What would be useful in all this discussion would be if someone gives a list of "good" root servers to put in my named.boot. i.e. generally fast response time and no blocking prefixes
you don't get to choose, and you don't have to choose. put the root.cache file that comes with bind in your config dir and use it as a "hint" zone for ".". bind will "prime" when it starts up, which means ask the servers in the "hint" zone for the real and current list of servers for ".". the result will be used until its TTL is nearly expired, then the whole thing repeats. bind will also measure the RTT to each server until it has tried them all and then home in on the one that returns good answers fastest; this "goodness factor" decays over time, forcing a re-sweep periodically in case the network topology or performance changes. i'm not sure microsoft or djbdns do this, but you mentioned named.boot, so i'm giving you a bind-specific answer. btw, if by named.boot you mean you're running bind4, you should upgrade to bind9 or bind8. see www.cert.org. -- Paul Vixie