[dns-operations] The (very) uneven distribution of DNS root servers on the Internet

[Jim Reid]

On 15 May 2012, at 08:23, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:

> http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/05/07/the-very-uneven-distribution-of-dns-root-servers-on-the-internet/
>
> Technically very interesting (many numbers) but the author does not
> seem to know how the root name servers are managed.

Sigh. The author of this piece doesn't seem to know much. So now  
people with clue may well have to spend even more time at IGF, ITU and  
the like to explain why this article is flawed. This will be  
unfortunate. Some of those people could have spent their time  
installing anycast nodes instead of putting out the fire the author's  
started. :-)

He/she might as well have whined about why the root servers are  
located in places that "disadvantage" people who are not living in or  
close to major population centres. And of course there's no  
explanation why it could possibly matter if the 3-4 queries a day a  
local resolving server makes to a root server take ~50 ms or ~150ms.  
Or if someone could tell the difference between the two.

It is of course interesting to note that there are proportionately  
fewer root servers in Asia than there are people (or is it IP  
addresses?). This does not justify making assertions about a more  
"fair and equitable" distribution of root server placement(s).  
Whatever that might mean. It will be interesting to see if this  
apparent imbalance is corrected by the ICANN plan for dense anycast: https://ripe64.ripe.net/presentations/135-dknight-lroot-dnswg-ripe64.pdf 
.

BTW "fair and equitable" is one of those unfortunate phrases that gets  
Internet governance types very excited, not always in a good way: eg  
"fair and equitable" distribution of IP addresses.