Hi Mike,
Due to a recent fiber cut in northern california, I've stepped up my plan to have one authoritative dns and backup mail exchanger located on another network far, far away. I am sadly having immense trouble with dotster understanding that I need to update the ip address of a glue record, as I host my own stuff, for which their gui has no abillity and which phone support says open a ticket for which the e-mailed response was utter cluelessness, claiming they checked and it's already set... yeah, you recursed and hit my existing ns which gave you the answer, but it's the roots which need to know....
Some ideas:
1. You could just add a nameserver. There's no rule that says you have to have exactly two. You could almost certainly have three. (There are some registry-specific rules that specify the minimum and maximum numbers, but I've never seen a registry where the maximum was two.) If you add a new nameserver, and leave your existing two as they are, you've achieved your diversity goal and avoided the problem you're currently struggling with. Apply a touch of mind bleach, and you'll forget that "glue records" are even a thing.
2. There's no universal answer to the question "how do I update glue records in a parent zone". It depends on the registry, and the data model they use to link all the various DNS and meta-DNS information they store.
[Incidentally, it's almost never the root server operators that need to know unless you're running a top-level domain (and even then, it's the administrator of the root zone that needs to know, not the root server operators). But when you said "roots" you didn't mean root servers, you meant "operator of the registry for the parent zone".]
For registries that follow the data model that was originally used for COM, NET and ORG, what you're looking for is a database operation "modify host object" to happen at the particular registry that contains that host object with addresses (a host object subordinate a the registry apex, you could call it, somewhat inelegantly).
Once you've found the right registry, you need to figure out how to make changes. Find the sponsoring registrar for the domain the host object is subordinate to. That's the organisation you need to talk to.
For example,
QUIRKAFLEEG.NET
is a domain with the following listed nameservers:
[scallop:~]% whois quirkafleeg.net | egrep '^Name Server: .'
Name Server: NS1.P23.DYNECT.NET
Name Server: NS2.P23.DYNECT.NET
Name Server: NS4.P23.DYNECT.NET
Name Server: NS3.P23.DYNECT.NET
[scallop:~]%
If your whois client needs help in finding out what server to use, try Rodney's very handy <tld>.whois-servers.net, e.g.
[scallop:~]% host net.whois-servers.net
net.whois-servers.net is an alias for whois.verisign-grs.com.
whois.verisign-grs.com has address 199.7.50.74
whois.verisign-grs.com has IPv6 address 2001:503:5ae2:1000::74
[scallop:~]%
If I decided I wanted to rename NS3.P23.DYNECT.NET, I would need to identify the sponsoring registrar for the DYNECT.NET domain name:
[scallop:~]% whois dynect.net | egrep '^Registrar:'
Registrar: DYNAMIC NETWORK SERVICES, INC
[scallop:~]%
The registrant (the person who "owns" the domain) in this case is:
[scallop:~]% whois dynect.net | egrep '^Registrant'
Registrant Name: Dynamic Network Services
Registrant Organization: Dyn
Registrant Street: 150 Dow St, Tower 2
Registrant City: Manchester
Registrant State/Province: NH
Registrant Postal Code: 03101
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.6036684998
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: Domains@dyn.com
[scallop:~]%
So those are the people I would ask to rename (say) NS3.P23.DYNECT.NET. Of course in this case they would say "haha, no" and probably advise me to add a nameserver rather than trying to reconfigure their commercial DNS service. But you get the idea; if the nameserver you want to rename is subordinate to a domain name you have administrative control over, you could interact with the registrar for the domain and make the change.
The precise way a particular registrar will accept such a change varies by registrar. Sometimes (I hear) the user interface involves phone calls and shouting. But then you have a choice of registrar, if you can figure out how to make transfers work.
If your domain and/or nameservers are not named under NET, ORG or COM, the above may be useful or, quite possibly, completely irrelevant, depending on factors that your registrar is in theory supposed to hide from you. There are as many other data models as there are other TLDs, almost-maybe, and I certainly don't know the details of all or even many of them.
If this is sounding very XKCD-927, that's because it is. This is perhaps why lots of people pay others to do this for them (registry/registrar shenanigans and DNS hosting) so that they can live their lives with one less thing to be angry about.
Joe