The actual root servers have a lot of extra capacity. The servers more likely to need to be beefed up are the gtld servers that handle .com. However, neither ICANN nor Network Solutions get a lot of sympathy from me. For what they charge they can run a few more servers and the world's ISPs can run a few less.
1. In this kind of relatively simple conversation, a "root server" and a "global top-level domain server" are functionally equivalent.
2. Your point is based on the presumption of overcharging by ICANN and NSI.
3. You have no way of knowing whether #2 is correct, hence your assumption and subsequent behavior are irresponsible.
4. Regardless of whether #2 is a correct or mistaken assumption, inappropriate or incorrect behavior by someone else does not provide a convenient excuse for us to also engage in inappropriate or incorrect behavior. If they are thieves, you are willing to become one too...? If they are rude, you have insufficient elegance in your soul to abstain from rudeness yourself?
The amount of extra traffic is very small compared to other things I do. A mistaken download can waste more network bandwidth than I use for DNS lookups in a year.
Irrelevant. The amount of extra traffic *you* incur is of no consequence to this particular discussion. The question relates to how much extra traffic would the *root/gtld* servers suffer if everyone (or lots of people) set up caching nameservers to do direct root/gtld queries without checking a forwarder first.
The real difference is whose servers handle the requests. ICANN and Network Solutions get paid a lot more money than they should be to run this stuff. They can afford to handle a little cost shifting from ISPs to their servers.
See 1-4 above.
-- Rodolfo J. Paiz rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.simpaticus.com
