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An Advisory to the ICANN Board of Directors and the Internet community. In this Advisory, the RSSAC identifies key technical elements of potential DNS root server operators.
RSSAC001 and RFC 7720 are considered as starting points; alone, they are insufficient to evaluate potential operators. The RSSAC believes non-technical aspects (trustworthiness, ethos, etc) to be important and part of an overall evaluation but are not address herein. The proposed recommendations only consider technical aspects as well as its current understanding of the key technical elements a potential root operator should meetThe precise technical language often found in RFCs, while often providing consistency and clarity to technical communities, can sometimes be incomprehensible or misleading when used in a non-technical setting.

The purpose of this document is to increase the understanding of terms used commonly when discussing the root server system to the broader ICANN community. It is not to redefine or provide guidance to any technical communities on the correct use of these terms. This document and its terms should be useful to anyone discussing the DNS root server system. This includes RSSAC members, RSSAC Caucus members, ICANN staff, and the larger ICANN community. It will be updated by the RSSAC as the vocabulary used to discuss the root server system evolves.