To get things started

> Matti Rendahl from NORDUnet, who's also on this list, is managing the
> nameserver at nic.nordu.net, and promised to give some input on the impact of
> having a rootserver, to the group.

I know it was something that had high priority when I got back from vacation,
sorry about the delay, and sorry about this brief and hasty contribution (I 
really was planning to get to Paris, but there is no time for that).

> One of the "hot" items that have to be discussed is wether we need another
> root name server in Europe. My guess would be yes. 

Yes, I really think we do. And the larger the European IP community gets,
the more we need the redundancy in root servers here. 

> I think it is the task of this working group to get input from people wanting
> to set up another root-server, make them aware of the consequences in terms
> of manpower, hardware, connectivity (especially the last one, since a root
> server must be reachable from EVERY single host on the Internet).

First let me summarize:

	Regarding manpower, not very much is needed in hours, more in
	alertness. And when looking at hardware, a SparcStation 1
	with 500M disk and 16M memory will do. The crucial point is
	the connectivity, this must be good, otherwise there is not
	much use adding one more root server.

1) manpower

	It is not that much work to get the server to run, the only thing
	that must be done/checked is to pickup the new zone files from 
	nic.ddn.mil (with ftp, zone-transfers won't do). This can be
	made with a script (a mail message is sent when the new files
	are available), even if I prefer to do it manually as the transefer
	fails every now and then (or the zone files themself can be corrupt/
	truncated). The important thing is that the new zone files is loaded 
	ASAP, and that the servers continues to work after this (can be 
	checked with e.g. doc). Checking that the server is running is easy 
	with a script, and as BIND crashes every now and then this is vital. 

	The zone files are updated twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday,
	late evening MET).

2) hardware

	NIC.NORDU.NET is a SparcStation 1, and this works nice (we tried
	an ELC, but that didn't really work, don't know if it was the
	e-net interface or what, but it didn't really manage the load).

	If it is only used for the name server, I would say that 16M memory
	will do, BIND tends to get big, lots of cache.

	The zone files does not require much disk, but if one like to
	log questions (LOGIT patches) a few 100M disk is needed for
	the server. (We scratch the log every 24 hours at nordunic, but
	the daily log can get > 100M.) (To process these large logfiles
	you need more memory...)
	
	The root servers are all (?) running BIND 4.8.3, but there is
	no real coordination that they have the same patches applied &c.
	There are som patches available to disable zone transfers except
	from "trusted" hosts (to get some load of the network), and to
	disable recursive queries.

3) connectivity

	This is really important, there is no use in adding one more
	root server if it is not well connected. (Networks that have
	problems with bad connectivity should set up a fake root server,
	like we did here at nordunic, not apply for a root server. There
	are ways to manage a fake server so that it in all except the
	NS list for `.' is a mirror of the real root servers. The fake
	root server we had on nordunic was most of the time more in
	sync with NIC.DDN.MIL that the real ones :-)

	It is also required for the root server to act as a primary
	server for the 3-letter zones and ARPA/IN-ADDR.ARPA as well
	as the root zone. And it is preferred that is also a server
	for the zone it resides in.

	To get an idea of the load, here is the monthly statistics from
	nordunic (note: nordunic does recursive lookup, but those questions
	is not included in this, this is only the questions received bye
	nordunic). I haven't really checked, but I think one can see an
	increase in load that to some extent reflects the upgrades of
	lines to both Europe and US.

	Month        Questions	      Day min   Day max	 Day mean  Q/sec

	 9107          8315817          22211 	 981077    277193    3
	 9108         10171786		58963 	 797348    339059    4
	 9109          8997370		 2882 	 957857    299912    3 
	 9110         11810123		 8167 	3178018    393670    5
	 9111          6837735		28871 	1046749    227924    3
	 9112         10124765		24931 	1665318    337492    4
	 9201         33076339		11873 	3510106   1102544   13
	 9202         31598520		16778 	3478439   1053284   12
	 9203         17007590		 8843 	1628033    566919    7
	 9204         24153201		29870 	4394418    805106    9
	 9205         26104016		27969 	3461392    870133   10
	 9206         49711587		  939 	4426938   1657052   19 
	 9207         43547168		30481 	5350535   1451572   17
	 9208         76186421		92550 	7481229   2539547   29

I'm working with a program that should be able to give more information
from the logs than this and Top-10 lists. Would be nice to get some kind
of indication about from where the questions are generated, I know that
we see a lot of questions from the US, but I have no real feeling for
how the geographic distribution looks.

I have some figures about DNS/UDP traffic also, but I can't find them
right now. But if I remember correct, it was a few % of the total use
(which is "normal" DNS usage), with ftp(.funet.fi) as the winner :-)

Matti

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matti Rendahl | SUNET/NORDUnet Operation Center    | Phone:       +46 8 7907224
              | Royal Institute of Technology, KTH | Fax:         +46 8 7230302
              | S-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden         | Internet:  matti at nordu.net