k.root-servers.net Changing DNS Software at on 19.2.2003

As announced previously k.root-servers.net will start running nsd 1.0.2-rel.
The changeover will start at 0900UTC on Wednesday 19.2.2003.  
Between 0900 and 0930 all instances of K will be sequentially cut over. 
This way there will be no service interruption.  During the cut-over
period K will answer either using bind8 or nsd.  After 0930 K will
answer only using nsd.  K will support identification of software and
instance via id.server and version.server in class CHAOS as per
draft-ietf-dnsop-serverid. 

This change is designed to increase the diversity of software in the
root name server system, the lack of which is widely considered to be a
potential vulnerability.  The nsd software has been designed from
scratch specifically as an authoritative name server.  It has no design
commonalities with bind, the currently prevalent DNS implementation.
In addition to that nsd provides a significant increase
in the performance reserve of k.root-servers.net.

Please report any anomalies with k.root-servers.net service to
<ops at ripe.net> as usual.

nsd can be found at http://www.nlnetlabs.nl/nsd/index.html.