Nervous ISPs replace Chrome as strange consumers of DNS resources

Google has fixed the flaws in the Chromium browser engine that saw it poll DNS root servers, but ISPs who seem to have odd views about resilience now emerged as a new source of probably-well-meaning overconsumption of internet resources.

ICANN’s office of the Chief Technology Officer delivered that view on Monday during the governance org’s annual conference in Bali, Indonesia, in a session that shared recent data from its Identifier Technology Health Indicators (ITHI) research program which monitors the security, stability and resilience of the domain name system.

ICANN principal technologist Maud Durand opened with a discussion of “Chromiods” the odd flaw in Chrome that meant well-meaning efforts to avoid a form of DNS hijacking caused the browser to generate about half of all DNS root server traffic during the year 2020.

Given Chrome’s enormous prevalence, that traffic was unwelcome.

ICANN, plus other internetworking and governance stakeholders, told Google to sort it out. Durand said the Chocolate Factory gradually did. …