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

[Roland Perry]

In message <B5EB1ADF-80C4-427E-A054-9911D44F9C58 at virtualized.org>, at 
08:27:05 on Fri, 3 Aug 2012, David Conrad <drc at virtualized.org> writes
>> 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.

A 512 byte limit per packet is understandable, but the queries could 
have been designed to cope with multiple packets.

>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).

Interesting that it was load, rather than a desire for more resilience 
that triggered the roll-out. Of course, in those days most Internet 
connectivity really did go to the USA and back (if not to the root 
servers and back) so a predominance of root servers in the USA was 
architecturally desirable, as well as potentially being just a 
historical accident.

>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.

I was at a CSTD meeting a couple of years ago, and there was a complaint 
that Africa had no root servers, but it was easy to point out there were 
four in Johannesburg, let alone other parts of the continent.

Obviously, these are anycast instances, so the existence of these needs 
to be better advertised to the relevant parties (as I've written about a 
few days ago).
-- 
Roland Perry

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