Subj : The Open Root Server Confederation
To   : All
From : Jonathan de Boyne Pollard
Date : Mon Mar 12 2001 05:30 pm

It may come as a surprise to some to learn that the U.S. Government's root 
content DNS servers are not the only root content DNS servers in existence, and 
that there are more top-level domains than just "com", "mil", "edu", "gov", 
"net", "org", and the country codes.

There are in fact many non-ICANN top-level domains, such as (to name but a few) 
"biz.", "cars.", "film.", "god.", "music.", "news.", "ocean.", "whois.", 
"trek.", and "wine.".  The BBC news pages are also known by the domain name 
"www.bbc.news.", for example.

To gain access to those domain names, one must use a set of augmented root 
content servers, such as the set maintained by the Open Root Server 
Confederation, instead of the U.S. Government's root content servers.

If you use a resolving proxy DNS server supplied by your ISP, then you are at 
the mercy of your ISP, and it is your ISP who needs to switch roots.  You might 
like to drop your ISP a line, asking that it provide you, its customers, with 
access to the larger namespace.  

Or you might like to switch to using the resolving proxy DNS servers run by the 
ORSC (at IP addresses 212.72.34.66 and 212.72.34.99) instead of your ISP's 
proxy server(s).  (If you use the DNS Utilities for OS/2 you can set up a 
caching forwarding proxy server on your own machine that forwards queries to 
the ORSC's resolving proxy servers, which will be more efficient than using the 
latter directly.)

If, however, you aspire to be self-sufficient and run your own resolving proxy 
DNS server on OS/2 you can reconfigure it to use the augmented root content 
servers directly.  

Or you can run a private content server that serves up a copy of the augmented 
root zone, and point your resolving proxy at it instead of external root 
content servers.

The ORSC now has sets of instructions for doing all of the latter three 
(redirecting your forwarding proxy server, reconfiguring your resolving proxy 
server, or publishing a private copy of the root data), both for BIND and for 
the DNS Utilities for OS/2.

( The DNS Utilities for OS/2 comprises a collection of programs that, in 
concert, form a complete replacement for the BIND package.  They are 
significantly more up to date, and secure, than the BIND versions that are 
available for OS/2, and more easy to understand. )

Have a peek at http://support.open-rsc.org./How_To/OS2/ .

 ¯ JdeBP ®

.... I used to kiss her on the lips. But now it's all over.
--- FleetStreet 1.22 NR
 * Origin: JdeBP's point, using Squish <yuk!> (1:109/921.70)

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