[rssac-caucus] Root Stability Study RFP

[Joe Abley]

On 10 Jun 2015, at 4:05, Davey Song wrote:

> FYI, there is a thorough study done by Joe and Kim in June 2012 which 
> is
> not included in the project overview document.
>
> http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/about/historical-documentation/root-scaling-27jun12-en.pdf

Thanks, Davey! I am particularly pleased that we managed to cite both 
Donna Summers and Angry Birds in Appendix E.

That appendix provides describes a numerical model for predicting the 
compiled root zone size (using BIND9's named-compilezone as a 
normalisation tool) based on the number of TLDs and the prevalence of 
AAAA and DS records. It seems like fun to see how accurate it turned out 
to be.

The numerical model is collapsed to three parameters, the number of TLDs 
(T), the number of AAAA RRs per TLD (alpha) and the number of DS RRs per 
TLD (delta). This gives S = 730585 bytes = 713 KB, or thereabouts.

[walrus:~]% dig @xfr.cjr.dns.icann.org . axfr | awk '($2 ~ /^[0-9]+$/ && 
$3 == "IN" && $4 == "NS") { if (!tld[$1]) { tld[$1] = 1; T++; } } ($3 == 
"IN" && $4 == "AAAA" ) { aaaa++; } ($3 == "IN" && $4 == "DS") { ds++; } 
END { print T, aaaa/T, ds/T, T*(496.225 + 70.1988*aaaa/T + 
125.387*ds/T); }'
964 1.7168 1.12552 730585
[walrus:~]%

The actual size of the root zone according to the measure used in that 
report is 704 KB, so the model is off by 1.3%, which seems acceptable. 
Hooray! :-)

[walrus:~]% named-compilezone -i none -f text -F raw=0 -o root.compiled 
. root
zone ./IN: loaded serial 2015061000 (DNSSEC signed)
dump zone to root.compiled...done
OK
[walrus:~]% ls -al root*
-rw-r--r--  1 jabley  staff  953547 10 Jun 09:38 root
-rw-r--r--  1 jabley  staff  720776 10 Jun 09:39 root.compiled
[walrus:~]%


Joe