Moratorium for Root Zone Changes during DNSSEC transition

14 July 2010

In the interests of stability, ICANN, the Department of Commerce and VeriSign have jointly agreed to briefly suspend processing root zone changes for a short period after the DNSSEC deployment in the root zone on July 15, 2010. Because of the magnitude of the change to the root zone represented by deploying DNSSEC, it is prudent to not make any additional changes so that any potential negative effects that might occur resulting from the DNSSEC deployment can be clearly observed and mitigated.

In light of these considerations, routine root zone changes are suspended until Tuesday, July 20. Beginning on Tuesday, July 20, all routine root zone change requests received during this brief suspension will be processed expeditiously.

Conservative operational best practices call for changing only one part of a system at a time. For example, specifically in the context of the root zone, the report "Scaling the Root" recommends that only one major change be undertaken in the root zone at a time. (This report was prepared by the Root Scaling Study Team as commissioned by the Root Scaling Steering Group in response to a request by the ICANN Board and is available at http://www.icann.org/en/committees/dns-root/root-scaling-study-report-31aug09-en.pdf.)