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[Quinn Wood <wood.quinn.s AT gmail.com>]

On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 2:46 PM, Coyo <coyo AT darkdna.net> wrote:
> In addition, I wanted to clarify something. A TLD's set of nameservers
> are configured in an identical fashion to second and third level
> domains, correct? Basically, instead of pointing to a TLD, you point
> to the OpenNIC root?
>
Zones:
.
|-- com
|   `-- google
`-- net

Zone contents are called records:
.
|-- com
|   |-- google NS a.gtld-servers.net.
|   `-- google
|       |-- ns1.google A 216.239.32.10
|       `-- mail.google CNAME googlemail.l.google
`-- net
    `-- google NS ns1.google.com

It may be confusing since we use the term "domain" all the time, but
really there are zones and records. A top level domain is a zone
directly under the root, and a record is in a zone. That record can
be- for example-  a A (IPv4 address), AAAA (IPv6 address), CNAME
(canonical name, i.e. refer to the DNS record listed and use its
result.) Those three record types identify a host, but there are other
"domain names" which do not, like DNSKEY and LOC, which are used for
other information.

In OpenNIC, most nameservers that run top level zones hold not only NS
records for delegating zones (so someone other than Verisign can run
the google.com. zone), but also hold other types of records as well.
In ICANN space this isn't as common, if it's done at all. That's
because at a higher scale, it makes more sense to run different
nameservers to handle the backbone than the ones that customers of
GoDaddy and Namecheap use for their sites. However, these nameservers
run the same softwares and the same configuration styles. It's just
human policy to only include NS records in the root.