[jiggawatts]

So it looks like the root namespace providers output a totally reasonable amount of traffic. Divided between the hundreds of points of presence globally, this is tens of megabits per physical host.

This FAQ is illuminating: https://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/internet-resolut...

The servers themselves are ordinary 1 RU physical rack mount servers with 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps Ethernet. Nothing special. I'm guessing that most of the load isn't from the root, e.g.: "j.root-servers.net", but from hosting the authoritative DNS servers for .com and .net (b.gtld-servers.net) on the same box. That would surely have more traffic and much more data.

[fanf2]

The root servers only serve the root, root-servers.net, and .arpa, and they are starting to move .arpa elsewhere - https://lists.dns-oarc.net/pipermail/dns-operations/2020-Aug...

[moonchild]

Reasonable quantity of traffic, but they have to be very reliable.

[londons_explore]

No need for reliability when there is 26 way failover...