a.root-servers.net can't handle the load.

[Barry Margolin]

In article <20000121182501.C26437 at washington.cospo.osis.gov>,
Joseph S D Yao  <jsdy at cospo.osis.gov> wrote:
>On Wed, Jan 12, 2000 at 11:29:25PM -0800, Ed Sawicki wrote:
>> Please excuse the newbie question but does this mean that
>> it may be a good idea to remove a.root-servers.net from the
>> hints file?
>
>No.

To answer the inevitable question "why not?", the reason is that servers
remember how long it took other servers to respond, and send future queries
to the ones with good track records.  So they'll learn that
a.root-servers.net is slow and stop asking it questions, favoring the ones
that can handle the load.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
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