

The (very) uneven distribution of DNS root servers on the Internet - icehawk
http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/05/07/the-very-uneven-distribution-of-dns-root-servers-on-the-internet/

======
lambda
> We think that the root server distribution should take regional Internet
> population size into consideration, so we hope the people in charge read
> this and act accordingly as the Internet continues to grow.

This is really the sum of their analysis? They "think"? The "people in
charge"? No analysis of actual performance? No discussion of the fact that
caching resolvers mean that most queries never hit the root servers? No
discussion of the fact that this is just the distribution of sites that the 13
root server IP addresses map to via anycast, and that each site will have many
actual physical machines behind that IP address?

How about doing some measurement to see if there is any problem? Some analysis
that discusses what effects this might have? Some discussion of who those
"people in charge" are, and what it's suggested that the should do?

This kind of drivel really makes me which that Hacker News had a downvote
button for articles.

------
alainbryden
"you can look directly at how many Internet users there are for each root
server site in a region. The lower the number, the better." [citation needed]?

I was under the impression that a diverse geographical distribution (to defend
against localized natural disasters and targeted attacks) was the primary
goal, rather than a concentration of DNS servers in areas of higher internet
population.

------
ars
There apparently is just one root server for all of Russia, and that
singlehandedly is responsible for these numbers. (Edit: 4 actually.)

<http://www.root-servers.org/>

And Canada only has root servers on the eastern side of the county, and none
whatsoever in the west.

But does it really matter? Aren't they just used when there is nothing cached?

The author makes it seem like "the powers that be" have some kind of
conspiracy, but it's really up to the local ISP's to devote the resources to
run a server, there is no one in charge - you just have to do it and then ask
to be added to the list.

~~~
vidarh
There's far more than one. Root-servers.org shows _clusters_ of root servers,
not single physical boxes. Even then there's instances of at least the F, J, K
and L roots in Russia (3 of them in Moscow; one in Novosibirsk).

But in any case, the fact that his source does not show individual servers
makes the numbers he is giving pointless. It's also meaningless to show
geography, when what matters is topology.

Having ten times as many root servers in Asia, for example, would be pointless
if they're spread out on networks that have poor connections too each other
and roundtrip times for most users don't improve.

It's quite possible, or likely, that there are imbalances that matter, but his
numbers don't show it.

~~~
alexchamberlain
I'd be interested to know more about the topology of the UK domestic internet,
is there anywhere where one can find such information?

------
nsns
Quote:

    
    
        You can see how the world is divided in two parts here:
        Above average (a bad thing in this case): South America, Middle East, Africa, Asia.
        Below average (a good thing in this case): Europe, North America, Oceania.
    

Just showing such an obvious division, without commenting on it (industrial
vs. post-industrial, "developed" vs. ex-colonies, Western vs. everything-else,
etc.) seems almost absurd. There's a thing to be said about the way and the
ways the US and Europe control the net, it has been said elsewhere.

------
blibble
why is this at all important?

it's not as if the end user ever contacts the root nameservers, their ISPs
nameserver does, and it'll cache the rather limited set of results for hours.

~~~
zerohp
It doesn't matter at all, that's why this article is stupid.

------
rachelbythebay
Never mind that. Look at how they are distributed in terms of IP (v4)
addresses.

198.41.0.4 192.228.79.201 192.33.4.12 128.8.10.90 192.203.230.10 192.5.5.241
192.112.36.4 128.63.2.53 192.36.148.17 192.58.128.30 193.0.14.129 199.7.83.42
202.12.27.33

Back off to the /3 level. All but two of them (128.8.10.90 and 128.63.2.53)
are in 192.0.0.0/3.

Guess what happens if someone fat-fingers a sync connection and adds one with
a netmask of /3 instead of /30? If it's in the right part of the net, you lose
a whole bunch of stuff, but two of the roots keep working.

This makes for some very interesting troubleshooting. I witnessed this once,
and it was bizarre: <http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/08/blackhole/>

I wonder what else might be tripped up by this kind of aggregation gone wrong?
It seems like spreading them out some more could be useful in some really bad
situations.

Edit: also, look at the /4 and /5 level and so on. Most of them have a _lot_
in common, actually.

------
mikerg87
Interesting that Pingdom would choose to complain about a lack of DNS servers
in these regions when they themselves do not offer Pingdom probes in any of
these regions less represented by DNS roots

If I knew of a similar offering with more global reach I would switch in an
instant.

------
alexchamberlain
Am I correct in thinking that the root servers only contain the NS addresses
for the TLDs? So, in theory, a recursive DNS resolver only has to contact them
once per TLD every 6 hours or so?

~~~
halfasleep
Yes. You can see the full lookup path with "dig yourdomain.com +trace" if you
are interested

------
badcrcerror
pie charts are the worst charts

~~~
alexchamberlain
Devil's advocate says Why?

~~~
pmjordan
Because humans are much worse at estimating the relative size of angles than
of lengths. See also:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_chart#Use.2C_effectiveness_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_chart#Use.2C_effectiveness_and_visual_perception)

Of course, the very worst are 3D pie charts, as the angles are distorted.

