jdfalk@cybernothing.ORG (J.D. Falk) writes:
Well, let's take the most extreme case, where NetSol suddenly ceases performing the services of the InterNIC. In such an instance, we would hope that the root servers would continue to function as they are, without any changes being made until a new "A" server comes into being and is accepted by the root server operators.
In general the failure modes are the same as a huge snow storm, power failure, fiber cut, smurf attack or any of many other natural disasters which could hit the Network Solutions severing their connectivity. Speaking only of technical concerns, the root servers have seven (7) days from the date of the last update before "something" must be done. That something could be simply extending the expiration date of the zone files, and refreshing them; or changing their configuration to be primary for the root zone. Primary servers never expire; but may require some external coordination between the operators to assure consistency. This has happened on a few occasions in the past, and was generally a non-event to everyone except for those few people who keep track of these things. The zone files would be frozen at the last update until a new zone generation process was implemented. With NSI's latest pronouncements, this gets into the political realm. So I'll just leave it at that. GTLD servers operated directly by NSI, but housed in other locations have some other interesting failure modes, namely network engineer single point of failure. No matter what some network engineers may claim, I haven't found any system which could not be brought to its knees by its own network engineers. I don't believe any zones are solely dependent on the GTLD servers operation. The in-addr.arpa, .mil, and .gov zones are sourced by others, nevertheless they have some interesting historical propagation problems through the "A" root server. Ceasing to function is really the easy case. The hard one is if the data is corrupted or otherwise made unusable. I don't know what proceedures the root zone operators have in place to "roll-back" zone files to an earlier version in case of corruption happening at the same time Network Solutions becomes unavailable. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation