[dns-operations] F Root question

[Joe Abley]

Hi Chris,

On 14 Jan 2009, at 11:27, Chris Cowherd wrote:

> Good day everyone.  We are building out a new authoritative DNS  
> infrastructure and my systems engineering director had a question I  
> didn't necessarily know the answer to.  Could someone be so kind to  
> point me in the right direction?
>
>
> " F Root, operated by ISC, has 2 "global" nodes (one in SF and one  
> in Pal Alto); and the remaining 44 nodes are dubbed "local".
>
> What functions do the global servers perform that the local ones do  
> not.  I.e., what is the functional difference between the two? "

The "global" and "local" distinction relates to how the service is  
distributed using anycast. The distinction was something I made up  
when I wrote ISC-TN-2003-1, and which Kurtis and I used again when we  
wrote RFC 4786.

There is no functional difference between any of the various nodes of  
F -- they all answer identically. The difference is only in the client  
base. Local nodes serve a local set of clients (for some topological  
meaning of "local"); global nodes serve, potentially, the whole  
Internet.

See <http://ftp.isc.org/isc/pubs/tn/isc-tn-2003-1.txt>.


Joe