[dns-operations] does anybody know why yahoo+akamai are doing this?

[Paul Vixie]

as i continue to puzzle about the query storms seen at the root name servers,
the fact that all five of yahoo.com's nameservers respond to their most popular
query with a meaningless and unnecessary root-referral, strikes me as notable.

(and as someone who thinks he knows what assertions the dns protocol is capable
of asserting, i do not know what could be intended or meant by this encoding.)

; <<>> DiG 9.4.0a3 <<>> www.yahoo.com a @ns5.yahoo.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 46514
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 13, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; WARNING: recusion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.yahoo.com.                 IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.yahoo.com.          300     IN      CNAME   www.yahoo.akadns.net.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
.                       3600000 IN      NS      A.ROOT-SERVERS.net.
.                       3600000 IN      NS      B.ROOT-SERVERS.net.
.                       3600000 IN      NS      C.ROOT-SERVERS.net.
.                       3600000 IN      NS      D.ROOT-SERVERS.net.
.                       3600000 IN      NS      E.ROOT-SERVERS.net.
.                       3600000 IN      NS      F.ROOT-SERVERS.net.
.                       3600000 IN      NS      G.ROOT-SERVERS.net.
.                       3600000 IN      NS      H.ROOT-SERVERS.net.
.                       3600000 IN      NS      I.ROOT-SERVERS.net.
.                       3600000 IN      NS      J.ROOT-SERVERS.net.
.                       3600000 IN      NS      K.ROOT-SERVERS.net.
.                       3600000 IN      NS      L.ROOT-SERVERS.net.
.                       3600000 IN      NS      M.ROOT-SERVERS.net.

;; Query time: 84 msec
;; SERVER: 216.109.116.17#53(216.109.116.17)
;; WHEN: Sun Mar 19 07:53:28 2006
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 273