Re: Advisory — D-root is changing its IPv4 address on the 3rd of January.

On 12-12-14 12:13, Joe Abley wrote:

In summary, theory (and practice) tells us that:

1. You should update your hints file from time to time, and 2. If you don't, chances are overwhelmingly good that it will make no difference, and everything will work as normal.

But this is important to those who write DNS server software to ensure they embed the most up to date version of the root servers in their binaries. There are also a number of much older systems which no longer get software updates (such as VAX-VMS) so it is good practice to manually maintain the root.hints files so that over time, you don't accumulate more than a couple of disused root server IP addresses.