Category Archives: DNS

25 Oct

NIXI root DNS servers and updates

Has been a while since I checked the status of root servers which are hosted at NIXI. The list as per their official member list stays the same i.e i root in Mumbai, K root in Noida and F root in Chennai. 

i root seems to be up!

K root seems to be down!

F root seems to be up!

Atleast while 2 out of 3 root servers seems to be up but for some reason my connection in Haryana isn’t  hitting i root. F root instance it is taking me there for sure. 

i root latency check from my home: 

That’s clearly too high latency. Latency from my location to Mumbai is typically 30-40ms. Let’s trace to the i root. 

Thus Airtel is taking me to all the way to London (while LNX = Airport code for Smolensk Airport, Smolensk, Russia but route clearly shows it’s being exchanged at LINX. Someone in Netnod got into habit of writing LINX as LNX which is confussing). 

I see the same by querying id.server and hostname.bind in CHAOS class.

So, for now, Airtel is preferring route learnt via LINX peering over route learnt at NIXI. In a check by all Indian RIPE Atlas probes, I see that out of 50 RIPE Atlas probes, 23 are hitting s1.mum in Mumbai, 19 are hitting LINX London (s1.lnx) and 1 (which is hosted on NKN) is hitting s1.amx in Amsterdam (json data here). 

Why this happens? 

It’s often the lack of peering and/or case of prefered routes. For smaller networks, it’s simply missing peering. For larger networks, it’s about which route they prefer, which not. Here’s a view of networks with their ASNs sorted by latency (wherever RIPE Atlas Probe) was present (measurement link here). 

So what can be done about it? 

NIXI needs to be more attractive to various (smaller) networks which clearly it is not since it just does not has any content player connected to it due to policy issue. Furthermore customers of Airtel need to buzz it and request for a better route to i root’s local instance. 

Comments & thoughts expressed in the post are personal and have nothing to do with my employer. I am also volunteering for supporting tech platform for BharatIX to facilitate peering.