Global Vs local node data in www.root-servers.org

Hello everyone!

It seems like http://www.root-servers.org/index.html has been updated after
quite sometime. Seems like data about local Vs global for many of root
servers nodes is incorrect. E.g for Netnod i root all nodes are marked as
Global nodes. As far as I understand it means that routes announced by
these nodes are announced to transit links as well to make routes visible
globally. Likely that is not case here right?

Same seems with L root and few others. Do we have webmaster of the project
on mailing list?

Thanks.

Hi Anurag,

Hello everyone!

It seems like http://www.root-servers.org/index.html has been updated
after quite sometime.

The root-servers.org <http://root-servers.org> site has indeed been
updated recently. We will investigate if the mentioned data errors are
related to the change.

Seems like data about local Vs global for many of root servers nodes
is incorrect.

Details of all instances, incl. global vs. local information, are
provided directly by individual root-server operators.

I will ask the responsible people to verify their instances' details,
and if necessary correct these, asap.

Kind regards,
Romeo

I think the taxonomy is probably my fault. At least, I thought I invented it when I wrote

  http://ftp.isc.org/isc/pubs/tn/isc-tn-2003-1.txt

the pertinent text of which is this:

   Two classes of node are described in this document:

   Global Nodes advertise their service supernets such that they are
      propagated globally through the routing system (i.e. they
      advertise them for transit), and hence potentially provide service
      for the entire Internet.

   Local Nodes advertise their service supernets such that the radius of
      propagation in the routing system is limited, and hence provide
      service for a contained local catchment area.

   Global Nodes provide a baseline degree of proximity to the entire
   Internet. Multiple global nodes are deployed to ensure that the
   general availability of the service does not rely on the availability
   or reachability of a single global node.

   Local Nodes provide contained regions of optimisation. Clients within
   the catchment area of a local node may have their queries serviced by
   a Local Node, rather than one of the Global Nodes.

The operational considerations that you mention would have been great for me to think about when I wrote that text (i.e. it's the intention of the originator of the route that's important, not the practical limit to propagation of the route due to the policies of other networks).

We did a slightly better job in RFC 4768 (e.g. "in such a way", "potentially"):

   Local-Scope Anycast: reachability information for the anycast
      Service Address is propagated through a routing system in such a
      way that a particular anycast node is only visible to a subset of
      the whole routing system.

   Local Node: an Anycast Node providing service using a Local-Scope
      Anycast Address.

   Global-Scope Anycast: reachability information for the anycast
      Service Address is propagated through a routing system in such a
      way that a particular anycast node is potentially visible to the
      whole routing system.

   Global Node: an Anycast Node providing service using a Global-Scope
      Anycast Address.

Joe

alas, our service predates Joe’s marvelous text.

“B” provides its services locally to its upstream ISPs.
We don’t play routing tricks, impose routing policy, or attempt to
influence prefix announcement.

/bill
Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet.

In the taxonomy I just shared, that makes the origin nodes of B all "global nodes".

To clarify though, I certainly wasn't trying to suggest that the things I described were new or original when I was writing in 2003. Anycast had already been in use for quite some time by a variety of people at that time.

It's specifically the terms "local" and "global" in a DNS anycast context that I was apologising for :slight_smile:

Joe

No apology needed. I was clarifying why "B" is listed as a local node.
  That it doesn't fit you taxonomy is fine - but it does need an explaination.

/bill