[dns-operations] What is the reason of J-Root doesn't serve the arpa zone?

[Wessels, Duane]

Thanks for the opportunity to add some clarity around J-root and
the arpa zone.  Here is a brief history of events that can provide
some context:

In the 1996 time frame there were 9 root servers: A through I.  In
addition to the root zone, they also served a number of TLDs,
including com, net, org, and arpa.

It is important to understand that when Jon Postel expanded the
root servers in 1997 to include J, K, L, and M, the new ones only
served the root and root-servers.net zones.

In June 2000 RFC 2870 was published with section 2.5 stating:

      [root servers] also MUST NOT provide secondary service for
      any zones other than the root and root-servers.net zones.

Around this same time (+/- 1 year) the first nine root servers
stopped serving com, net, and org, but not arpa.

In November 2002 K, L, and M were added to the NS list for arpa,
but J was not.  We can't speak to decisions made by the other
operators, but Verisign chose not to put j.root-servers.net in the
NS set based on the language of RFC 2870.

DW


> On Dec 2, 2021, at 10:08 PM, Yasuhiro Orange Morishita / 森下泰宏 <yasuhiro at jprs.co.jp> wrote:
> 
> Caution: This email originated from outside the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Now I'm writing an article for Japanese people that introduces the
> IETF's recent DNS-related activities, and I have a question about the
> current "arpa" zone.
> 
> RFC 9120 says:
> 
>   Historically, the "arpa" zone has been hosted on almost all of the
>   root nameservers (NSs), and [RFC3172] envisages the "arpa" domain to
>   be "sufficiently critical that the operational requirements for the
>   root servers apply to the operational requirements of the "arpa"
>   servers".  To date, this has been implemented by serving the "arpa"
>   domain directly on a subset of the root server infrastructure.
> 
> Yes, it is "almost all", not "all".  Currently, the "arpa" zone has
> been hosted on 12 root servers, except to J-Root.
> 
> Probably, this is a part of the "Historically", but I want to know why.
> 
> -- Orange
> 
> -- 
> Yasuhiro 'Orange' Morishita <yasuhiro at jprs.co.jp>
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