Waiter root of the DNS

A waiter root of the DNS (“root nameserver” in English) is a waiter DNS which answers the requests for the root field and redirects the requests for a Signal-level domain (TLD) towards the waiters DNS managing the corresponding TLD.

All the Domain names on Internet finish in fact by a ". " what means that Wikipédia is lodged on the field “www.wikipedia.org.” (try to put http://www.wikipedia.org. in your navigator). This point " final" is implied, and the modern software of DNS always does not require its presence to translate a Domain name into Adresse IP. The Character string vacuum after this " not final" Domaine root is called and all the fields like .com, .org, .net, .fr, etc are contained in the root field.

Principle of the requests

When a Ordinateur on Internet wants to solve a Domain name, it proceeds from right to left while asking each Serveur DNS concerned to solve the element directly on the left. “Waiters DNS root” have the responsibility for the field root ". " and knows which waiters deal with the Signal-level domains (TLD). Each TLD (as .org for example) has its own whole of waiters DNS which in their turn delegates the requests to the waiters DNS responsible for the particular domain names (like wikipedia.org), those then return the Adresse IP of the under-fields or many machines hosts like www.

In practice, the majority of information often do not change and are put out of mask. The requests going up to waiters DNS roots are relatively rare. However, of many systems badly configured on Internet involve most of the traffic on waiters DNS roots. For example, the requests with the address source 0.0.0.0 (correspondent with everywhere and nowhere) go up to the waiters roots. Thus, of the Ordinateur S badly configured Mettre up to date the entries of the waiters roots for TLD S test sometimes what is incorrect. See the " Bogus queries" (in English) in the external bonds for more amusing stories of this style.

List waiters roots

There exist currently 13 roots installations of the DNS whose names are given by the letters of has to M:

(*) The first waiter is in Dulles (airport of Washington). This city is thus very close to the Bibliothèque of the Congress, which contains the personal collections of Thomas Jefferson, and which is in addition large user of computer's resources (see Marc standards).

Older waiters obtained their own name before the current policy is not established.

One cannot use other names because of the limitations of the protocol but the waiters C, F, I, J and K now occupy several places on different continents, using Anycast to provide a decentralized service. Several waiters roots are not thus any more in the United States (more physically than administratively).

Optimization of the traffic

The Japan obtained that a waiter root is established in Tokyo (WIDE project).

Paris is connected to Internet network via the waiter root F (with Nairobi with the Kenya), and, since September 2004, via the waiter root M (in Tokyo).

See: M-Root DNS Server

Recent studies of CAIDA and WIDE in 2005 show that 98% of the requests on the waiters roots are not necessary.

See: Study CAIDA-WIDE (March 2005).

In practice, very few requests pass by the waiters roots. In fact Routeur S make it possible to optimize the traffic.

Often due to the errors of configuration of the filters of packages and other avoid-fires. They are especially the Firewall S letting leave requests DNS but not letting them enter. Thus, a continuous flow of requests, requests boguées, of boguées requests TLD, the internal names and the private addresses cause an useless traffic on Internet.

See also (November 3rd 2006) it study on the waiters:

C-root: Cogent
F-root : ISC
K-root : SCRAPE

There exist some systems of alternative domain names with their own whole of waiters roots which exist the principal waiters parallel to. The first, AlterNIC, generated much noise in the press, to see Alternative DNS root for more information.

List waiters by waiters roots

See: Root Server Technical Operations Association

See too

Anycast
IPv6

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