Re: [ga] No more FUD -- what is the current size of the .com database?
George Kirikos wrote: Let's go to facts, though, instead of FUD. What is the current size, in gigabytes, of the actual .com database If you are talking about the zone file I use a very rough rule of thumb metric: 200 bytes per name before any compression is applied. After compression the number is more like 80 bytes/name (often less). The whois file is larger, but it has no direct operational value as measured by the ability of DNS to turn DNS query packets into DNS response packets. There is a subtle matter about .net - that virtually all of the root and many of the TLD servers have their names in .net. This means that if the .net zone were to wobble it could cause an amplified ripple in other TLDs, particularly if it happens as servers come up via their hints files and are trying to fill caches and avoid over dependence on glue records. A while back I suggested to ICANN's SSAC that they do some simulations to see what might be the nature and size, if any, of those ripples on other TLDs should .net go south. The .com zone has on the order of 60,000,000 names, which means we are talking about a 12 gigabyte zone file, uncompressed. One does have to give credit to Verisign for coming up with systems to distribute the updates to this every 5 minutes (although one might suspect that such incremental updates became a necessity as the size of the file made bulk updates difficult.) --karl--
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