[dns-operations] root? we don't need no stinkin' root!

[Jim Reid]

> On 11 Dec 2019, at 12:51, Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at nic.fr> wrote:
> 
> IMHO, this is by far the biggest issue with your proposal: TLDs change
> from one technical operator to another and, when it happens, all name
> servers change at once.

That’s not correct.

In principle, they could all change at once, In reality, they don’t. When making a change of this nature, established wisdom is to change half of the NS records (or their glue), wait a few days to see that all is well and then change the other half. I think IANA would try to persuade a TLD to do that if they came with a proposal to change all of the TLD's NS records in one transaction. Though if the TLD insisted, IANA would respect their choice.

Come to think of it, changing all of the NS records at once is generally a bad idea for any zone. That would probably only make sense when all of the existing name servers were dead or no longer serving the zone.