[LINK] alternative DNS root clients

[Craig Sanders]

On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 11:52:12AM +1100, Kim Holburn wrote:
> Why shouldn't we as DNS clients be able to use more than one DNS root?

depends what you mean by a 'DNS client'...

if you mean each individual application, then the really obvious reason
is that it would be too much of a PITA for every user to configure.
technically, there's no reason why it's impossible. it would just be
completely impractical, unusable by most people, and unwanted by most of
those who were capable of using it. in short: the burden of complex DNS
configuration management for each app would be far too high.

if you mean individual machines, then the capability to use as many
DNS roots as you like already exists.


> [...]
> If I want to add another DNS root to my client, say for example
> opennic.org, and I put a normal DNS server as my first server and an
> opennic.org DNS server as my second DNS server (or v.v.) it can take a
> long time to get to the second server.
>
> Opennic's servers serve normal ICANN TLDs as well as opennic TLDs, but
> why shouldn't this happen at the client level?  Why can't you specify
> several root domains?

you can.  here's one way:

install a name server (i.e. a recursive DNS server/cache) on your local
network, configure it to use whichever forwarder(s) you like, then
configure your client machines to use your local nameserver.

if someone doesn't have the expertise to do this, then they really
don't have the expertise to diagnose and fix the potential problems
associated with having multiple DNS sources.

NOTE: there are dns caches which can fire off asynchronous queries -
the timeout/delay issue with sequential queries is a solved problem.
there are, however, tradeoffs - it's been a few years since i looked
into it in any detail, ,but the async dns servers i know of just aren't
as "feature-complete" as the most commonly used nameservers like bind9,
powerdns, or even dnsmasq.


> Is there something I've missed here?

making this a client configuration issue would break
DNS for most users.  DNS is supposed to just work.


craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>

BOFH excuse #358:

struck by the Good Times virus