The key asset of Internet is the domain name directory known as DNS. A root name server is a DNS server that answers requests for the root namespace domain, and redirects requests for a particular top-level domain to that TLD’s name servers.
There are currently thirteen root name servers around the world. Most of the servers reside in the United States while the rest exist in multiple locations on different continents. The US government plays a key role in supervising the asset.
In the early hours of Tuesday, three key servers were hit by a barrage of data in what is known as a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS). There is no evidence of damage proving once again the robustness of the Internet.
The servers under attacks are as follow:
- G-root, G.root-servers.org at Columbus, Ohio, USA
- L-root, L.root-servers.org at Los Angeles, California, USA
- UltraDNS, authoritative for .org and .info TLDs
I recently setup a mail server for a company. I was blamed for using the same domain name for internal and external access. I was asked to use a different internal and external domain name instead. The irony is the difference between the domain names is so subtle. For external domain name, I was asked to use example.com and example.com.my for internal domain name.
The reason some people prefer using different names for internal and external domains is a DNS suffix like .corp can not be resolved by external network clients because it is not a publicly available top level domain name. The disadvantage is that this configuration requires you to manage two separate namespaces. Also, using a stand-alone internal domain that is unrelated to your external domain might create confusion for users because the namespaces do not reflect a relationship between resources within and outside of your network. Whatever security advantages that may be gained by this DNS design are mitigated by the complications and user dissatisfaction you’ll encounter when using different domain names for internal and external network resources.