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

Suzanne Woolf woolf at isc.org
Tue May 15 15:00:24 UTC 2012


On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 09:46:36AM +0100, Jim Reid wrote:
> 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.
....
> 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?).

It speaks of "users," and appears to be assuming that there's some
relationship between "has more users" and "needs more root server
capacity" on a regional (multiple countries, large network scale) basis.

I don't necessarily believe this, but the question is worth examining.
It has the same intuitive appeal as "Won't more TLDs mean more load on
the root servers?" to non-technical audiences and frankly deserves an
answer.

> 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.

Yes, and that's unfortunate, because the piece reads as if those words
are used in their common sense not their "governance" sense.




More information about the dns-operations mailing list