Toward Lowering the Load on DNS Root Nameservers

Duane Wessels
The Measurement Factory and Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis - CAIDA
San Diego Supercomputer Center,
University of California, San Diego

CAIDA is continuing efforts to analyze DNS root server performance. We are characterizing DNS clients that send large numbers of queries to root servers. Analysis of trace data from the two F root servers shows a number of interesting things. Most of the high-rate queries exhibit the strange behavior of only using 25% of the query ID range. A number of sources also transmit each query two or three times. We also notice hourly spikes in the number of clients contacting the root servers. The talk will include results of analyses of which applications/configurations are broken, and how to fix or upgrade them.