Setting up a Root name server

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "chris" == chris  <chris at megabytecoffee.com> writes:

    chris> We already have lots of local servers, we have 6 servers, 4
    chris> authoritative and 2 resolvers. I would like to do
    chris> everything I can to speed up the resolvers and provide our
    chris> customers with the fastest possible service.

This is not "a lot of local servers" for a network as big as yours is
claimed to be. Especially if you've got 250,000 or so resolvers
pointing at just those 6 servers. Maybe this is where your DNS
problems really lie?

    >>  This is just silly. Perhaps you'll configure your name servers
    >> to slave every domain known to the DNS "to provide instant
    >> response".  If you think you need to do this, you have other
    >> deep-seated problems in your net. [As well as a poor
    >> understanding of how the DNS works.]  Nobody else in the world
    >> needs to slave .com, .net. etc (or feels the need to slave
    >> them), so what makes things different for you? Really.

    chris> Slave? Who said anything about slave? I see the word
    chris> "Authoritative" in that paragraph.

Slave is the new term for "secondary". This is what's used in BIND8 to
define a secondary name server. BIND8's been out for over two years
now and most people who run it use that definition. Nice to see you
keep up to date with DNS developments.

    >>  You've not identified the performance problem, far less
    >> indicated how
    >> 

    chris> There isn't a problem.

So why are you saying there is? You're the one who claims that if you
make your DNS lookups faster (for some unspecified definition of
faster) your users/customers will see the difference. As others have
tried to explain to you over and over, a few ms difference in DNS
lookups will not be noticed. This is clearly a dialogue of the
deaf. If you don't want to listen, why not shut up until you've done
what you want to do and proven that it really makes the big difference
that you mistakenly believe to be the case. I'm sure other big ISPs
and companies would be interested in your findings.

    >> remains: faster DNS lookups only matter when the existing DNS
    >> setup is

    chris> You are full of shit on that one. Faster DNS look up is one
    chris> of the key things that makes an internet connection fast.

We'll have to disagree on both points.

    chris> I work with what I can control. I run the DNS servers here,
    chris> and I would like to do what I can to make things as fast as
    chris> possible with the resources available.

So go and slave - secondary in your terminology - everything under the
root domain. That'll make everything really fast for sure. In fact,
why don't your run DNS for everybody on those servers so that
everybody in the rest of the world can benefit from these super-fast
name servers too.

    chris> no, it's more like you type in nslookup, set server to a
    chris> root server that you KNOW is geographically close to you,
    chris> send it a query and get no response. Then you try another
    chris> root server and still get no response. When this came up it
    chris> was at about 6pm on a week day.. and I'm sure the internet
    chris> was really cramped at that hour. But, the fact still
    chris> remains, if I can get a root server on my network, and get
    chris> our local nameserves to query it, and have our customers
    chris> nameservers query it, it will speed things up. I don't know
    chris> how much it will speed things up but I would like to find
    chris> out. Since no one seems to have done this before.

Because, as you've already been told several times, it's an utterly
pointless exercise. A good name server will query the root name
servers very infrequently so a "long" lookup will happen perhaps once
or twice a day. So any performance improvement would only be for
perhaps one lookup per TLD per day. Other lookups for that TLD will
just get returned what was previously cached. They won't see any
difference in response time irrespective of whether your name server
was authoritative or not for the root or TLD zone.

There's clearly no point in continuing this discussion. You don't want
to listen or consider what's being said, so I for one have no
intention of talking to you about this again.