[Pdns-users] General DNS questions...

[bert hubert]

On Thu, Apr 07, 2011 at 10:14:31PM -0400, Mohamed Lrhazi wrote:
> I hope you guys don't mind a couple of non pdns specific questions...
For once ;-)

> 
> - When you declare 2 or 3 NS records for your domain, does the order
> of those names correlate with their usage? by that I mean can I expect
> a bigger percentage of traffic to go to ns1, compared to ns2?

No, this is perfectly distributed.

> - How does that load translate in practice when you declare three, and
> how about four or five? do these extras even get used at all?

They do.

> - What free tools are there to use to test the latency, response
> quality, and stress load, a DNS server?

Response quality can be determined against a 'reference' implementation
using dnsreplay http://doc.powerdns.com/analysis.html

Latency can be measured using dnsscope described on the same page.

Alternatively, for resolvers within PowerDNS there is also the tool
'dnsbulktest' (undocumented, only available from Subversion) which can
consume the Alexa 'top 1 million' list, available from
http://www.alexa.com/topsites and check their resolution status.

Stress load can also be  generated using the excelent dnsperf and resperf
tools from Nominum, http://www.nominum.com/resources/measurement-tools

Good luck!

	Bert