Re: Experiments in multi-placed root servers

[hardie@equinix.com]

Bill, Ray,
	I suspect my personal job security would go down if the
failure modes for these systems expressed themselves too often, so I'm
sensitive to the problem.  It's probably obvious that the main reason
we would like to do this work in conjunction with those who have
significant experience with the root servers is to make sure that the
result *is* solid enough to be relied on as a core piece of Internet
infrastructure.  I also believe some of the operational problems seen
in other deployments have been because the software involved was
designed to meet the needs of customers with requirements which
actually differed fairly significantly.  We're aiming to do one pretty
specific thing here, which will hopefully reduce the set of potential
problems.  We're also not talking about rushing into anything; I see
this as a very staged roll-out, with a *lot* of testing.
	Achieving redundancy is also only part of what we're aiming
for here.  Think of it from the point of view of a non-North American
network user.  There is a high concentration of root servers in North
America and the links to reach them may be expensive or high latency
or both.  Without moving current roots to new places in the network
topology, how do you serve those users?  Distributing replicas of the
data to a wide variety of places is one answer, and that distribution
fits the current models better if the replicas are authoritative.  As
Randy pointed out during the BOF, replicated distribution can create
its own problems of administration and coordination unless all the
copies are coordinated through a single entity.
	That's really the problem space we see; how do you see
the problem and its potential resolution?
			regards,
				Ted Hardie








	


> > 
> > On Wed, 5 May 1999 bmanning@ISI.EDU wrote:
> > 
> > > 	stratagy since the failure modes are so baroque as to make
> > > 	debugging/troublshooting such events lifetime employment
> > > 	for certain classes of engineers.  While things are improving,
> > 
> > Bill - You could always look at it as a new form 
> > of job security    :-)
> > 
> > Ray
> 
> So,  you folks hiring :-)
> 
> --bill
>