root name servers

[Bill Larson]

In article <199907132201.SAA08959 at fw1-a.osis.gov>,
Joseph S D Yao  <jsdy at cospo.osis.gov> wrote:
>
>This is usually not particularly useful information, since your name
>server will find the closest one and use it.

I will agree that this is NOT a particularly useful piece of
information for the reason that you identified, but that does NOT mean
that it was an inappropriate question.  I have been interested in the
operation of the root name servers since I started working with DNS,
and this would have been a question that I would have easily wanted an
answer to.  In fact, I did ask questions about the root name servers,
and received informative answers.

Prior to the renaming of the root servers to [a-z].root-servers.net,
these machines had an actual names.  You could find an
"ns.internic.net", "ns1.isi.edu", "ns.nasa.gov", etc.  Recognizing
that these names could be misleading, it would give you a hint
about who was running what.  If fact, if was nice to know that
the U.S. Army was protecting the operation of the Internet with
"aos.arl.army.mil" as one of the root name servers!

Bill Larson (wllarso at swcp.com)