RE: .mil domain root only hosted by one server??

["Al Rowland" <alan_r1 () corp earthlink net>]

Perhaps the military has more interest in controlling access than in
making sure John Q. Public is able to reach their sites? There's also
little commercial interest in making sure they're available. 

I'm willing to bet the important stuff doesn't rely on DNS anyway. ;)

Just my 2¢

Best regards,
_________________________
Alan Rowland
USAF, Ret


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog () merit edu [mailto:owner-nanog () merit edu] On Behalf Of
Vinny Abello
Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 12:46 PM
To: nanog () trapdoor merit edu
Subject: .mil domain root only hosted by one server??



I just stumbled across something I thought was interesting. All the .mil

domain names used by the U.S. Military are served by one single root 
server. I thought that was a bit odd. I'm sure that one server is more
than 
enough to handle the queries for all the .mil domains with no problem,
but 
it doesn't seem very redundant or safe at all. Especially for something
our 
military uses. There's something that could be beefed up a little bit.
My 
other thought (which others may know) was that perhaps the military runs

G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET and I'm just not aware of it. Maybe it's a policy to 
only run .mil on what they can control? Even still, I think it might be
in 
their best interest to setup a few more.

These are the results I got when I queried A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET:

; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> @a.root-servers.net mil.
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 41
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;mil.                           IN      A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
mil.                    86400   IN      SOA     G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 
HOSTMASTER.N
IC.mil. 2002082000 3600 900 1209600 86400

;; Query time: 390 msec
;; SERVER: 198.41.0.4#53(a.root-servers.net)
;; WHEN: Wed Aug 21 15:38:58 2002
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 90


I'd like comments from anyone with more information on this. I'm just 
curious as to why it is this way and what the reasoning behind it is.
Maybe 
I'll email hostmaster.nic.mil and ask. ;)

Vinny Abello
Network Engineer
Server Management
vinny () tellurian com
(973)300-9211 x 125
(973)940-6125 (Direct)
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