One of the reasons why putting root servers outside the US has been avoided is that the most common DNS implementation -- BIND -- has for a long time had bugs such that it wouldn't use "close" servers over "distant" ones. Since the U.S. was the center of most of the world's Internet connectivity (and still is) it was easier to just put the root servers where the traffic ``probably had to go anyway most of the time'' than to fix BIND. BIND is fixed. I think some of the math is still "wrong", since I didn't pick up all of the patches I got from Phil Almquist in this area and I know he spent a whole lot of time on it. But I did fix a lot of the sorting behaviour in 4.9 (and a few more things will be fixed in 4.9.2). If all of the root servers that run BIND use 4.9 or later, and most of the large institutional forwarding servers that run BIND use 4.9 or later, it will no longer matter where the root servers are. Note: I'm just another BIND hacker, I don't make decisions about root servers. But if those who *do* make these decisions want to spread the root service load a bit more, BIND is finally able to do the right thing about it. -- Paul Vixie Redwood City, CA Also: <comp-sources-unix@uunet.uu.net>, <vixie@bsdi.com>, decwrl!vixie!paul <ftpmail-admin@pa.dec.com>, <vixie@sony.com>, <paul@vix.com> <{bind-workers,objectivism}-request@vix.com> --- End of News article __ Erik-Jan.