Who pays for the DNS root servers, according to Paul Mockapetris?

Paul Mockapetris admits he does not fully understand the incentive. Early on he went around asking organisations to run root servers, until European operators asked for one of their own. Today he points to prestige and to companies like Microsoft that earn more when services such as LinkedIn respond faster, and he notes DNS is becoming more centralised under hyperscalers like Cloudflare and Google because running it has grown complicated.

• Mockapetris compares the outsourcing trend to email, which old internet hands say has become hard to self-host.

▸In their words

“I ask myself this question a lot.” Paul Mockapetris · at 25:26 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Ryan Peterman (2026-10-19). Read the whole episode summary →

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