OT: Forwarding to your ISP

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "Kirk" == Kirk Strauser <kirk at strauser.com> writes:

    Kirk> I apologize in advance for bringing this up, but it's always
    Kirk> been my understanding that the Internet is better off if
    Kirk> everyone forwarded their requests to their upstream provider
    Kirk> (caching and all that).

This may have been valid 15-20 years ago when a campus would have a
56k link to the net and every packet on the WAN mattered. But not today.

    Kirk> I know this has been discussed
    Kirk> before, but the usual answer I've heard to the question is
    Kirk> along the lines of "search the archives".  I seem to be
    Kirk> Google-impaired because I've never found a concise summary
    Kirk> of why directly querying the root servers is better than
    Kirk> forwarding.  Any chance you could point me toward an
    Kirk> explanation somewhere?

The BIND mailing list archives are found at www.isc.org. Go there and
type "forwarding" into the search box and you will be enlightened.