[Gllug] DNS

[Chris Ball]

On Tue, 2001-11-13 at 11:07, Paul Brazier wrote:
> In the DNS Howto it gives a sample "root.hints" file that lists the root
> nameservers. They are named A to M but listed in a strange order. I
> thought the order didn't matter, so wouldn't it make more sense to have
> them in alphabetical order, then it would be clearer to see if one was
> accidently missing.

The root servers are all over the planet.  Assuming that the order
/does/ matter, and that they're interrogated according to their order in
the file, it would make sense to order them according to geographical
distance.

> When I resolve a domain name does it select one of these root
> nameservers at random which then sends the request on to a second level
> nameserver (if one exists for that domain)?

No, the root servers are rarely involved.  When you resolve a domain
name, you're talking to your ISP or network's nameserver, which has got
its information from a number of other nameservers, leading - at some
point - back to the root servers.  This is why a DNS change on a domain
name will take some hours to propagate; it needs to make its way from
the root servers all the way down to your local network.

Hope this helps,

~C.

-- 
$a="printf.net"; Chris Ball | chris at void.$a | www.$a | finger: chris@$a
         "In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded."          


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