[NotAWorkNick]

Thanks for that, appreciated. I'll be honest- I'm just a 'little guy' in the food chain so I always figured that doing something like that was for the ISP level folks <edit to clarify, I mean connecting to a Zone 1 Resolver. I wasn't aware that one could download the Root Hints File directly (Thanks!).

One quick question though - After taking a quick skim of it the list seems to be extremely 'Western-Centric' (reference link https://www.internic.net/domain/named.root)

[icedchai]

The root servers are anycasted. Each one of those root server IPs corresponds to N physical servers at diverse networks / locations all over the world.

[lapinot]

> I'm just a 'little guy' in the food chain so I always figured that doing something like that was for the ISP level folks

A lot of people are running recursive resolvers at home (like pi-hole stuff, or most people running some custom openwrt router/modem). I'm running one on my laptop (my resolver is localhost) and it works great.

> After taking a quick skim of it the list seems to be extremely 'Western-Centric'

It is, but that's what the internet is. But by running your own recursive resolver you can control your cache and a lot of the data doesn't change often. If you're extra paranoid you can cache the record data (or even archive the history) for ccTLD (or even all TLDs). For stuff (domains) you're interested in you can also hard-code or otherwise program "non-standard" ways to resolve the ips (by somehow populating a local database that overrides recursive resolution), like pi-hole/safebrowsing blocklists, stuff from institutions or CDNs you trust.

[aaomidi]

They are western centric, and unfortunately, in this current state of the web they're still essentially the authority on DNS.

Alternatively, you can maintain the NSes for all the TLDs you are particularly interested in, and alert yourself if they change to something you don't recognize.

Finally, keep in mind that whatever you do, you need to have multiple vantage points to the internet. There's not a lot stopping your ISP from not delivering you to the right host when you try to talk to it. E.g. your ISP can fake the DNS responses.

[endymi0n]

> They are western centric, and unfortunately, in this current state of the web they're still essentially the authority on DNS.

I‘m curious to see your evidence on that or which future state you would see as a more fortunate one.

[tylersmith]

The canonical DNS system itself is extremely Western-Centric.

[kfrzcode]

As are many Western inventions