The loss of one or two (or as someone once calculated up to 40%) of the root servers has no or little effect. DNS is relatively robust, but not indestructible. However, no one outside of Cable & Wireless knows just how many networks or even which networks they eventually will cut-off. If C&W continues down the road of "de-peering", they may eventually cut off too much and cease to be a useful Internet provider. They may be a fine private network, but if you eliminate enough interconnectivity you aren't in the Internet any more. PSI was simply the most public case. But it doesn't appear that even Cable&Wireless's own sales force knows how bad C&W's network connectivity is going to get until after C&W finishes cutting off all the networks. There have been private reports that C&W sent out letters to several other providers. Will C&W still be a viable network after its management finishes? I don't know, I don't know if they know. They didn't seem to understand the effect cutting PSI would have. On Wed, 06 June 2001, Rafi Sadowsky wrote:
Combine the loss of C.ROOT and the loss to E.ROOT for their loss of peering to NASA that happened last week and will happen again in a few weeks and they may have many issues related to this decision.
Maybe I'm missing something obvious but I can't help wondering why given the redundancy of the DNS system the loss of connectivity to 2 or 3 root-servers should have a significant effect on an ISP who is otherwise well connected and probably has a low latency/loss link to at least 2-3 of the remaining root DNS servers
Anyone care to enlighten me ?