Understanding and Preparing for DNS Evolution

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a crucial component of today’s Internet. The top layer of the DNS hierarchy (the root nameservers) is facing dramatic changes: cryptographically signing the root zone with DNSSEC, deploying Internationalized Top-Level Domain (TLD) Names (IDNs), and addition of other new global Top Level Domains (TLDs). ICANN has stated plans to deploy all of these changes in the next year or two, and there is growing interest in measurement, testing, and provisioning for foreseen (or unforeseen) complications. We describe the Day-in-the-Life annual datasets available to characterize workload at the root servers, and we provide some analysis of the last several years of these datasets as a baseline for operational preparation, additional research, and informed policy. We confirm some trends from previous years, including the low fraction of clients (0.55% in 2009) still generating most misconfigured “pollution”, which constitutes the vast majority of observed quer...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: TMA
• Authors: Sebastian Castro, Min Zhang, Wolfgang John, Duane Wessels, Kimberly C. Claffy
• Keywords: Day-in-the-Life Annual Datasets, Internationalized Top-Level Domain, Planning, Root Servers, TMA 2010