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Re: name servers

  • From: Kevin Day
  • Date: Sun Apr 23 14:09:35 2000

> 
> 
> I have a name server for the few domains I host and my little local LAN.
> with reverse DNS lookup on for incoming e-mail and for web server logging,
> it does a fair bit of ns queries. I considered making it forward to
> concentric (my DSL ISP) name server but the result would be degraded
> performance of my network (or possibly no improvement over concentric,
> depending on which root is queried):
> 
> PING hudson.concentric.net (207.155.183.72): 56 data bytes
> 64 bytes from hudson.concentric.net (207.155.183.72): seq=0 ttl=247 time=85.1 ms
> .
> 64 bytes from hudson.concentric.net (207.155.183.72): seq=1 ttl=247 time=85.9 ms
> .
> 64 bytes from hudson.concentric.net (207.155.183.72): seq=2 ttl=247 time=86.3 ms
> .
> ---- hudson.concentric.net (207.155.183.72) PING Statistics ----
> 3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
> round-trip (ms) min/avg/max = 85.1/85.8/86.3 (std = 0.475)

<snip>

> 
> Clearly BTW I'm not getting what I'm paying for (1.1Mb SDSL via Covad) from Concentric.
> 85ms is ridiculously bad to a name server.
> 

What you're seeing isn't really too bad.

--- a.root-servers.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 20% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 38.025/43.774/56.639/7.573 ms

--- b.root-servers.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 20% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 89.725/98.950/115.136/10.337 ms
su-2.00# 

--- c.root-servers.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 20% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 43.902/50.025/56.996/4.661 ms

--- d.root-servers.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 78.115/99.506/125.723/17.295 ms
su-2.00# 

--- e.root-servers.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 66.496/68.397/72.560/2.221 ms

--- f.root-servers.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 86.751/88.591/90.156/1.445 ms


hudson.concentric.net might be across the country from you, concentric is a
big provider. Also keep in mind that ICMP pings aren't necessarily the best
measurement of round-trip-time. Many ISP's now have their routers placing
icmp at the bottom of the queue, causing icmp to get dropped if anything is
going to. This also increases ping times, while real applications won't
actually see it.

Now, my uplink's name server happens to be sitting a few feet from where my
lines reach them, so it's decently fast:

--- cerebus.mcs.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 6.136/14.032/26.805/8.062 ms

Also, don't confuse what you're paying for (bandwidth) with good
connectivity. You can get 30ms pings back from hosts on a 64k line, and
still be slow. Unless you're seeing a real problem, I wouldn't worry much
about it. 

Personally, I disable reverse lookups on my web server, specifically for
that reason. Even if I can get to my uplink's nameserver quickly, that
doesn't necessarily mean the nameserver that's authoritative for the domain
I'm looking up is going to respond quickly, or at all.

Also, this probably doesn't belong on NANOG, as it's not a internet-wide
operational discussion. There are some bind/named mailing lists I can point
you to if you need more help.

-- Kevin