because of the religious nutters - on both sides. And the religious biggots in the US 'bible' belt are doing their best to drag this country down to the same level with their creationism and their 'president' with the IQ of a wet sock and a mud brick combined. Gore Vidal was right, the US would have been better off loosing the civil war, letting the south east leave and become a second Mexico, just stop slavery spreading to Texas and the new territories.

      China and India are the rising powers because they have a heck of a lot of people and they have been reasonably successful keeping the religious biggots from screwing everything up. Its a pity the loonies have made progress in India - the current lot in power are the gang who destroyed the Iodiah mosque. But people still have the guts to stand up to them so they don't get their way.

      Religion is not biggotry, but Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson are using religion as a cloak for their hatreds and bigottries, and there are a lot like them.

      --
      Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
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    68. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you mean puritans. not that there's much difference...

    69. Re:This just in by glesga_kiss · · Score: 1
      Well, what do you expect? The entire country is descended from criminals.

      Not quite. More criminals were sent to North America from Great Britain than were sent to Australia.

    70. Re:This just in by japhmi · · Score: 1

      your own President thinks they speakMexican south of the border (and from memory Al Gore thought they spoke Latin in Latin America).

      Actually, it was Dan Quale who thought they spoke Latin in Latin America.

      And the president speaks Spanish.

      --
      "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
    71. Re:This just in by Tassach · · Score: 1
      from memory Al Gore thought they spoke Latin in Latin America
      Your memory is faulty. That was J. Danforth Quayle, Bush Sr's idiot vice-president.
      --
      Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
    72. Re:This just in by aled · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In fact the religous hate factor was increased because it is like a way of excape to the west supported orient dictatorships (like Saudi Arab monarchs, the Sha of Iran, etc). Western support dictatorships to keep the oil fuel. The people is oppresed, they goto religious extremists, the extremists attack west, west reacts and the wheel keeps turning.

      --

      "I think this line is mostly filler"
    73. Re:This just in by Rotten168 · · Score: 1

      Back when the "World Series" was named, America (and to some extent Canada) were the only countries that played baseball. When baseball gets popular in... whatever country you're in... I'm sure we'll let you participate.

    74. Re:This just in by CmdrGravy · · Score: 1

      I guess that will about the same time Cricket takes off in the US ;-)

    75. Re:This just in by kasperd · · Score: 1

      The DNS servers aren't being spread across the world, there are just plain more of them.

      It is about root DNS servers, not DNS servers in general. There were a good technical reason for having no more than thirteen root DNS servers. IIRC the reason was that this was the largest number you could fit into a single UDP packet. And until people started making workarounds, the number of root DNS servers did not change.

      --

      Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
    76. Re:This just in by Vancorps · · Score: 1

      I was referring to root DNS servers. The number will grow larger than 13 and continue to grow because you don't need to fit them all in.

      A typical setup I come across for those running DNS servers. They have their own DNS authoritative for their domain which forwards requests to their ISP. Depending on the quality of the ISP their DNS servers will refer to the root servers but this is an unlikely scenario. Instead it gets passed to another provider and their DNS servers will forward and eventually if it still cannot be resolved it will go back to the root DNS servers. In such a scenario you don't need to query all of them at once, so why would it matter?

      Feel free to educate me if I am mistaken

    77. Re:This just in by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 1

      Hell your own President thinks they speak Mexican south of the border

      While I am not a fan George W. Bush's policies, I will come to his defense on this one. Bush speaks Spanish, and has given political speaches in that language.

      Bush also named his oil exploration company Arbusto Energy - Arbusto is the Spanish word for Bush.

      Geroge's brother, Jeb Bush is even more fluent in Spanish, and is married to a Mexican woman who he met while living in that country.

      So I think you have really out your foot in this one, and have shown a great deal of ignorance.

    78. Re:This just in by Zeinfeld · · Score: 1
      In fact the religous hate factor was increased because it is like a way of excape to the west supported orient dictatorships (like Saudi Arab monarchs, the Sha of Iran, etc). Western support dictatorships to keep the oil fuel. The people is oppresed, they goto religious extremists, the extremists attack west, west reacts and the wheel keeps turning.

      That was demonstrated amply by the effects of operation Ajax, the CIA organized coup that replaced the democratic government in Iran with a dictatorship under the Shah.

      The issue that led to operation Ajax was the nationalization of the oil fields by the nationalist governments. The background to this is that Anglo-Persian oil had been cheating the Iranians out of the royalties they were due for years. The original contract had been agreed with a 'monarch' of dubious legitimacy in any case. Rather than accept a 50:50 share in the royalties from the oil fields Anglo Persian went for broke and dared the nationalists to nationalise thinking that the Iranians would not be able to run the industry themselves. Turns out that they could.

      The result of the 1953 coup was that the Shah's government toppled after two days of Saddam style misrule. The American Embassy had been the center of the 1953 coup which explains why the decision of Carter to allow the Shah to visit the US for hospital treatment resulted in the embassy siege and hostage crisis.

      The CIA installed the mullahs in Iran as surely as if they had planned it that way. If you look at the history of CIA interventions none were a success in the long run. Every single one resulted in damage to US interests.

      --
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    79. Re:This just in by kasperd · · Score: 1

      Depending on the quality of the ISP their DNS servers will refer to the root servers but this is an unlikely scenario.

      Of course not all DNS queries will result in a query sent to a root DNS server. But some of them will need to go all the way to the roots. The root DNS servers are the only servers authoritative for "." and you can only cache lookups for a limited amount of time. So no matter how many different DNS servers can use the same response, eventually it will expire, and by then they must query the roots again. In addition to that all queries for nonexisting top level domains must be send to a root DNS server, unless of course someone recently queried the same nonexisting domain. Actually I think trying to lookup a local hostname that can be found in your DNS search path will result in an attempt to lookup that as a top level domain name first. So when my /etc/resolv.cof says "search daimi.au.dk" and I do a lookup of the hostname kalashnikov, this will result in an attempt to lookup a top level domain named kalashnikov, and only when that fails it will lookup kalashnikov.daimi.au.dk.

      Clearly the growing internet does not cause the load on the root DNS servers to decrease. Quite the contrary, it causes more load on the root DNS servers. But fortunately caching and forwarding queries to other DNS servers prevents the load from increasing linearily in the size of the internet. But considering how the default for some DNS software is to queriy the root servers directly when something is not in its own cache, you can still expect a significant load on the root DNS servers. I changed my own caching DNS server from doing that to just sending every query to my provider's DNS server.

      --

      Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
    80. Re:This just in by Vancorps · · Score: 1
      When it comes to DNS I hope more people keep away from defaults. I know that when someone tries to lookup their hostname it will query local dns and never even go out onto the Internet unless it for some reason needs to query and offsite DNS server which is still controlled by me and so no forwarding beyond that point.

      In the case of a dialup user their hostname is attached to the DNS suffix of their isp, so if they query their hostname while online they will only query the ISP.

      At any rate, my original point was you can theoretically have as many root DNS servers as required. Obviously if you have too many then you start having problems with convergence which you could argue they already due. Every 12 hours they all sync and I think the scheme works. Adding one more will increase capacity so the original issue about root DNS servers not being spread out is still moot. They aren't been spread apart, there are just more of them and like I said before, its a good thing since such things are inherently influenced by the governing body of which they reside. Fortunately the way it is setup is provides a safe scenario where rules of one land don't interfere with DNS of everyone on the Internet. Think China and how much it would suck to have to query the DNS server to get to google.

    81. Re:This just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      heh they DOO speek mexican south of the border

    82. Re:This just in by jxs2151 · · Score: 1
      I realize that this is Slashdot but repeating the mantra "'president' with the IQ of a wet sock" shows you to be too stupid to do your own research and implies that you simply gave up your brain and now let the NYT do your thinking for you.

      Your comments about religion and your repeating of easily disproven fallacies about the south show you to be more racist and bigoted, with less facts that those you look down your nose at.

      I only hope that you are just simply punk kid that is enraptured at his professor's mindless, Chomsky-inspired rants but who will eventually grow up and see the ignorant, non-critical thinking, lemming-like error of his ways and join the rest of us in happiness, success and prosperity.

      If not then I guess you will have to simply rot in your hatred and continue spewing hate-filled, propaganda-filled lies like how 'ignorant' the west is based on 500 year old history. In the meantime I will pity you for about the ten seconds that your pathetic, ignorant rants are worth.

  3. Damnit! by Jin+Wicked · · Score: 4, Funny

    I just changed bloody hosts three days ago and my DNS still isn't completely changed over! Now I find out it's because all the new servers are farting around in Frankfurt! Great, just great! =)~

    --
    My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
    1. Re:Damnit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Life's so unfair. Why don't people post messages like "Look at that guy's homepage! He's super hot" under my Slashdot posts?

  4. Not really a subject I understand, so let me ask by RLiegh · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If you are in an insulated internet enviroment, such as china or certain american networks, is it possible to hook up to one of these external DNS servers and use it to handle your NS requests, or would you need to have an existing account with a foriegn ISP?

  5. Does it really matter though? by toddestan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure, there may be more DNS root servers outside the US, but it would seem that Verisign still has exclusive rights to muck around with them. So what's the big deal?

    1. Re:Does it really matter though? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      all your server are belong to US

    2. Re:Does it really matter though? by leerpm · · Score: 2, Informative

      The .com and .net servers are not the same as the root servers.

    3. Re:Does it really matter though? by Lehk228 · · Score: 3, Informative

      As i stated in the past the only reason verisign, ICANN or anyone else has DNS power is because everyone agrees to use their standard.. well.. not everybody ;) there is a choice in the matter anyone who wants to run a DNS server can do so and can map domains to whatever IP address they like... it's just that issuing conflicting domain names on different servers benifits nobody and makes things worse for everyone

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    4. Re:Does it really matter though? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Weird rules...

      "Each domain must maintain and enforce a registration/use policy for domains registered under it and for users who access the net or use services in it. A domain registration, even a Top-Level Domain, may be revoked or transferred if the responsible party fails to enforce this policy."

      so I have to have an acceptable use policy even if i just have a personal site on my domain? Wacky.

    5. Re:Does it really matter though? by Lehk228 · · Score: 1

      that is because any domain is capable of creating subdomains, yours could be personalwebsite.null and later you could give a friend friend.personalwebsite.null and (s)he could give out friendofafriend.friend.personalwebsite.null thus every domain needs an AUP in order to curb abuse

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    6. Re:Does it really matter though? by cpmte · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, but Verisign does operate the A root server, which gets replicated to all the other root servers.

    7. Re:Does it really matter though? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, but Verisign does operate the A root server, which gets replicated to all the other root servers.

      Nope, not at all. A-root is just another server, it is not involved in distribution of the root zone to the other servers. See my recent article on this topic, which CircleID picked up.

      Paul Vixie

    8. Re:Does it really matter though? by stephanruby · · Score: 1
      As i stated in the past the only reason verisign, ICANN or anyone else has DNS power is because everyone agrees to use their standard..

      In fact, that's effectively what happened to the Minitel in France. In 1985, the French Post Office started giving away free Minitels instead of free telephone books. The Minitel effectively became the network with the largest user base in the World, while the rest of the World and the United States were still in the dark ages. Ecommerce was introduced overnight in France. By 1986, you could order anything you wanted over the Minitel, porn, train tickets, retail, etc. If it weren't for the French government's fears, and if it weren't for the French government's desire for control, the Minitel would be the standard of the World Wide Web today. Instead it killed the internet within its own borders.

  6. More importantly: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can they DO that?

  7. Minor /. prediction: by Faust7 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Service quality and security is not always proportional to money spent."

    Time until someone makes a Windows-Linux parallel: 5... 4...

  8. The US... by Pathway · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Cool. This is as it should be, too.. As the rest of the world gets on the net, we'll se the US further down the list, I'm sure.

  9. Globalization at its finest by qortra · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm an American, and I love the US, but the imbalance of the internet towards the US has always bothered me. To me, it always has seemed that it should be a completely global venture, and be supported fairly evenly throughout the globe.

    DNS servers are probably a good indicator of internet usage/participation and the fact that other countries are catching up is a good thing; however, just shy of half of the DNS servers are still in the US. That's pretty sad considering we represent less than 5% of the global population. Here's to hoping other countries continue to grow in their participation.

    Also, I hope Babelfish improves as globalizations continues.....

    1. Re:Globalization at its finest by Takara · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I've also found it sad that while the internet is a global service, many TLDs (namely .gov .edu) are US centric. Some countries right now use a .gov.TLDcc title for their government uses, I don't see why it couldn't have been .TLDcc.gov.

    2. Re:Globalization at its finest by Judg3 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      " imbalance of the internet towards the US has always bothered me"

      Don't worry the rest of the world will catch up. Just like telephone networks, automobiles and transistors the internet will follow the usual pattern of:

      1. US Invents it
      2. US then screws it up
      3. Other countries improve on methods and make superior products
      4. US consumers flock to the improved, cheaper products
      5. US companies create something new to get people to 'Buy American'
      6. Follow 2 - 6

      I'm guessing that the reason we Americans go from a technological breakthrough to wondering why the hell everyone buys the product from overseas is we're either to arrogant and set in our ways, we spent a lot of $$$$ being early adopters and now the technology we use is antiquated just as the rest of the world adopts it, or a combo of the two.

      --
      Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
    3. Re:Globalization at its finest by SweetAndSourJesus · · Score: 1

      It's all part of the plan...

      --

      --
      the strongest word is still the word "free"
    4. Re:Globalization at its finest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      To me, it always has seemed that it should be a completely global venture

      It mostly is, isn't it?

      and be supported fairly evenly throughout the globe.

      Well it more or less is. It's supported in accordance with the infrastructure of countries and how much wealth the people have. Like anything else.

      That's pretty sad considering we represent less than 5% of the global population.

      Only in terms of numbers. It's way more than that in terms of developing and using technology. So it stands to reason where most of the internet infrastructure currently is.

      Obviously this'll change in the future. Good to see more DNS servers anyway (I am still sometimes fascinated at how DNS ends up working as it does).

    5. Re:Globalization at its finest by aled · · Score: 3, Interesting

      perhaps, just perhaps, other countries don't speak english and gov means absolute nothing.
      I think that USA has a .us domain, it's just also the default domain. So x.gov is really x.gov.us.
      Of course you didn't want to mean that USA rules the world. Eh... you don't, no?

      --

      "I think this line is mostly filler"
    6. Re:Globalization at its finest by Takara · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Other countries might not speak english, but they still get assigned english TLDs, so x.gov wouldn't be a stretch. For example, why is Japan .jp instead of .nh, when germany got .dk?

    7. Re:Globalization at its finest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you mean the plan. You clearly mistyped the url.

    8. Re:Globalization at its finest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps we have to try to understand each other, so global domains use some convention that may be predates the Internet and given that a lot of the technologies of Internet were made by Americans it made sense that english was used. But within each country domain there's no reason to use english.
      And kanji would be difficult to type in western keyboards instead of jp.

    9. Re:Globalization at its finest by nelsonal · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's still isn't in parity, but I would think that we would probably host DNS servers in propotion relative economies or relative numbers of accessors. I think in both cases the US accounts for about 1/3 of global totals. I would assume that it will stay in parity with those figures for a reasonable period of time. Remember that the internet has only been a mainstream phonomeon for about a decade, so the fact that we developed it is probably a lot of the imbalance. I don't think that you will see India or China hosting 40% of DNS servers in our lifetimes.

      --
      Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
    10. Re:Globalization at its finest by ncc74656 · · Score: 3, Informative
      For example, why is Japan .jp instead of .nh, when germany got .dk?

      Last time I checked, Germany is .de. .dk is Denmark. As for why some ccTLDs are derived from the local language (.de, .es) and some aren't (.jp, .ru), your guess is as good as mine. (One theory is that countries where the local language uses a non-Roman alphabet (or no alphabet at all) got their ccTLDs derived from the English names for those countries.)

      --
      20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
    11. Re:Globalization at its finest by aled · · Score: 1

      Dude no offense but that sig is pathetical. What would be barbarism, what is civilization and what the force? Being forceful you can turn civilization into barbarism, even without others help.

      --

      "I think this line is mostly filler"
    12. Re:Globalization at its finest by another_twilight · · Score: 1

      making a sweeping generalisation it may also have to do with patant law and patent culture.

      consider that while the first men to fly where from the US, it took government intervention to remove the strangle hold that patent litigation had placed on the fledgling industry while in Europe the aviation industry rapidly overtook that in the US.

      the telephony industry had to be forcibly deregulated to try and re-introduce competition and hence innovation that is only now seeing it catching up with similar services overseas.

      with a little research i could probably cite more examples, but I am starting to wonder if the example of capitalism that exist in the US, while excellent at promoting invention, also encourages monopolisation and litigation which in turn stifles further development

    13. Re:Globalization at its finest by senatorpjt · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      ADD [adultadd.com] isn't a joke, it's a serious problem. Treat it as such.

      What? Sorry, I wasn't paying attention.

    14. Re:Globalization at its finest by sould · · Score: 3, Informative

      Just like telephone networks, automobiles and transistors the internet will follow the usual pattern of: 1. US Invents it

      Except the US did not invent the autombile.

      The most significant contribution the US has made to automobile engineering is the cup holder.

    15. Re:Globalization at its finest by bob_dinosaur · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, they're the two-letter ISO country codes. And Germany is .de - Denmark is .dk

    16. Re:Globalization at its finest by Blimbo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "That's pretty sad considering we represent less than 5% of the global population"

      Sure, but what percentage of the INTERNET population does the US represent ?

    17. Re:Globalization at its finest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the imbalance of the internet towards the US has always bothered me.

      I know, who would have thought; right? We only invented the thing...

    18. Re:Globalization at its finest by Lord+Kano · · Score: 1

      Of course you didn't want to mean that USA rules the world. Eh... you don't, no?

      Well, it kinda does.

      Our "friends" get to ignore UN resolutions, while our "enemies" get killed faster than a baby at planned parenthood.

      The Internet is now a truly global communications medium, but its humble beginnings were for the communication of the US military.

      LK

      --
      "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
    19. Re:Globalization at its finest by Rotten168 · · Score: 1

      Why does it bother you? One way to look at it is that we're shouldering a large part of the world's burden in providing them with stable host resolving. This doesn't have much to do with control, it's just simply a service.

    20. Re:Globalization at its finest by Rotten168 · · Score: 1

      But where would the automobile be if it were not for mass production?

    21. Re:Globalization at its finest by marnanel · · Score: 1

      No, that's not how it works at all. .gov is a top-level domain. ".gov.us" doesn't exist.

      Default domains have nothing to do with it: whatever country you're in, a hostname ending with ".gov" refers to the US government's root domain.

      For example, if you're in the UK and you fancy visiting a US government site, you'd type, say, "www.whitehouse.gov", not "www.whitehouse.gov.us", because that hostname doesn't exist. Conversely, if you wanted to visit a UK government site, you'd type, say, "www.number-10.gov.uk", not "www.number-10.gov", because that hostname doesn't exist either.

      --
      GROGGS: alive and well and living in
    22. Re:Globalization at its finest by Sjobeck · · Score: 0

      probably based on amount of traffic more than amount of people. The people in other nations do not generate any traffic what with not having computers and all.

    23. Re:Globalization at its finest by sould · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But where would the automobile be if it were not for mass production?

      So what?

      He said invent, not popularise.

      I am well aware that the U.S. is good at industrialising other counties inventions.

    24. Re:Globalization at its finest by Bram+Stolk · · Score: 1

      >The most significant contribution the US has made to automobile engineering is the cup holder.

      The cupholder, and ofcourse the fabulous Chevy Camaro V8 from the seventies.

      --
      Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
    25. Re:Globalization at its finest by Rotten168 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well... how can a country "invent" something anyway? The original poster is an idiot.

    26. Re:Globalization at its finest by Eminor · · Score: 2, Informative


      1. US Invents it
      2. US then screws it up
      3. Other countries improve on methods and make superior products
      4. US consumers flock to the improved, cheaper products
      5. US companies create something new to get people to 'Buy American'
      6. Follow 2 - 6


      In alot of cases it more like:

      1. Someone invents it.
      2. The US makes an implementation of it.
      3. The US takes claim to the invention.
      4. Other countries continue to improve it.
      5. The product goes into it's next cycle in the US because the rest of the world forced them via competition.

    27. Re:Globalization at its finest by Matthias+Wiesmann · · Score: 1
      As already pointed out, those are not english words, but ISO-codes. Germany actually got .de, not .ge and Switzerland go .ch not .sw. In case you wonder why CH, this comes from Confederatio Helvetica. Yes this is Latin.

      Certain countries (mostly UK and Japan) actually mimic the gov/com/edu/org structure in the country domain, i.e the register is in the co.uk domain.

    28. Re:Globalization at its finest by caluml · · Score: 0
      As for why some ccTLDs are derived from the local language (.de, .es) and some aren't (.jp, .ru), your guess is as good as mine.

      Russia and Japan are the worst examples to choose - they don't use the Latin alphabet.

    29. Re:Globalization at its finest by 216pi · · Score: 2, Informative

      according to the the university of huston, the telephone was invented by a German 26-year-old science teacher.

    30. Re:Globalization at its finest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Finland uses latin alphabet but we still have .fi instead of ie. .su

    31. Re:Globalization at its finest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah, it's redundant but anyway:

      Automobiles was NOT invented in the USA.

    32. Re:Globalization at its finest by alexpage · · Score: 1

      Ooh, I know this from working at CENTR...

      As any fule no, the country TLDs are the two-digit country codes from ISO3166 with a couple of exceptions, including the United Kingdom who were already using .uk when this agreement was reached (IIRC there are a few legacy .gb domains, but I couldn't get a zone transfer working to check).

      The ISO working group in charge of 3166 was mostly comprised of Europeans, especially French engineers, which is why most of the country codes are biased towards the European names for the countries.

    33. Re:Globalization at its finest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorta off topic, but where does the name Japan come from?

    34. Re:Globalization at its finest by Alioth · · Score: 1

      One theory is that countries where the local language uses a non-Roman alphabet (or no alphabet at all) got their ccTLDs derived from the English names for those countries

      Well, Isle of Man got .im, where the Manx name is Ellan Vannin (so it should really be .ev), and Eire got .ie instead of .ei. In these cases, possibly it's because English is the first language of the Isle of Man and Ireland, rather than Manx and Irish Gaelic respectively.
    35. Re:Globalization at its finest by kevjava · · Score: 1

      We don't have to invent it here to screw it up... we brought Linux all the way from Finland to make Lindows out of it.

    36. Re:Globalization at its finest by register_ax · · Score: 1

      haha, it's circular logic, hopefully it is meant to be funny, quite disheartening if it is not ...

    37. Re:Globalization at its finest by aled · · Score: 1

      Oh well, if I can be insightful at least may I be funny.

      --

      "I think this line is mostly filler"
    38. Re:Globalization at its finest by register_ax · · Score: 1

      Naw, it was in reference to the other guy's sig, not your comment.

      If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.

      If one uses force in defense it is most likely barbarism, but if one is barbaric, they are not much of a civilization as it would be a barbarism state.

      It's like saying you can have the piece of candy, but you cannot take the piece of candy. "If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism" does not flow because it reaches a conditional brick wall.

      Actually, what it does is merely highlight a civilization must be protected, and thus we *all* are barbaric by default.

      haHA...I'll start first...GRRR!...yer standing on my toe! die you merry tool!...::charges with spear::AAGGGHHHHH

      You see? you see? I exemplify my conjecture perfectly. You're welcome. We'll be dredging out the bristling Anglo-saxon folk of eastminster plot next week if you're interested.

    39. Re:Globalization at its finest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot the the Steering Wheel which was invented by Packard in 1900.

    40. Re:Globalization at its finest by jlanthripp · · Score: 1
      I'm guessing that the reason we Americans go from a technological breakthrough to wondering why the hell everyone buys the product from overseas is we're either to arrogant and set in our ways, we spent a lot of $$$$ being early adopters and now the technology we use is antiquated just as the rest of the world adopts it, or a combo of the two.
      It's probably both, plus:

      "I want another $2/hour raise, because I can barely afford the payments on two SUV's and a McMansion on the $24/hour they're paying me now. And if the union doesn't vote in a strike to get me that raise, me and a few buddies are gonna start sending trucks outta the plant with a few bolts missin' from the rear axles! Hell, it's already a wonder that anything makes it past Quality Control in this plant."

      This is frequently followed by the same person saying:

      "Well dammit, we need to increase unemployment benefits. Ever since they shut down the plant and moved production to Malaysia or Mexico or some damn place where the locals sign up in droves to work for $20/week, I've been out of work. Best damn job I can get around here is sweeping up at the local Hyundai dealership!"

      --
      "Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
    41. Re:Globalization at its finest by NEOtaku17 · · Score: 1

      Yeah that sounds great except for one thing. When you try a .gov.us extension it doesn't work. .us is not the default extension. Or else why can't you type the full address for a website in the US and have it go through.

  10. Can someone please explain by Bingo+Foo · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Can someone please explain how it is that "Name Service" has become synonymous with "The Internet?" Am I mistaken that all these root servers do is propagate name service information down to other machines until my office DNS can tell met that yahoo.com has address 66.218.71.198?

    The routers themselves deal in numerical IP space, right? Why is name service so dang important?

    --
    taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
    1. Re:Can someone please explain by pseudochaotic · · Score: 1

      Okay, YOU try using the internet without DNS. Just for a day. Or at all. The truth is, almost the entire internet depends on DNS name resolution.

      --
      And the l33t shall inherit the 34r7h.
    2. Re:Can someone please explain by dmp123 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, because most things users have dealings with operate by hostnames, rather than IP addresses?

      Even more so when IPv6 comes in. Besides, unless you're a masochist, I bet your mail client has SMTP: mail..com, rather than it's IP?

      Did you come to slashdot.org, or 66.35.250.150?

      Thought so.

      David

    3. Re:Can someone please explain by morelife · · Score: 2, Informative

      Am I mistaken that all these root servers do is propagate name service information down to other machines until my office DNS can tell met that yahoo.com has address 66.218.71.198?

      Correct. But that only happens when everything is working correctly.


      Why is name service so dang important?


      Try the book "DNS and Bind" (O'Reilly Publishing), pp 1-601.

    4. Re:Can someone please explain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

      I don't know about you, but I prefer typing www.yahoo.com rather then 66.218.71.198. But thats just me... I've never been very good at memorizing 4 billion addresses.

    5. Re:Can someone please explain by DotNM · · Score: 3, Insightful

      DNS converts the name (e.g. www.studentprogress.info) into an IP addy (65.49.199.172). Without DNS, the internet would be like the phone with no phone book.... no way to find the number of the person/company you want to call... and in internet terms, no way to find the IP address of the website you want. Think about it.... would you (and many users who are new to computers/the internet) find it easier to remember www.studentprogress.info or 65.49.199.172? My guess would be the hostnames.

      --
      There's no place like localhost
    6. Re:Can someone please explain by Josh+Booth · · Score: 1

      I can barely remember my social security number, let alone a IPv6 IP address! I understand that you don' t have to remember all of it, but once real web sites start using IPv6, there will be some long addresses. Of course, people memorize pi to a gazillion decimal places, too.

    7. Re:Can someone please explain by Bingo+Foo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "The Internet" would function just fine for extended periods of time if name services were more distributed and locally defined. "Root Server" != "The Internet"

      The U.S. Interstate Highway System is an engineering marvel and a national asset. Its value lies in its connectivity and capacity, not so much in the green signs with white letters. Most people on it know where they are going already.

      --
      taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
    8. Re:Can someone please explain by aled · · Score: 1

      It's easier that it seem using a mnemonic rule:
      four integers between 0 and 255 and a dot between each of them. Works like a charm. The same method even could be extended to IPv6.
      Now if you want to memorize the association of address to names it's a little more difficult...

      --

      "I think this line is mostly filler"
    9. Re:Can someone please explain by Bingo+Foo · · Score: 1

      Maybe I wasn't perfectly clear about what I was asking, but I'm sure the O'Reilly book has the answers. Anyway, what I meant, is that my local DNS and my /etc/hosts or NetInfo database will hold the addresses for virtually everywhere I want to go for months on end. Those numbers don't change, and I can't believe that a call is made to a root server every time someone in the world resolves any name to an IP number. How often do calls to the "root server" get made? Is it only when someone emails me something about hampsterdance.com and I'm the first person in my office to follow the link before our DNS has cached that value? I'm asking how important the "Root Server" is, not how important the concept of name resolution is.

      --
      taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
    10. Re:Can someone please explain by burns210 · · Score: 1

      What happens if all the root DNS servers went off? Would the 2nd-tier boxed be able to take over the role, would they eventually clear their tables, or do they only edit what they have, never perge?

    11. Re:Can someone please explain by SkewlD00d · · Score: 1

      Almost, except you can't browse DNS (like you can UDDI, LDAP, DAP, NDS, AD, NTLM, Netbios) unless you have a tier-1 zone updates subscription. =)

      --
      The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
    12. Re:Can someone please explain by burns210 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      could you keep your own local 'phone book' like a DNS table cache on your own box? how large are the tables that the root DNS servers store?

    13. Re:Can someone please explain by DotNM · · Score: 1

      What happens if all the root DNS servers went off? Would the 2nd-tier boxed be able to take over the role, would they eventually clear their tables, or do they only edit what they have, never perge?

      AFAIK... the second-tier boxes would only be able to handle whatever records they have cached on them. Other than that, you wouldn't be able to go anywhere unless you know the IP addys
      (and that's not to mention that many sites are VirtualHosted so that there are many sites on one IP addy)

      --
      There's no place like localhost
    14. Re:Can someone please explain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What are you, one of those brilliant Chinese teenagers who has the whole DNS system memorized in his fucking head?

    15. Re:Can someone please explain by gclef · · Score: 1

      'cause some of us young whippersnappers like to actually *use* this new-fangled Internet-thingy, rather than just putz around with it like you old geezers. Jeez...old farts still think that we should all use hosts files or something.

    16. Re:Can someone please explain by Unregistered · · Score: 1

      cause i can't always remember if yahoo is 66.218.71.198 or 66.218.71.189. Hell, i barely know my own phone number and you expect me to remember ip addresses?

    17. Re:Can someone please explain by aled · · Score: 1

      Please read my post again. Slowly, very very slowly.

      --

      "I think this line is mostly filler"
    18. Re:Can someone please explain by changelingyahoo.com · · Score: 4, Informative

      If all the root servers somehow miraculously disappeared then most people would be alright for 1-2 days. After 2 days all the cached NS records for .com will have expired and virtually no one will be able to resolve any .com addresses. Similar results for all other TLDs, but the time until resolution failure for each TLD can differ.
      Of course this is a highly unlikely scenerio as there are 13 root DNS servers and many of these servers are actually multiple machines using anycast (for example). Of course, taking out a handful of the machines places sufficient load on the remaining servers to cause them to start dropping requests, but this too is unlikely.

    19. Re:Can someone please explain by iCEBaLM · · Score: 1

      Sure, your local DNS cache will work, untill that machine, or, heaven forbid, BIND crashes and it has to be restarted, then you're toast.

      Without the root servers you never get the resolution in the first place.

    20. Re:Can someone please explain by britneys+9th+husband · · Score: 0, Troll

      The name service is very important for finding porn sites. There's an endless number of sites you can get to by just guessing the url: sex.com, porn.com, blowjob.com, weirdkinkystuff.com, etc. If you just had numerical IP addresses, you'd be stuck with 69.69.69.69 and not much else.

      --
      Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
    21. Re:Can someone please explain by senatorpjt · · Score: 2, Informative

      Besides, a lot of smaller sites won't even work with the IP address, since they're being vhosted, they depend on you using the actual hostname, which is passed by the browser.

    22. Re:Can someone please explain by morelife · · Score: 4, Informative


      Those numbers don't change, ...

      They can, and often do.

      How often do calls to the "root server" get made

      Many millions of times an hour. Each zone (or domain, in practical terms) has expiration and refresh times. In addition to caching host and other data, these expiration (ttl) and refresh times get cached as well. The clock is ticking on the ttl when first cached, and when it expires a new lookup will have to be made (even if the resulting information is, as you said, identical, e.g. it "doesn't change") Just about every time a lookup is made by a tier 3 name server the query will recursively end up at a root server which will point it back down to a gTLD server and down to the tld auth server which finally sends the data to the requestor.

      Or something like that :) The root servers have to operate in a highly reliable way, as almost all name servers use them.. There is hardly a service on the 'net that does NOT rely on names (mail, nntp, shoutcast streaming, rss, http, etc), but you are right in that strictly speaking, routing operations are IP address based and have little to do with DNS.

    23. Re:Can someone please explain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      my local DNS and my /etc/hosts or NetInfo database will hold the addresses for virtually everywhere I want to go for months on end. Those numbers don't change

      A bad assumption, which coincidentally points out the need for the root servers - a central point to make changes. IP addresses aren't carved in granite.

    24. Re:Can someone please explain by kfg · · Score: 1

      Parent poster's question was more sophisticated than your answer. In fact, his question implies knowledge of your answer.

      He asked what importance DNS service has to the Internet, not the WWW.

      There are any number of uses for the internet where all parties concerned know all the relevant IP addresses. In these cases hostnames make life easier for humans here and there, but they aren't explicitly necessary.

      KFG

    25. Re:Can someone please explain by Rotten168 · · Score: 1

      Isn't that what the /etc/hosts file is for?

    26. Re:Can someone please explain by Mr2cents · · Score: 1

      DNS is to the internet what the phone book is to the telephone system, with an added advantage that the dns system resides on computers, and computers ar just perfect for making queries. Imagine you'd have to buy a book and look up an ip addresses manually.. wouldn't that be great?

      --
      "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
    27. Re:Can someone please explain by JDWTopGuy · · Score: 1

      Most people only know the first few decimal places of PI, so you can fake it, and as long as you get the first few right, you're cool.

      PI = 3.14159265666945943945943

      See?

      --
      Ron Paul 2012
    28. Re:Can someone please explain by boneshintai · · Score: 1

      Well, the ".root-servers.net" servers only tell you where to find .com, .net, .cx, .us, and so on. A good chunk of those (.com and .net at the very least) reside on servers in ".gtld-servers.net", which could also be considered root.

      While the .root-servers.net servers only get requeried by any given client DNS server fairly rarely, the .gtld-servers.net servers get queried very often. If you go to www.example.com and you've never been there before, you'll end up asking a .gtld-servers.net server for example.com's name servers. The answer will come back with a TTL (time to live), which will probably be rather shorter than the TTL on com. Hosts within that domain, like www, might have an even shorter TTL, depending on how frequently that IP might change.

    29. Re:Can someone please explain by the+unbeliever · · Score: 1

      Yes, in a very generic way, most people on the interstates know where they are going, at least after a period of time.

      They may, however, not understand the specifics of how to get to a certain location, and may get off the interstate several exits too early or too late, or even if they get off at the right place, they may not take the proper surface streets.

      Using the DNS::Interstate analogy is somewhat flawed.

    30. Re:Can someone please explain by MCZapf · · Score: 1
      As others have pointed out, the root servers are very important. DNS is hierarchical. Assume for a moment that your local DNS server was just started, and has nothing cached. If you want to lookup see.the.hamsterdance.com, your local DNS server has to do several lookups, starting with a root server.
      1. Contact a root nameserver for .com (the IP addresses of these few servers are kept in a file somewhere). Find out what the nameserver is for hamsterdance.com.
      2. Contact the nameserver for hamsterdance.com and find out what the nameserver is for the.hamsterdance.com
      3. Contact the nameserver for the.hamsterdance.com and find out the IP address of see.the.hamsterdance.com
      It gets more complicated of course, but this is the general idea.
    31. Re:Can someone please explain by Droctulft · · Score: 1

      Just for starters:

      1. A lot of names can point to the same IP address [shared hosting; the response given, for example, by an Apache sever would depend on the site's name passed].
      2. The same name can be resolved into different IP addresses [allowing things like load balancing].
      3. The same name address can be pointed to different sets of IPs depending on what name server you are using [I mean each name server can resolve the different name to different sets of IPs]. For example: you connect and recieve ns1.a_in_isp.com as your name server. Then try to resolve proxy.someisp.com it will give you a set of addresses [nslookup proxy.ispname.com ns1.a_in_isp.com]. Connecting from other city with the same ISP could get some other name server, let's call it ns1.b_in_isp.com, getting a different set of IPs for the same proxy.ispname.com [
      nslookup proxy.ispname.com ns1.b_in_isp.com].

      And I am sure there's a lot more to it.

    32. Re:Can someone please explain by LittleBigLui · · Score: 1

      can't be bothered to look it up right now, but if my memory serves me right, shouldn't it be 3.1415296... ?

      --
      Free as in mason.
    33. Re:Can someone please explain by TwistedGreen · · Score: 1

      No, your memory doesn't serve you right.

      It's 3.1415926535...

    34. Re:Can someone please explain by LittleBigLui · · Score: 1

      you're right. shoulda asked google before risking my club geek membership. :)

      --
      Free as in mason.
  11. Insensitive parent comment! by weeboo0104 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am part K-raut you insensitive K-lod!

    --
    It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
    1. Re:Insensitive parent comment! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So what? I'm 100% Kraut traceable back to somewhere in the 16th century (my grandfather had to do this to get into the SS).

      And I even had Sauerkraut and Bratwurst fur lunch today.

    2. Re:Insensitive parent comment! by kfg · · Score: 4, Funny

      I am part K-raut you insensitive K-lod!

      Well Jeez. Don't go getting all sauer over it.

      KFG

    3. Re:Insensitive parent comment! by Ballsy · · Score: 1

      Well Jeez. Don't go getting all sauer over it.

      Bwaha....dammit....that's just good humour. Cheers.

    4. Re:Insensitive parent comment! by codermotor · · Score: 1

      Is that like being part Minnesotan?

  12. Sucks by Gyan · · Score: 3, Funny

    I wanted to read the article, but my browser can't resolve the host.

  13. Somewhat problematic home page... by mrdogi · · Score: 1
    The measurements are reliable and the web site is fully functional. However, the web site is run on development hardware which is old, slow and not monitored for availability.

    OK, the FIRST thing they need to do is dump the large picture on the main page. 140K seems just a bit on the large size for a main page, especially on "old, slow" hardware.

    1. Re:Somewhat problematic home page... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      done. sorry about that.

  14. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  15. Re:Dilemma by El · · Score: 2, Troll

    Personally, I'm torn between the cushy redundancy offered by decentralization, and the cushy security of having most of the servers in a stable, well-protected country. You mean a country like Canada, that doesn't go around pissing off the rest of the world? Diversity is a survival factor, especially in adverse conditions. If we put all the servers in one place, we might as well run the same exact Windows OS on all of them too...

    --

    "Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney

  16. Re:Dilemma by crabpeople · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Personally, I'm torn between the cushy redundancy offered by decentralization, and the cushy security of having most of the servers in a stable, well-protected country."

    oh i forgot, germany is such an unstable rogue state. better hurry up and invade!^H^H^H^H^H^H liberate

    --
    I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
  17. Economics at its finest by Dukael_Mikakis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It kind of reminds me of how the Annual Hockey game is always North America vs. the World (even though the world has some good hockey players).

    That's wonderful also and I think that the Internet and everything should also be more globalized, but the DNS servers are providing a resource that has a certain demand associated. Simply, the internet should be skewed to America because, for whatever reason (they are obvious), America likely generates the most requests and receives the most requests (though I don't know the numbers, maybe China is coming close?). Obviously, if nearly all of the surfing consists of Americans accessing American sites, then an extra server in Germany serves little utility (aside from alleviating, perhaps, accesses outside of the country).

    So (obviously) establishing more servers in other countries won't globalize the internet any more, it's an indication (and a positive one) of some increasing global demand.

    That is, unless Germany just wasting a bunch of money simply so that the world may pass the U.S. in Root servers.

  18. Re:Your Father was in the SS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    his father? the guy must be quite old then.

  19. Babelfish (English French German English) by SkArcher · · Score: 1

    I am an American, and I like the USA, but the imbalance of the InterNet into the USA always worried itself me. At me it has to always seem that it would have to be a completely global enterprise, and, i.e. continuously rather even with the whole sphere. Dns host are probable a good indicator of the InterNet customs/participation, and the fact that other countries are highly sticking on, is a good thing; however, just shy of half the dns host always are in the USA. Rather more sadly us represent less than 5% of the global population consider. Here different countries to hope develop further in their participation. In addition I hope that Babelfish improves, while the globalizations continue.....

    --

    An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of /.
  20. At least it's election season... by TopShelf · · Score: 1, Funny

    Personally, I'm waiting to see how the contenders in the Presidential election plan to restore American supremacy in this critical area of the New Economy. Forget mere investment in additional servers, let's jump right to forced annexation of the some of these upstart two-bit "nations"...

    --
    Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
    1. Re:At least it's election season... by Unregistered · · Score: 1

      some of these upstart two-bit "nations"...
      Canada? or England?

    2. Re:At least it's election season... by Sjobeck · · Score: 0

      You are confused ... it is not the presidential contenders who will annex dirt poor nations and force them in to DNS slavery, it is the incubment.

  21. Re:Dilemma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well protected is very difficult, I assume U mean US, but the rest of the world grows weary of US, so->following the philosophy of democracy-> Most votes count, and that is certainly not US

    Please don't flame, me personally am (very)weary of Bush, and not USpeople, but...
    Needless to say as long as he's in power I will grow more weary of USpeople.

    U would be surprised how little US has to say if "democracy" were global(Democracy doesnt seem to be in the interest of "american" survival.).

  22. Re:wow. by juglugs · · Score: 1

    5.85 billion? You sure? 300 Million...

    --
    This sig is in Spanish when you're not looking....
  23. ROFFL!!!!!2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dude you just made me spit cum all over my keyboard!!!1

    1. Re:ROFFL!!!!!2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am afraid you are champ.

  24. Slashdotted! by thedji · · Score: 4, Funny

    Quick...

    Everyone ping k.root-servers.net and try and /. THAT

    --
    ... and then there were none
    1. Re:Slashdotted! by rabs · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Dang. Looks like it's already slashdotted -- I can't even bring up the website.

      - rabs

  25. Re:Dilemma by iminplaya · · Score: 1

    "oh i forgot, germany is such an unstable rogue state. better hurry up and invade!^H^H^H^H^H^H liberate"

    Been there, Done that.

    --
    What?
  26. Those damn Germans! by FearUncertaintyDoubt · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'd hate to think any of my packets being exported to those guys who wouldn't even help us rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction! I think in protest, we should hereby refer to all the USA DNS root servers as "Freedom Hosts" (cue Lee Greenwood music...now).

    1. Re:Those damn Germans! by Conor+Turton · · Score: 1

      What weapons of mass destruction would those be? THEY HAVEN'T FOUND ANY. Every day it is looking more and more like the Germans, French and Russians were right.

      --
      Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
  27. VirtualHosting by DotNM · · Score: 3, Informative
    The thing is.... surfing by IP only (without DNS) would require EVERY SITE to have a static IP address, instead of every server.

    Many hosting companies, etc. use shared servers. I do as well, in fact, for my websites. For example, my website www.studentprogress.info may have the IP address 65.49.199.172, but the site will only show up if you use the hostname.

    Based on the sheer number of websites these days, I'm sure we'd run out of IPv4 space instantly without DNS, and maybe even run out of IPv6 space!

    --
    There's no place like localhost
    1. Re:VirtualHosting by burns210 · · Score: 1

      ipv4, sure. but ipv6, not any time soon. all joking aside, which i am sure you are, ipv6 gives more addresses than there are particles in the universe, if i remember my geek trivia correctly... no one we run out of those anytime soon.

    2. Re:VirtualHosting by DotNM · · Score: 1
      Well.... I've noticed that a lot of crap websites have been popping up with no apparent purpose or reason for existing. I particularly hate those stupid search ones (like the losers that took my last name as a domain name: www.dean.ca - warning lots of popups).

      Anyways, I'm seeing more and more of those pointless, worthless sites and I think to myself, "Why did you spend the money on the domain name if this is all you're going to do with it???"

      --
      There's no place like localhost
    3. Re:VirtualHosting by GeekWade · · Score: 0

      You can get to a virtual host by adding the full entry to your host file. Then configure your webserver to check the headers and route as needed. All of these can be on the same server just fine...

      65.49.199.172 genericwebserver
      65.49.199.172 my.realgoofyaddy.com
      65.49.199.172 www.studentprogress.info
      65.49.199.172 your.realgoofyaddy.com

      -Wade

  28. Re:Dilemma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You have what? 70 years?

  29. Re:Your Father was in the SS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In SOVIET GERMANY, joke does not get YOU!

  30. Germans? by KalvinB · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think you're confused. The Germans volunteered to change the names of things such as saurekraut (I'm only half German) to "Liberty Cabbage" during WWII because they were getting persecuted so much by (you guessed it) Americans. We Americans know that the French are too stuck up to stick it to themselves so we changed "their" things to names like "Freedom Toast." And I'm not old. I learned that "Liberty Cabbage" thing from Grandpa Simpson. I kid you not. Simpson's is edumacational.

    And besides, even the govenment couldn't change the name to "Freedom Hosts" because even they are slaves to VeriSign. It'd be all wrapped up in too much irony. Even for this administration.

    Source

    Ben

    1. Re:Germans? by shadowbearer · · Score: 1


      Thereby proving that Political Correctness is not a new invention...

      The irony is so thick one could walk on it.

      SB

      --
      It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
    2. Re:Germans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that "French" Toast is an American invention.

      Funny thing is, the French were probably right about the war given that there weren't any WMD's after all.

    3. Re:Germans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes there were. They were moved out of the country in the 12 month run-up to the war. Bush will send troops into the neighboring countries to look for them once he's re-elected in November.

    4. Re:Germans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The former head inspector seems to think otherwise and I seriously hope Bush doesn't make another term.

      http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/28/sprj.nirq.wmd.k ay /index.html

    5. Re:Germans? by glesga_kiss · · Score: 1
      Bush will send troops into the neighboring countries to look for them once he's re-elected in November.

      We have always been at war with Syria. Come along commrade brother, repeat after me:

      We have always been at war with Syria.

      We have always been at war with Syria.

      We have always been at war with Syria.

  31. No. You don't care. Here's why. by rs79 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the bad old days you and you alone were in control of name resolution. For those of you without receding and/or grey hairlines who may not know or remember this, you had a file called hosts.txt that contained all the mappings of names to IPs. That, obviously, didn't scale and DNS was developed and was widely deployed by about 86 or so.

    The one big gotcha with DNS is it takes control out of your hands. That is, you may have your own DNS server locally, but you traditionally refer to other servers that serve up the root zone that tells your DNS server where all the TLD servers are. Somewhere along the line the decision was made to use other machines, not your own, for this.

    This is wrong for many reasons:

    1. It's slower than if you have your own local copy of the root zone
    2. it's a point of failure you can live without - a DDOS on the legacy roots shouldn't take you down
    3. it provides a political point of capture - he who controls the root controls all the DNS namespace, and it's currently under the aegis of the trademark lobby under the guise of an incompetant and gutless wonder we jokingly refer to as "ICANN".

    But there are ways around this. The easiest if is you static route the 13 root server IPs to your own nameserver. Then you can run an unmodified copt of the legacy root zone on your own nameserver and the US government root servers can be backhoed or DDOS'd and you wouldn't even notice. ISP's are starting to figure this out, especiallly ones with expensive longhaul connections.

    Or, you can modify your nameserver to declare youtself primary for the root zone (which you've dutifully downloaded) and edit out the declarations for "." in the legacy root zone.

    Or you can use the ORSC root zone. If it's good enough for two ICANN board members, it's good enough for you.

    Whatever you do, for God's sake dump bind and use DJBDNS. It really is so much better it's just not funny.

    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?
    1. Re:No. You don't care. Here's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Truly one of the most intelligent posts ever on Slashdot.

    2. Re:No. You don't care. Here's why. by jpmorgan · · Score: 1

      Well, in a typical environment you're not talking to the root servers at all, but rather sending a recursive DNS query to an intermediate DNS server. This will be faster than handling the root zone yourself in many cases as your intermediate DNS server can handle many clients (see large ISP) and cache results.

    3. Re:No. You don't care. Here's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So if I install a Norton CD will my Intarweb be faster?

    4. Re:No. You don't care. Here's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (1) I have a receding hairline and I'm nowhere near old enough to remember that (I was two in 1986). Damn my genes, and damn those liars who says it only comes from your mother's side.

      (2) We seriously refer to them as ICANN; jokingly we refer to them as ICANT, though I can understand your confusion.

    5. Re:No. You don't care. Here's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      RS79 has done it again! Why are people still sitting still? ICANN must go!

    6. Re:No. You don't care. Here's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      "Whatever you do, for God's sake dump bind and use DJBDNS. It really is so much better it's just not funny."

      Software monoculture is bad, mmmkay?

      Try PowerDNS, MaraDNS, LDAPDNS, or whatever suits your needs, preferably isn't populair, and is not coded by ISC.

      I, for X, will switch to GNU when Linux has become the popular replacement for Windows. By that time, it'll be almost ready and Stallman will rise from his Holy grave! ;)

    7. Re:No. You don't care. Here's why. by oohp · · Score: 1

      Well I tried the ORSC root and the root zone thingie, but the first is less reliable than the icann root and the local root zone requires that you get the root zone every week or so.

      DJBDNS is pretty cool but has its limitations. I use it on most of my nameservers. PowerDNS is pretty cool too and has very nice fetures.

  32. But Export Laws will make it alright. by Linus+Sixpack · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes but Export laws will keep any dns number above 2^2 from crossing the border.

    Its amazing how those forigners keep sneaking back into the US to develop their software then releasing it like it came from other countries!

    ls

  33. Re:wow. by Nexus+Seven · · Score: 1

    Or, to put it another, more fuzzy way:

    World = 6 billion(ish)
    World - America = 6 billion(ish)

  34. Explain something to me. by blair1q · · Score: 1

    How does anyone make money running a root server?

  35. Typical Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Most people don't even know what the root nameservers are, or how they work. Hell, most people don't even understand DNS.

    Posting a technical story like this has confused most slashdoters, as can been seen by the lack of comments that have anything to do with the story.

    Andrew

    1. Re:Typical Slashdot by Sjobeck · · Score: 0

      Andrew, How about sharing some of that knowledge with them then. You know that NBC PSA called "the more you know"? :)

    2. Re:Typical Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Andrew? From GOBBLES? Is that you???

      http://www.immunitysec.com/GOBBLES/papers/social .t xt
      http://www.immunitysec.com/GOBBLES/papers/dati ng.t xt

      If so, you're K-root d00d. Glad to see j00!

    3. Re:Typical Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why, who's going to read it?

      There's plenty of good information about DNS out there if you want to look.

      My point wasn't that i'm so elite I know it all, because I don't. Mearly that it's pointless posting stuff like this on slashdot when no one understands it.

      Andrew

    4. Re:Typical Slashdot by Hurricane78 · · Score: 0

      Uuum... sorry, if not here, then where is the place where poeple are supposed to understand this stuff?

      Just a little quote about the attitudes in such a case:
      "It's a perfect illustration of reverse evolution in action. You try to make something idiot-proof, then nature only goes and comes out with a dafter idiot."

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  36. We're losing the DNS arms race!! by Mustang+Matt · · Score: 3, Funny

    Quick everyone in the US go setup 5 DNS servers!

    --
    The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
    1. Re:We're losing the DNS arms race!! by bbrazil · · Score: 1

      IIRC due to the maximum size of a UDP packet you can't have more then 13 root servers. Of course anycast would allow this to be distributed somewhat.

      Quick google:
      http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/regional-meet ings/duba i-2003/presentations/k_root_nameserver_operations. pdf

  37. The US *does not* own the Internet. by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This whole root server thing is good for the Internet. For way too long, big corporations and the USA government have believed that the US "owns" the Internet. It seems like rules are made based on what USA corporations "want" or "need". Americans *do not* own the internet.

    --
    "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
    1. Re:The US *does not* own the Internet. by quork · · Score: 1

      Sounds like the rest of the world is only jealous of America... again. Go invent something cool yourselves. Oh, I forgot, the majority of these crybabies come from countries where freedom to invent anything doesn't exist.

      --
      gllshhht...
    2. Re:The US *does not* own the Internet. by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 0

      Sorry you feel this is a troll, but it's not...

      --
      "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
    3. Re:The US *does not* own the Internet. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, so USia is a socalist country where everything produced in it is owned by the goverment.

    4. Re:The US *does not* own the Internet. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People like you are the reason I've finally decided to stop reading slashdot. I may read bits and pieces in my RSS feed but no more scanning the comments looking for nuggets of gold in a river of shit.

      Please educate yourself.

    5. Re:The US *does not* own the Internet. by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 1

      100sR (or whatever YOU script kiddies call it)

      --
      "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
    6. Re:The US *does not* own the Internet. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny I didn't see your comment like this on the majority of comments, you know, they ones that say the same thing, only the opposite way, putting America down. But those comments are probably your nuggets of gold.

  38. Re:Dilemma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Forgive him/her, must have been brainwashed in the New American Century Empire.

    Thell say anything to fit their needs.

  39. NAT-T patches for isakmpd now available!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    JK,

    Instead, the authors of openbsd and the vapor NAT-T patch have decided to remove ipsec completely because they are afraid of the SSH corp suing them over trivial ideas.

  40. All your base ... by ongeboren · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... are resolved to us.

    --
    First I wanted to be a chef. Then I wanted to be Napoleon. My ambitions have continued to grow ever since.
    1. Re:All your base ... by DotNM · · Score: 1

      Maybe it should be.... All your hosts are resolve to us ;)

      --
      There's no place like localhost
  41. Re:OMG OMG OMG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm glad there's sick fuckers like you that find her attractive. Leaves the truly hot chicks for us that have taste. Of course, it would be best if you both slit your wrists.

  42. How could you forget? I think I know how... by rs79 · · Score: 5, Funny
    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?
  43. Re:OMG OMG OMG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please give an example of a hot chick by your definition.

  44. Huh? by rs79 · · Score: 1

    I don't undestand the question. What exactly are you trying to do?

    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?
  45. Of course you can by rs79 · · Score: 1

    You can primary the root on your own box. Hell if you ask NSI nicely they'll let you download daily copies of .com and .net as well.

    If you have the disk space, ram and cpu you can do all of these.

    You can primary the root zone (it's a piddly 100K file) on a 386 and get better performance than using the legacy root servers.

    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?
  46. You don't by rs79 · · Score: 1

    NSI used to pay for them by picking up the tab for machines and bandwidth. I don't know if they still do that or if the USG pays for it.

    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?
  47. authoritative root by humankind · · Score: 1

    This may be a goofy question that I should know, but is there an authoritative source for the root server list? How do you determine which is the most efficient root server for your area, aside from going through the list and doing traceroutes?

    1. Re:authoritative root by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      There's a 386 box somewhere that handles that. I say somewhere because they lost it. It was working fine for years, and all the people that knew which box it was and where gradually moved on to something else. It's possible that the closet it was in was walled over--it happens. With the nest of wiring at *****, no one knows where the connection to it starts, never mind where it ends. It only has to handle a request now and then because of the overlapping nature of name servers, but if it ever crashes...

    2. Re:authoritative root by Iamnoone · · Score: 1
      How do you determine which is the most efficient root server for your area

      To increase the resilience of the dns system, resolvers are supposed to randomly pick a server from the list of name servers for that domain, so you can do:
      dig NS .
      to get your list of root name servers - I believe that some resolvers don't follow the RFC, which I believe says randomly use the name servers in the list, not in order - this is a separate thing from the list in /etc/resolv.conf

      I put local roots on all the networks I have control over (the DNS part of) and I use the root list from open-root.org's root file and I use djbdns to run the local root on a local IP, I then point all my caching dns software to that root.
      I have a cronjob that pulls the root file once per week, combines that data with my local authoritative entries.
      As insurance against a root server Armageddon, I simply don't replace last weeks file if I can't download it this week.
      It is so easy, gives you local control over which tld's you have resolvable on your local net and appears to make name resolving faster since I never have to wait for any of the famous 13 root servers to respond.
      I highly recommend it for anyone who has control over their dns architecture.
      djb local root notes: here
      open-root.org's notes: here for djbdns, here for BIND

      If you don't have control, you can still use the open-root root server list via their publicly available servers: open-root root servers and here for using their servers on non-server machines

      And, of course, with any widely use resource esp. where large amounts of money and control are involved, there are fairness, oversight and political issues. Those are covered in detail on other parts of their site open-rsc.org
      I must say for all the railing that people do against monopolies like MS and Verisign with their [mis]management of the legacy tld's, the root server control and new tld control issues have flown somewhat under the radar.
  48. Fool... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The world is pissed off by illegal militairy invasions, and it has nothing to do with economy, ...stupid idiot.

  49. Re:OMG OMG OMG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    5'5", 110 lbs, C-cups, pretty face, in shape

    but don't worry, it's ok if you like sheep

  50. Re:Not really a subject I understand, so let me as by jpmorgan · · Score: 1

    Sort of. The root servers don't support recursive DNS queries, but any DNS client/library worth its salt will be able to cope with iterative DNS lookups. You may notice performance problems though: without an intermediate DNS server handling recursive queries there's no DNS caching.

  51. Re:Dilemma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    yeah, so you don't want them in the US do you? especially not near any airports.

  52. Re:Not really a subject I understand, so let me as by 1lus10n · · Score: 2, Informative

    DNS isnt that simple. All the root NS handle is (most importantly) the authority records, such as the authoritative nameserver for slashdot.org, in order to get the needed info you will need to ask the authorotative server. Typically this is handled by your upstream provider. (ISP)

    But to answer your question you could probably use a different namesever in china et all unless they are capturing outbound traffic (port 53 in specific).

    I dont know how to do this in windows (since i dont use windows) but in *nix you would edit your /etc/resolv.conf file. then test it using the nslookup (screw dig) utility.

    --
    "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
  53. Re:Not really a subject I understand, so let me as by cbreaker · · Score: 1

    You can probably find about a half a million DNS servers that you can query from, or more. That still won't let you connect to web sites that are in blocked IP ranges.

    --
    - It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
  54. Re:OMG OMG OMG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I tell you what. If you don't like that redhead mentioned above, you're 100% gay. I swear.

  55. Re:Indian Outsourcing by DotNM · · Score: 1

    Might be.... the way everything is going, India will probably surpass the USA and my home country, Canada, pretty soon.

    --
    There's no place like localhost
  56. modded as interesting? wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mod's must be smoking what was up in an slightly higher comment.

  57. Wouldn't that be... by Xeth · · Score: 1

    Slightly less than half of all your base are resolve to us?

    --
    If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
  58. It's nice to see an article by someone who knows by qtp · · Score: 4, Informative

    what they are talking about for a change.

    The recent flurry of articles giving the impression that VeriSign is somehow "in charge" of DNS has been rather irritating, when in fact, it is not difficult to configure your DNS server to ignore VeriSign operated root servers. (If you're using bind, dont include thier roots in your roots.cache zone file. I'm sure there's an equivalent trick for djbdns.)

    I wish all of those who are about to continue the current flood of "what difference does it make?" and "VeriSign controls DNS anyway." posts would kindly read this article and this one as well for a breif tutorial on DNS from that programmer who writes good shit but everyone says they hate him anyway, D. J. Bernstein.

    If you like the subject, maybe you should go out and buy a copy of DNS and BIND so you'll have something interesting to talk about at the coffee house this weekend.

    The truth is that DNS is a distributed system that is rather well designed to be redundant. The anycast implementation mentioned in the article is a good and needed way (it's the right way[tm]) to increase the redundancy that is already inherent in the system, making DNS much more secure and resistant to DDOS attacks and other attempts to disrupt DNS service. VeriSign showing off thier "secure" sites, and blowing thier own horn about how "important" they in particular are to the internet is a load of sh*t that should not be given a second thought unless you are in the habit of educating our lawmakers about related issues. Not an especially good habit, it will make you enemies (but only if you're right).

    --
    Read, L
  59. Re:OMG OMG OMG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've flushed things down the toilet better looking than her.

  60. Re:OMG OMG OMG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No fuckin way that you'd refuse if this chick asked you to sleep with her.

  61. Re:OMG OMG OMG! by Sivaram_Velauthapill · · Score: 1

    Further confirms the fact that geeks are seriously lacking the opposite sex ;)

    On a side note, it is interesting how the artist draws characters that look like herself. I haven't seen this before. Interesting...

    Sivaram Velauthapillai

    --
    Sivaram Velauthapillai
    Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
  62. Re:OMG OMG OMG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Depends on if she likes ass-to-mouth play.

  63. The US - military supermen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seeing as how the Americunts couldn't beat the stone-age villagers of Vietnam and can't beat the rag-tag resistance to the US theft of Iraq, I don't think anyone's particularly worried, son. To paraphrase Jack 'The Hat' McVitie - "you're just fat, loudmouthed poofs, and nobody's scared of you".

    1. Re:The US - military supermen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, any organized fighting force will get slowly chewed up in a fragmented guerilla war. No amount of raw power is going to change that. Give the US military a well-defined target, however - like the industrial infrastucture of a western nation - and it'll only take them a few weeks to completely annihilate it. The military technology and quantity thereof is staggering, and hopefully nobody loses sight of that - most important of all the Americans themselves, who hold the responsibility of keeping that power under control through participation in their own government... Not to piss on a good flamewar or anything :P

  64. Re:Indian Outsourcing by brain_not_ticking · · Score: 0

    I spent the summer in India; you aren't too far off the mark.

    While I was in Pune, there were workers on every major road, installing fiber optic cable.

    As far as DNS goes, they haven't got a clue what they're doing. If I traceroute an ip, my packets fly to Australia, California, New York, California, Norway, and finally the uk site i'm looking for.

  65. How to do better than that by rs79 · · Score: 1

    I dunno what typical is or means. Even on a lowly W98 box I put Simple DNS+ ($35) or, better, BIND PE (free) on it. And they will query the root servers to find where the pointers to say, .TH or .SK are.

    Probably you mean most people just use their ISP's DNS servers. This is usualy not a terrific idea as most of these blow dead goats.

    If you have a spare 386 or higher, deploy it as a dedicated DNS server (under Windows or *nix, it does't matter), primary the root on it and watch everything you do get just a little bit faster, or if you have a funky ISP, maybe even considerably faster.

    The most it'll cost you is $6/mo for the electricity.

    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?
  66. If you're not hosting by qpt · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    With LRSE, you could have a decent host.

    Tell 'em qpt sent you, though, and you'll get the first six months at half off the introductory business-class rate for first-time dedicated leasers, not including set up and take down fees or configuration surcharges and local infrastructure levies.

    Think about e-commerce, too.

    --

    --
    Domine Deus, creator coeli et terrae respice humilitatem nostram.

  67. There's one "Long Bet" candidate taken care of by eric76 · · Score: 1

    There is a web site called Long Bets where people can place long term bets that may not be settled until long after they are dead.

    For example, the longest bet is Long Bet #7 - The universe will eventually stop expanding. I don't suppose any of us will be around to empirically determine the answer.

    One candidate for a bet is/was Long Bet #26 - By the end of 2012, more than 50% of the root servers on the internet will be located outside the United States.

    But noone accepted the bet.

  68. Re:* Sigh * Another anti-american slug fest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Corporations don't vote our leaders, people do."

    Wake up, Neo.

    You agree with me leaders are more than some president, yes? This (so-called -- for a chosen leader in a non-transparant nation isn't fair imo) chosen leader decides for the people in a lot of ways. The fact this is called "democratic" doesn't mean it is actually democratic in theory; imo, it isn't.

    Even this can be brought futher. Exactly which people assign the leader(s) of a company? Government organisation? NGO? Who decides over ICANN? VeriSign? We all do? Yeah right.

    Worse, we as non-US civilian can't vote for some US president, yet this president has tremendous infuence over the lives of people all over the world.

    Democracy? In my ass.

    Heck, i won't even _start_ about Carlyle...

    Before you start with some anti-American conpsiracy the sae is true for the country i'm living in.

    In the case such a country has a lot of known influence over the world it'll receive more (valid) criticism, especially on moral issues.

  69. (OT) by theNeophile · · Score: 1
    Get a free @wicked.dj redirection! Mail me!

    Don't see enough people from Djibouti around here.

  70. Re:Not really a subject I understand, so let me as by Vancorps · · Score: 1

    You are referring to the DNS order. For most people filled out automatically by DHCP but obviously can be manually reconfigured . The same thing can be done in Windows by modifying the DNS settings in the TCP/IP configuration of the network connection used.

  71. ALL your DNS roots are belong to US! by superhoe · · Score: 0, Redundant
    ALL your DNS roots are belong to US!

    .. oh, wait..

    --

    -el

  72. A testimonial by karl.auerbach · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've been using the ORSC root zone and its servers for several years. I have not noticed any outages or problems - oops, yes there was a problem once - it was when ICANN decided to create a .biz of its own even though there was one already running.

  73. Mods?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What's up with the mods tonight?

    I appreciate the humor of the parent post, but if you want to join in and make a funny, fscking with the moderation a pretty lame way to do it.

  74. Re:Dilemma by qtp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm torn between the cushy redundancy offered by decentralization, and the cushy security of having most of the servers in a stable, well-protected country.

    Fuirst of all, Germany is what most knowlegable people would call a "stable, well protected country".

    Second, that in and of itself does not affect the security or reliability of DNS as it is designed very much, and has even less signifigance now that anycast is proven to be a reliable technique for increasing redundancy.

    D. J. Bernstein has provided some good introductory about the workings of DNS, including security.

    There's a chapter on DNS security from "DNS and BIND" available at the O'reilly website as well.

    The biggest dispute about DNS security (and internet security in general) is between those who prefer centralized, single point solutions, and those who prefer distributed, autonomous security measures. IMHO, centralized security creates weakness in most (all?) cases by creating a single point of failure, and is an approach that is most often motivated by the desire to exert control over internet usage in hopes of personal gain (re: VeriSign), and to establish an authority because of a misguided belief that there need be one.

    The internet's basic strength is due to it's lack of dependance on centralized authorities in order to work. Any proposals that change that basic assumption are either poorly thought out or suspect.

    --
    Read, L
  75. Re:Dilemma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cool, a russian posting to slashdot.

  76. Re:* Sigh * Another anti-american slug fest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Corporations don't vote our leaders, people do

    And they just love the fact that you belive that line.

  77. Sorry by silence535 · · Score: 1

    The US did also NOT invent

    the laser
    mp3
    television
    the steam engine
    a lot of other useful stuff

    Einstein and Oppenheimer were no Americans, Mme Curie was french, adidas, Mercedes and BMW are also not american corporations.

    and YES, a lot of the ROW* citizen are annoyed by American Cultural Ignorance (tm)

    Apologies for maybe overreacting a little, but Coke, burger and fries are not the universial food source. Get off your high horse.

    -silence

    *ROW = Rest Of World

    --
    Dyslectics of the world, untie!
    1. Re:Sorry by silence535 · · Score: 1

      Damn, I even forgot the www, which was invented at the CERN in switzerland.

      -sl

      --
      Dyslectics of the world, untie!
  78. wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    6 thousand million god damnit!

  79. Re:Indian Outsourcing by clevelandguru · · Score: 1

    DNS has nothing to do with IP routing. Routing tables are maintained by ISPs. IP routing decisions are not made just based on distance, but also cost/bandwidth per route.

  80. Re:* Sigh * Another anti-american slug fest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hahaha. Jealous foreigner.

  81. Re:Babelfish (English French German English) by urmensch · · Score: 1

    I am an American

    Wow. Not from the US though? I hope the babelfish translation improves to.

  82. dra.hmg.gb by marnanel · · Score: 1

    "dra.hmg.gb" is still around:

    dra.hmg.gb. 10786 IN SOA ns1.cs.ucl.ac.uk. liaison.ess.cs.ucl.ac.uk. 200305161 14400 1800 3600000 360000

    I don't know of any hosts in it, though.

    --
    GROGGS: alive and well and living in
  83. Re:OMG OMG OMG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    She has a beautiful personality as well, stupid cunt. That's half of the attraction. You can keep your 'truly hot' airheads, you shallow fuck.