[address-policy-wg] Policy proposal: #alpha: TLD Anycast Allocation Policy

On 24-mrt-05, at 14:25, Peter Koch wrote:

>> We're talking about TLDs here, not the root. There are very few TLDs
>> that even use the full 13 or so addresses that are possible without

> it might appear so since they are already anycasting.

I was talking about addresses, not about servers.

It makes no sense to anycast when there is room for more regular 
addresses.

>> using EDNS0. Country code TLDs have existed for 20 years without
>> trouble without anycast, so I really don't see why this would be

> Well, I've been told that some things have changed during those 20
> years, including IPv6 deployment, query volume increase, DoS attacks,
> user expectation to name a few.

Yes, and these changes over 20 years could be accommodated without TLD 
anycasting. My point isn't that there shouldn't be any TLD anycasting, 
just that TLDs can get by just fine without it too.

>> necessary now, especially as the shorter RTTs that are possible with
>> anycasting are extremely unlikely to make a noticeable real-world
>> difference.

> They might not for a single user but they definitely do -- even more so
> for the users "at large".

The users "at large" of ccTLDs are clustered within a small part of the 
network so having anycast instances all over the place doesn't help the 
users at large, only the very few that go to .nl from Argentina or some 
such. And since they incur longer round trips for the query to the 
authorative nameserver for the domain and then for the actual 
communciation anyway, the benefit to those users is also relatively 
low.