Alternate DNS root

In addition to the Internet's main DNS root (currently consisting of 13 root nameservers working in agreement with ICANN), several organizations operate alternate DNS roots (often referred to as alt roots). Each alternate root has its own root nameservers and its own set of top-level domains.

The BIZ TLD created by Pacific Root was in operation before ICANN proposed running BIZ, and at least one of the alternate root servers resolves BIZ to Pacific Root's. There are BIZ domain names that exist in different roots and point to different IP addresses. The possibility of such conflicts, and their potential for destabilizing the Internet, is the main source of controversy surrounding alt roots.

Only a small proportion of ISPs actually use any of the zones served by alt-root operators, generally sticking to the ICANN-specified root servers.

Among the most well-known alt-root zones are:

• Open Root Server Confederation (ORSC)
  • The ORSC root zone is too large to be fully quoted here. The ORSC root zone can be downloaded from http://dns.vrx.net/tech/rootzone/db.root
• OpenNIC
  • GLUE -- root server administration
  • INDY -- independent news
  • GEEK -- anything geeky
  • NULL -- miscellaneous non-commercial individual sites
  • OSS -- Open Source Software
  • PARODY -- parodies
• AlterNIC
  • EXP --
  • LLC --
  • LNX --
  • LTD --
  • MED --
  • NIC --
  • NOC --
  • PORN --
  • XXX --
• Pacific Root (many TLDs, not all listed here)
  • AIS --
  • BIO --
  • CAL --
  • IND --
  • JOB --
  • LIB --
  • NPO --
  • PPP --
  • SAT --
  • WWW --
  • BIZ --
  • ETC --
  • MEN --
  • NGO --
  • NOT --