Availability, usage, and deployment characteristics of the domain name system

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a critical part of the Internet’s infrastructure, and is one of the few examples of a robust, highlyscalable, and operational distributed system. Although a few studies have been devoted to characterizing its properties, such as its workload and the stability of the top-level servers, many key components of DNS have not yet been examined. Based on large-scale measurements taken from servers in a large content distribution network, we present a detailed study of key characteristics of the DNS infrastructure, such as load distribution, availability, and deployment patterns of DNS servers. Our analysis includes both local DNS servers and servers in the authoritative hierarchy. We find that (1) the vast majority of users use a small fraction of deployed name servers, (2) the availability of most name servers is high, and (3) there exists a larger degree of diversity in local DNS server deployment and usage than for authoritative servers. Furthermore, we ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: IMC
• Authors: Jeffrey Pang, James Hendricks, Aditya Akella, Roberto De Prisco, Bruce M. Maggs, Srinivasan Seshan
• Keywords: Dns Server, Grant Number, IMC 2004, Local Dns Server