DNS Wars
https://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2019-11/dnswars.html [www.potaroo.net]
2019-11-04 07:42
The initial distribution of names was via flooding of a common copy of the hosts file. Pretty obviously this does not scale, and the frustrations with this naming model drove much of the design of the DNS. The DNS is a hierarchal name structure, where every nodal point in the namespace can also be a delegation point. A delegation is completely autonomous, in that an entity who is delegated control of a nodal point in the namespace can populate it without reference to any other delegated operator of any other nodal point. The implementation of the matching namespace as a database follows the same structure, in that an authoritative server is responsible for answering all queries that relate to this nodal point in the database. Client systems that query these authoritative services also use a form of hierarchy, but for somewhat different reasons. End systems are usually equipped with a stub resolver service that can be queried by applications. They typically pass all queries to a recursive resolver. The recursive resolver takes on the role of traversing the database structure, resolving names by exposing the delegation points and discovering the authoritative servers for each of these zone delegations. It does so by using the same DNS protocol query and response mechanism as it uses once it finds the terminal zone that can provide the desired answer.
Ever since then we’ve been testing out these reasons and discovering how we can break these assumptions!
source: HN