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Re: History of 4.2.2.2. What's the story?


From: Steve Ryan <auser () mind net>
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 04:43:20 -0800

I think around 10 years ago Slashdot had a few stories (and still do, actually) about how great these resolvers were. I think that propelled quite a bit of their growth and popularity.

On 2/14/2010 1:16 AM, Sean Reifschneider wrote:
I've wondered about this for years, but only this evening did I start
searching for details.  And I really couldn't find any.

Can anyone point me at distant history about how 4.2.2.2 came to be, in my
estimation, the most famous DNS server on the planet?

I know that it was originally at BBN, what I'm looking for is things like:

    How the IP was picked.  (I'd guess it was one of the early DNS servers,
          and the people behind it realized that if there was one IP address
          that really needed to be easy to remember, it was the DNS server,
          for obvious reasons).
    Was it always meant to be a public resolver?
    How it continued to remain an open resolver, even in the face of
          amplifier attacks using DNS resolvers.  Perhaps it has had
          rate-limiting on it for a long time.
    There's a lot of conjecture about it using anycast, anyone know anything
          about it's current configuration?

So, if anyone has any stories about 4.2.2.2, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks,
Sean


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