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From: del@thrush.mlb.semi.harris.com (Don Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Subject: Re: A plea for care when faking top-level domains
Message-ID: <1990Jul26.224348.3089@mlb.semi.harris.com>
Date: 26 Jul 90 22:43:48 GMT
References: <1990Jul25.054936.25540@mel.dit.csiro.au> <1990Jul25.223636.22744@mlb.semi.harris.com> <F$wjb271@cs.psu.edu>
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Organization: Harris Semiconductor, Melbourne FL
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In article <F$wjb271@cs.psu.edu> ehrlich@cs.psu.edu (Dan &) writes:
>Why not just modify BIND to respect only what the user puts in the named.ca
>cache file?  That way one could put in what one wanted and ignore the rest?

	1) Because there are so many people out there that don't update
	   their named.ca file.  I bet lots of people still have
	   SRI-NIC.ARPA @ 10.0.0.51 listed as a root server.

	2) Because name servers sometimes repond with a list of the
	   root servers and all extant versions of BIND take this
	   as gospel, we don't want to propagate the contents of
	   out of date configuration files.

This idea would only work if sysadmins kept their configurations
up to date, but we know how likely that is.

Currently, when BIND starts up, it looks at the root cache file to
find out what the root servers are and queries the root servers for
the actual list of root servers.  It then uses this as its list of
root servers (until its cache gets polluted by another name server).
This way, if the cache file is good enough for BIND to find at least
one real root server it gets the correct list.

Hmn, what if BIND only used the intersection between the root cache
and the root server response?  The only disadvantage that I can think
of is that when new root servers are added that they will be
underutilized until peoples' configurations catch up.
--
Don "Truck" Lewis                      Harris Semiconductor
Internet:  del@mlb.semi.harris.com     PO Box 883   MS 62A-028
Phone:     (407) 729-5205              Melbourne, FL  32901