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Re: [LUG] Local DNS, webcaching??

 

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M.Blackmore wrote:
>
> Is the solution to the "looking up" time lag a local DNS cache?

Whilst I run such boxes in a lot of places, I do it for reasons other
than performance, although there can be a performance gain if you have
the free memory to burn.

If the ISP you use is unable to run a well performing DNS cache, you
need a new ISP. But I doubt that is the problem.

Get some timings for DNS lookups to see if they are slow.

Repeatedly requesting the same lookup, should also show the effects of
caching.

Here for example I query "www.sun.com" twice in quick succession.

srw@derek:~$ dig www.sun.com

; <<>> DiG 9.2.4 <<>> www.sun.com
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 17361
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.sun.com.                   IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.sun.com.            3600    IN      A       209.249.116.195

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
sun.com.                86400   IN      NS      ns1.sun.com.
sun.com.                86400   IN      NS      ns2.sun.com.
sun.com.                86400   IN      NS      ns7.sun.com.
sun.com.                86400   IN      NS      ns8.sun.com.

;; Query time: 792 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)
;; WHEN: Mon Aug  1 17:30:08 2005
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 117

srw@derek:~$ dig www.sun.com

; <<>> DiG 9.2.4 <<>> www.sun.com
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 41196
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.sun.com.                   IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.sun.com.            3584    IN      A       209.249.116.195

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
sun.com.                86384   IN      NS      ns1.sun.com.
sun.com.                86384   IN      NS      ns2.sun.com.
sun.com.                86384   IN      NS      ns7.sun.com.
sun.com.                86384   IN      NS      ns8.sun.com.

;; Query time: 1 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)
;; WHEN: Mon Aug  1 17:30:24 2005
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 117


First time it took 792 milliseconds, second time 1 msec (I'd expect
maybe 10 to 30 milliseconds from a remote DNS server). So no problem there.

Note it would probably have been quicker using Demon's DNS servers for
the first lookup, as they no doubt have "www.sun.com" cached most of the
time! So running your own server isn't guaranteed faster...

It is possible there is some other DNS misconfiguration going on. Are
the servers in /etc/resolv.conf all working, and all fast...

Try for each IP address...
dig @IP.AD.DR.ES www.sun.com

Do you allow both TCP and UDP queries to the relevant DNS servers?

Also DNS lookups can get very slow, if packets are being dropped due to
congestion (or poorly implemented traffic shaping), as the retry times
can be quite laid back (at least in systems that implement a sane retry
policy - unlike recent versions of MS Windows that really don't try and
play nicely with the other computers in the world).

I suspect your slow starts may well be nothing to do with DNS.
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