[aklug] Re: GCI DNS servers

From: Royce Williams <royce@alaska.net>
Date: Tue Jan 29 2008 - 06:42:01 AKST

To quote Zork (or was it Hitchhiker's?):

> hello, me
Talking to yourself is a sign of impending mental collapse.

Royce Williams wrote, on 1/29/2008 6:30 AM:
> I must respectfully disagree, as I think that I did the last time that
> a thread like this went this direction.
>
> The whole point of the design of the DNS infrastructure is to
> distribute load. Everyone running their own server doesn't scale.

That being said, running a caching-only nameserver that uses your
ISP's DNS servers as forwarders would be both efficient and
educational, and I personally encourage that.

> I encourage anyone with this symptom to document it -- perhaps by
> using Nagios or otherwise monitoring your provider's DNS
> responsiveness over a period of time -- and reporting it to your
> provider, whether it be GCI, ACS, AT&T, Clearwire, AP&T, TelAlaska, or
> Joe's ISP and Sandwich Shop. :)

Of course, if you're running an important service and your provider's
DNS is acting up, it's a good idea to follow Damien's advice to
address the symptom in the short term -- as long as you follow up with
diagnosing the problem, helping your ISP get back on track, and
switching back to using them when the problem has been resolved.

Some interesting references:

98% of DNS Queries at the Root Level are Unnecessary
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/01/030124074245.htm

Is Your Caching Resolver Polluting the Internet?
http://dns.measurement-factory.com/writings/wessels-netts2004-slides.pdf

DNS Measurements at a Root Server
http://www.caida.org/outreach/papers/2001/DNSMeasRoot/dmr.pdf

... and there's one more excellent paper that I'm having trouble
locating at the moment; if/when I find it, I'll follow up.

Royce

-- 
Royce D. Williams                                - IP Engineering, ACS
http://www.tycho.org/royce/                   - PGP: 3FC087DB/1776A531
       Words are good servants but bad masters. - Aldous Huxley
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Received on Tue Jan 29 06:42:32 2008

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