[dns-operations] Domain Name System without Root Servers

[Daniel Karrenberg]

On 02/10/2017 12:23, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> Nice paper, for resolver managers and TLD managers: how to get rid of
> the root for some TLDs (the system would be opt-in):
> 
> https://www.vs.uni-due.de/paper/2017_Wander_Rootless_DNS.pdf
> 
> The idea is to reuse priming (RFC 8109). The resolvers would know the
> NS and DS resource record sets of TLDs, and use priming to refresh
> their knowledge. It works as long as a TLD does not change everything
> at once.
> 
> The most interesting part of the paper is a survey of the TLD changes
> in the last four years: most TLD kept at least one IP address of the
> original set during these four years. So, the idea could work.

Merci Stephane. Glad to see good work from my native region.

Methinks we could do even better by just loading the whole root zone
into resolvers. We know how to effectively distribute O(1MB) files. The
DNS protocol is not needed for this. Neither are special root servers.
As this paper shows nicely lameness will be very limited even if a
resolver operator chooses to do this only every couple of weeks. No
protocol changes needed. No IETF politics and over-engineering. No
special action by TLD operators. No ICANN process required.

Simple, distributed, resilient, robust, ...

Resolver software could make this easy ...

Daniel