Differences between root-servers

[Tony Mountifield]

(I posted this to comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains yesterday, but there
seems to be more activity here. It may not be directly bind-related)

I'm sure this doesn't only apply to the root-servers, but that is where
I saw it, so I'll ask why.

I'm playing with Net::DNS in perl, and I was querying each of the root
servers for NS records for "com". In each case they gave me the list
of gtld-servers, as expected.

My question is: why do some of them return the list in the ANSWER section
(with AA flag unset) but others return it in the AUTHORITY section (with an
empty ANSWER section)? Is there a subtle difference in meaning?

Thanks,
Tony
-- 
Tony Mountifield
Work: tony at softins.co.uk - http://www.softins.co.uk
Play: tony at mountifield.org - http://tony.mountifield.org