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

[George Michaelson]

I tend to functional questions in these matters. This is not a
symmetric pair, but they go to different sides of the problem

1) what will happen if we imagine these queries not being answered? A
hypothetical (*and, its not zero cost*) front-end process which drops
them

2) what is the consequence of continuing to answer these queries?

Noting 1) is not trivial, I believe if these queries were not
answered, there would be short-term downsides, but long-term upsides.
The problem would (I believe) go away.

Noting 2) is the "do nothing" option. The only clear consequence is
that we're incurring cost, in root instantiations. It is possible if
we go with run-root-on-local/loopback we smear the cost, but do we
reduce it?

-G

On Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 1:00 PM Mark Allman <mallman at icir.org> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Paul!
>
> > The biggest problem I see here is the legacy/long-tail problem. As
> > of a few years ago, I bumped into BIND 4 servers still
> > active. Wouldn't be shocked to hear they are still being used.
> >
> > IPv4 reachable traditional DNS servers for some tiny group of
> > antique folks will be needed for years, even if we get 99+% of the
> > world to some new system.
>
> I wonder if we're ever allowed to just decide this sort of thing is
> ridiculous old shit and for lots of reasons we can and should just
> garbage collect it away.
>
> > Doesn't mean we shouldn't be thinking about a better way to do it
> > for that 99% though.
>
> Is it better if we only get to 99%?
>
> To me, this whole notion is that we can in fact get rid of this
> giant network service.  If we don't get rid of it then what is the
> incentive to move one's own resolver away from using the root
> nameservers?  I don't have any heartburn with RFC 7706.  But, it is
> a quite minor optimization in the general case.  It may well be
> important in some corner cases, but in general I don't think running
> a local root nameserver helps all that much.
>
> Maybe 99% lets us draw down the size of the root infrastructure...I
> dunno.  But, if we don't say something like "it's going to go away"
> then I am not sure resolvers will move away from it.
>
> allman
>
>
> --
> https://www.icir.org/mallman/
> @mallman_icsi
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