Root nameserver hardware

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "Rus" == rf  <rf at rf0.com> writes:

    Rus> Hi, This is a little bit OT but I thought it might be worth
    Rus> bringing up.  I am intrested in what hardware the
    Rus> root-servers are running on. I have a look at the and they
    Rus> are all running bind 8.2.x and obviously have the glue
    Rus> records. What I would like to find out is memory/CPU esp they
    Rus> need to be able to handle the sort of load they are under.

The root zone is not particularly big, so its name servers don't need
much RAM to host that zone. The last copy of the root zone file I
picked up from ftp.rs.internic.net was around 100 Kbytes. CPU isn't
usually a problem either. Answers can be churned out almost as fast as
the protocol stack in the OS can get packets to and from the wire.

Take a look at:
	http://www.isc.org/services/public/F-root-server.html

This has info on one of the root servers. f.root-servers.net used to
be the busiest name server in the world: and may well still
be. However it might not be quite so busy now that it no longer
serves the .com zone. When f got ~5000 queries a second, it was pretty
much using all the CPU cycles of an Alpha to handle the load.

I don't have details of the other root servers offhand. There might be
some info on ICANN's web site. ISTR that a.root-servers.net is a big
Sun. It also serves .com IIRC. I believe one of the other root servers
- m.root-servers.net? - is a Pentium running some flavour of BSD Unix.