At 11:35 PM 3/25/99 -0800, J.D. Falk wrote:
On 03/25/99, Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com> wrote:
In particular, what are the 'serious operational impacts' that could develop? There is a long-standing claim that services of the type offered by NSI are fine left without special handling (oversight, assistance). To the extent that problems to such a company can have far-reaching impact on Internet operations, it would be extremely helpful to understand them before the fact. This might permit consideration of methods to avoid such fall-out.
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.
This is probably what Jon Postel's fear-inspiring experiment a few months back was intended to test.
Check your calendar, it was over 12 months ago.
But, would it really go that smoothly? How long can the root servers last without an A?
About half the Internet would keep on chugging along, on local copies of the root.zone. This could continue indefinitely. The other half would shortly follow. It would not take long for a new root.zone repository to appear. Maybe even a new TLD registry. ___________________________________________________ Roeland M.J. Meyer - e-mail: mailto:rmeyer@mhsc.com Internet phone: hawk.lvrmr.mhsc.com Personal web pages: http://staff.mhsc.com/~rmeyer Company web-site: http://www.mhsc.com ___________________________________________________ KISS ... gotta love it!