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

[Paul Ebersman]

jim> What do you consider to be a lot of queries? The root server system
jim> collectively handles 500K-1M queries per second. That seems rather
jim> a lot to me. YMMV.

fw> But globally?  For the entire planet?

fw> It's certainly beyond what I can run out of my basement using spare
fw> parts, but it's also not a mindbogglingly huge number.  I would have
fw> expected something that's clearly impossible to handle from a single
fw> box.

Actually, it's a great argument for longer TTLs and caching doing what
they're supposed to.

The root zones and most TLDs tend to have longer, non trendy (over 5
minute) TTLs, so root servers, TLDs and other auth servers get orders of
magnitude less queries than large recursive farms, which cache and then
get cache hits.

Comcast & Google get 2-3 orders of magnitude more than large TLD servers
and 4-5 orders of magnitude more than the root servers and these two
probably represent something like 1/3 of public recursive server
traffic. The largest Chinese ISP used to do more traffic then either of
the above.

But compared to a large corp DNS server farm, the root servers shovel a
lot of bits. Some of it even valid DNS queries and responses. ;)