[governance] India's communications minister - root server misunderstanding (still...)

[David Conrad]

On Aug 3, 2012, at 1:31 AM, Roland Perry <roland at internetpolicyagency.com> wrote:
> Or when they ask "why" do they really mean "why was any limit at all designed in?" Perhaps I'll look into that as well - maybe the answer is "because we never expected there ever to be more than 13".

I believe the 512 byte limit was a more-or-less arbitrary selection that fit within what was deemed to be the maximum that could reasonably be supported in the typical infrastructure of the day (circa mid-80s). It also corresponded roughly with a similar arbitrary limit specified in an earlier core protocol, TCP. 

Originally, I believe there were only 2 root servers.  When those 2 began to get overloaded, Postel asked some Usual Suspects to host more (in the late 80s, I was working at the University of Maryland Computer Science Center when TERP.UMD.EDU (now known as D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET) was set up). The last of the 13 weren't assigned until the mid- to late-90s).

However, back when Mockapetris was finalizing the DNS specifications, I suspect the idea that root servers would become political footballs and/or viewed as a critical component of Internet governance would have been seen as laughable, so the idea of supporting more root servers for non-technical reasons wouldn't even have come up.

Regards,
-drc


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