Whatever happened to alternative root servers? [LWN.net]

Whatever happened to alternative root servers?

Posted Oct 8, 2003 20:22 UTC (Wed) by log2 (guest, #10024)
In reply to: Whatever happened to alternative root servers? by iabervon
Parent article: VeriSign fends off critics at ICANN confab (News.com)

True, you can google for "open root servers" (no quotes) to find
some alternate root server information. The problem at hand would
require alternate .COM and .NET servers, since the alternate roots
still delegate .com and .net to the "official" servers, some of
which (not all, apparently) had the wildcard record. Alternate
.com or .net servers is a much harder problem thatn alternate root
servers, and I believe not realy possible at all because of the
special status of Verisign. Correct me if I'm wrong.

to post comments

Whatever happened to alternative root servers?

Posted Oct 9, 2003 0:26 UTC (Thu) by proski (guest, #104) [Link]

It's possible if you have the list of the .com and .net domains. I don't think VeriSign will share it with you for free and keep it updated. It should be possible to set up a caching proxy that would request VeriSign but exclude the wildcard entry, based on the returned IP address or on the fact that VeriSign answers itself rather than redirects the request. VeriSign can try to foil this proxy by using multiple IP addresses for the SiteFinder and by delegating wildcard replies to another DNS server. In short, it would be a mess, maybe a full-blown DNS war.

Disclaimer: I'm not a DNS specialist.