Re: Advisory — D-root is changing its IPv4 address on the 3rd of January.

[Julien Goodwin <nanog () studio442 com au>]

On 15/12/12 06:03, Jean-Francois Mezei wrote:
> There are also a number of much older systems which no longer get
> software updates (such as VAX-VMS) so it is good practice to manually
> maintain the root.hints files so that over time, you don't accumulate
> more than a couple of disused root server IP addresses.

Hosts like that should be using forwarders, not running their own
recursive resolver.

(And probably ported to Alpha at least in the VMS case, which is still
"receiving updates" even if its been two and a half years since the last
release)

Outside of VAX-VMS or old Windows systems I doubt there's much out there
that runs a recursive resolver that can't just have the current version
of bind installed fairly easily. There's probably some appliance type
systems, but the vast majority of those are so broken that an out of
date hints file is the least of their worries.