On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, vinton g. cerf wrote:
....
The USG doesn't actually run the root server (although some of the
root servers are in fact housed at USG supported laboratories). The
Dept of Commerce in effect delegates the actual operation to the root
server operators.
As a technical, legal, and historical matter the USG does not "delegate"
root server management to anyone. Root server operators are volunteers
and self-organizing. The USG lacks the authority to tell them what to do,
or to fire them. Indeed, as you note, some are not affiliated with the US
in any way.
Nit-picking, yes, but fairly important when sorting out who has authority
over what. (Cf.
http://personal.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/formandsubstance.pdf for
a discussion of the legal import of the root sever operator's legal
position.)
The issue is less the size of the file than the problem of updating many
copies of it reliably. The root server operators find it a challenge to
assure that even the modestly sized root zone file is correctly distributed
to all root servers accurately and in a timely fashion.
Are there statistics on this? Certainly the published info I've seen is
more of the patting-self-on-back variety.
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