[dns-operations] stealth slaving the root zone

[Jim Reid]

On 16 May 2012, at 08:53, Mark Andrews wrote:

> The only problem with this is ICANN wanting to make the DNS a flat
> namespace by adding lots of vanity TLDs.   As these grow the space
> required to serve "." increases and it will only be possible to do
> this with large servers.

Nonsense. A $300 box from the local hypermarket or electrical shop  
will have at least 1 GB of RAM, 1 GHz CPU and a 250GB disk. This could  
easily serve a zone containing a few million names. [And FWIW I very  
much doubt the vanity TLD madness will continue long enough for the  
root zone grow to anywhere like that size: maybe a few thousand new  
TLDs at most.] There are of course non-trivial problems making every  
DNS server on the planet hold the root zone and keeping that copy up  
to date. Big Iron for those stealthy servers won't be one of them.