Why does Local DNS Fail when Internet is down?

[Martin McCormick]

	How large is the root zone file, anyway?  I was expecting
a MONSTER! which makes me think I am looking at the wrong files.
I can ftp a file from rs.internic.net called arpa.zone.gz
which is all of 700 bytes.  The edu.zone file which is also there
is actually larger than that.

	The top few lines of arpa.zone.gz are:

;File start: 45291
; The use of the Data contained in Verisign Inc.' aggregated
; .com, .org, and .net top-level domain zone files (including the checksum
; files) is subject to the restrictions described in the access Agreement
; with Verisign Inc.

. IN	SOA	A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. NSTLD.VERISIGN-GRS.COM. (
				  2002052400 ;serial
				  1800 ;refresh every 30 min
				  900 ;retry every 15 min
				  604800 ;expire after a week
				  86400 ;minimum of a day
				  )
$TTL 518400
. NS A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. NS H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. NS C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. NS G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. NS F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. NS B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. NS J.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. NS K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. NS L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. NS M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. NS I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. NS E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. NS D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. A 198.41.0.4
H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. A 128.63.2.53
C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. A 192.33.4.12
G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. A 192.112.36.4
F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. A 192.5.5.241
B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. A 128.9.0.107
J.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. A 198.41.0.10
K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. A 193.0.14.129
L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. A 198.32.64.12
M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. A 202.12.27.33
I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. A 192.36.148.17
E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. A 192.203.230.10
D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. A 128.8.10.90
$TTL 172800
PS. NS NS.DOLEH.COM.
PS. NS DNS3.GOV.PS.

Martin McCormick