choosing a root server(s)

André Pirard A.Pirard at ulg.ac.be
Mon Jul 5 20:52:00 UTC 1999


"Cricket Liu" <cricket at acmebw.com> wrote:
>The root hints file, sometimes called db.cache, is used by your name server
>at startup to find the current list of root name servers.  When your name
>server starts up, it queries one of the name servers in the root hints file
>for the current list of root name servers and thereafter uses that list.
>...

According to what you say, it seems a valid method, to avoid tedious
maintenance of departmental servers under foreign administration, to
configure these servers once with root hints to central servers having
the list of root servers in cache, for example:

.                       99999999        IN      NS      ns1.my.domain.
ns1.my.domain.          99999999        IN      A       1.2.3.4
.                       99999999        IN      NS      ns2.my.domain.
ns2.my.domain.          99999999        IN      A       1.2.4.5

Correct?

I've done this for years without a single known problem, nor a single
named.ca update but on the central servers.
I would like however to have a garantee that this method passes an
upgrade to BIND 8 and to have the following behavior explained.

If I query such a dpt BIND server with '. any', I may get an answer
listing nsX.my.domain as roots, alone or with other real root servers.
This answer lasts just for one query. The next query answers the
correct list of real root servers alone with fresh TTLs.
So, it seems that the root cache is refreshed on demand and a
posteriori (those departmental servers are also forwarders, so that
they rarely use their root cache, which makes the phenomenon visible).
Is the root cache also initialized on demand (rather than when the
server starts in a strict sense)?

Thanks and best regards,

André.



André PIRARD                         ULgNet Coordinator, Adm. & Support
SEGI - Université de Liège           IP: 139.165.0.0 - ulg.ac.be
B26 - Sart Tilman                    www.ulg.ac.be
B-4000 Liège 1 (Belgium)
A.Pirard at ulg.ac.be                   +32-4-3664932  Fax: 2920


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