English Wikipedia down due to dns issue

Thanks bunches. You've now put a question in my head that I've never thought of before and am stuck wondering about...

"Are there geographically ideal places for data centers?"

...I never thought much of the question before, since I've heard stories of places like the Principality of Sealand being used for them, thinking that where you put them is more a matter of politics than situation.

But Florida does sound like a less than ideal place for a data center, given its location on a peninsula in a hurricane prone part of the world. The only advantage logistically I can think of is easy access to ocean cabling.

EDIT: That reminds me... A few weeks ago, while visiting family, my mother asked me why they didn't put data centers in salt mines. She reasoned that the temperature and humidity controlled environment would be ideal for climate sensitive hardware. I didn't have a good answer for her, either with regards if they did so or not, or why not if they didn't.

Perhaps they like to live in Florida, or already did live in Florida when deciding where to put the data center?

At least one person connected to Wikipedia lives in Florida:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales

Record caching is intrinsic to DNS. Negative cache times being ignored is not usual in my experience; but then when you're at Wikipedia's scale minority cases are large enough that they are worth compensating for.