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[Coyo <coyo AT darkdna.net>]

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I have a question regarding delegation.

The .[root] zone nameservers are different than the .com. nameservers,
correct? I realize TLD records such as com, net, co and us have very
long time-to-live, to relieve the burden on .[root] nameservers, but
I'd imagine TLD zones such as .com and .us require much more
information, even if only NS records to delegate to the nameservers
that respond to third-level zones, such as google, yahoo,
opennicproject, etc.

Some gTLDs and ccTLDs, I've noticed, are handled by specific
organizations, rather than VeriSign, though their nameserver clusters
are no less beefy.

How does delegation work? When you ask your friendly neighborhood
recursor, in this case an OpenNIC recursor, though usually it's a slow
overburdened one provided by one's ISP, that recursor usually has to
ask other nameservers for an A or AAAA record.

How does it go about doing that?

I've read the Wikipedia and HowStuffWorks articles on DNS, and they
weren't very clear on how the recursor run by one's ISP (or OpenNIC)
locates the SOA operated by a web hosting, CDN or VPS hosting company.

I understand what NS does for a given domain, it instructs the
recursor to look there for further information or instruction, and the
recursor keeps doing that until it gets the A or AAAA record it wants.

What I don't understand is how the recursor is instructed to look
elsewhere, via a NS or CNAME record, when it's looking for an A or
AAAA record.

I do know that the DNS client asks for a specific record, be it a TXT,
SRV or MX record, or any other record, but I'm not certain how a
recursor recurses.

I apologize for the stupid question, and I thank you for your time and
patience in advance. The biggest reason I am interested in OpenNIC is
not simply because I use the servers, but because DNS fascinates me,
and OpenNIC is an opportunity to gain experience with DNS nameservers
and the structure of top level zones and the root zone, which is not
possible with InterNIC.


> 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.


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