Re: Who owns the Root Name Servers

[Paul A Vixie <paul at vix.com>]

I don't read Fleming's posts here or elsewhere any more, since my .signature
file is already full.  But since Carl BCC'd me on his response to a Flaming-
gram, I see that I've been mentioned.  I'd like to clarify something.

> According to Jim Fleming:
> 
> > At one point I believe that Paul Vixie (of ISC) described how Network
> > Solutions, Inc. (a U.S. Government contractor on the InterNIC) pays for
> > his F Root Server hardware.

Because of Karl Denninger's endless paranoid carping on this subject, about
18 months ago we took the NSI machines out of the rack and sent them home to
West Virginia.

The current F is on loan from Digital Equipment Corporation.  I would supply
the iron myself if nec'y, although with the spiralling size of the data set
I am happy that *I* am not the one who had to buy 1GB of RAM for each box.
(F is two machines, one primary, one standby.)

Neither NSI nor Digital has ever asked us to make any content decisions other
than ``do whatever the IANA says.''  F is also an authority server for .FR,
and yes, the IANA approved this exemption to the RFC 2010 statutes, and yes,
we're going to move .FR service to its own virtual host in the near future.

Credits:

Stephen Stuart of Digital: hardware and OS support
Bob Halley of ISC: BIND software support
Jerry Scharf of ISC: F operations
--
Paul Vixie
La Honda, CA
<paul at vix.com>			"Many NANOG members have been around
pacbell!vixie!paul		 longer than most." --Jim Fleming